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stoutfellowTwo comments before I begin discussing this book, by Gordon Wood:
1) In reading the book, I seem to have stumbled into the middle of an argument, and I'm hearing only one side of it. Wood is tackling the question of the extent to which the American Revolution was, in fact, a revolution - a social upheaval as well as a political one, as the French and Russian Revolutions so clearly were. I have several other texts on the Revolution, but as far as I recall - it has been quite a while since I read any of them - none of them address this particular question. So, I'm not really in a position to weigh Wood's arguments against the arguments of those who disagree with him. All I can do is lay them out, to the extent that I understand them, and perhaps raise a question or two.
2) This is a meaty book, so I'm not going to try to cover it all at once. It is divided into three parts, titled "Monarchy", "Republicanism", and "Democracy", and I will divide my discussion accordingly.
Wood begins by describing one of the principal strands of colonial (and British) society, a network of ascending and descending personal relationships, founded in an acceptance of a natural hierarchy of ability. Slave to master, servant to employer, child to parent, wife to husband, client to patron - each owed allegiance to, and received benefits from, his or her superior. The authority, and the power, of the superior in each relationship was great; if disobedience was not always punishable by physical means, financial means were always available. The nominal power of official government, where it differed from these personal lines of allegiance, bowed to it; Wood mentions an occasion or two in which recently-appointed functionaries were pulled up short by the pre-existing real powers. A high-ranking aristocrat - titled or not, landowner or merchant - stood at the center of a network of obligations, allowing him to raise militias, appoint local officials, and generally dominate the political life of his people. We today are accustomed to relatively impersonal dealings, in business, in government, and in other areas, but in the thinly populated colonies such were almost non-existent.
Between people of comparable rank, not themselves hierarchically linked, the relationship was still fundamentally personal. Reputation - honor - was a vital component of any gentleman's state, and to damage another's reputation was serious business. It could be punished mercilessly at law or by the duel, and indeed had to be, as a gentleman whose honor had come into question could lose the power to carry out his obligations, upward and downward. In some cases, crimes that we would consider considerably more serious were subjected to lesser penalties than were slanders and libels.
A few thoughts come to mind. The kind of networks Wood describes are not altogether foreign to us. The hierarchies of street gangs, of organized crime, or of political machines - at least, as popularly conceived - share many of the above characteristics. For that matter, the informal structures of many present-day organizations - quite different from the official rankings - also display some of these traits. So do those of small towns - again, as conceived by those who do not live in them! Nonetheless, for most of us, dealings with, say, a grocer - or more likely a supermarket - do not entail any relationship beyond that of the exchange; if Wood is correct, this was not true, or at least less true, in society of the colonial era. It takes a certain effort to picture this.
Wood comments that many of the relationships he describes were spoken of as friendships, even when the participants were manifestly unequal. This makes me wonder about, for example, the often-touted relationship between John and Abigail Adams; they refer to each other as friends, but do they mean what we would mean by that word? I suspect not, at least not entirely.
In any event, Wood's discussion does raise questions. The colonies had very little in the way of formal aristocracy; a few of the royally-appointed or chartered officials might hold titles of nobility, but most could claim only such honorifics as "Esquire" or "Mister" (and the latter was not available to most adult males). Nonetheless, if Wood is correct, there was an effective aristocracy of wealth and talent - not merely an upper class, but a class claiming and receiving deference and obedience; in this respect, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were more alike than either would be likely to admit.
I'll have to think about this.
1) In reading the book, I seem to have stumbled into the middle of an argument, and I'm hearing only one side of it. Wood is tackling the question of the extent to which the American Revolution was, in fact, a revolution - a social upheaval as well as a political one, as the French and Russian Revolutions so clearly were. I have several other texts on the Revolution, but as far as I recall - it has been quite a while since I read any of them - none of them address this particular question. So, I'm not really in a position to weigh Wood's arguments against the arguments of those who disagree with him. All I can do is lay them out, to the extent that I understand them, and perhaps raise a question or two.
2) This is a meaty book, so I'm not going to try to cover it all at once. It is divided into three parts, titled "Monarchy", "Republicanism", and "Democracy", and I will divide my discussion accordingly.
Wood begins by describing one of the principal strands of colonial (and British) society, a network of ascending and descending personal relationships, founded in an acceptance of a natural hierarchy of ability. Slave to master, servant to employer, child to parent, wife to husband, client to patron - each owed allegiance to, and received benefits from, his or her superior. The authority, and the power, of the superior in each relationship was great; if disobedience was not always punishable by physical means, financial means were always available. The nominal power of official government, where it differed from these personal lines of allegiance, bowed to it; Wood mentions an occasion or two in which recently-appointed functionaries were pulled up short by the pre-existing real powers. A high-ranking aristocrat - titled or not, landowner or merchant - stood at the center of a network of obligations, allowing him to raise militias, appoint local officials, and generally dominate the political life of his people. We today are accustomed to relatively impersonal dealings, in business, in government, and in other areas, but in the thinly populated colonies such were almost non-existent.
Between people of comparable rank, not themselves hierarchically linked, the relationship was still fundamentally personal. Reputation - honor - was a vital component of any gentleman's state, and to damage another's reputation was serious business. It could be punished mercilessly at law or by the duel, and indeed had to be, as a gentleman whose honor had come into question could lose the power to carry out his obligations, upward and downward. In some cases, crimes that we would consider considerably more serious were subjected to lesser penalties than were slanders and libels.
A few thoughts come to mind. The kind of networks Wood describes are not altogether foreign to us. The hierarchies of street gangs, of organized crime, or of political machines - at least, as popularly conceived - share many of the above characteristics. For that matter, the informal structures of many present-day organizations - quite different from the official rankings - also display some of these traits. So do those of small towns - again, as conceived by those who do not live in them! Nonetheless, for most of us, dealings with, say, a grocer - or more likely a supermarket - do not entail any relationship beyond that of the exchange; if Wood is correct, this was not true, or at least less true, in society of the colonial era. It takes a certain effort to picture this.
Wood comments that many of the relationships he describes were spoken of as friendships, even when the participants were manifestly unequal. This makes me wonder about, for example, the often-touted relationship between John and Abigail Adams; they refer to each other as friends, but do they mean what we would mean by that word? I suspect not, at least not entirely.
In any event, Wood's discussion does raise questions. The colonies had very little in the way of formal aristocracy; a few of the royally-appointed or chartered officials might hold titles of nobility, but most could claim only such honorifics as "Esquire" or "Mister" (and the latter was not available to most adult males). Nonetheless, if Wood is correct, there was an effective aristocracy of wealth and talent - not merely an upper class, but a class claiming and receiving deference and obedience; in this respect, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were more alike than either would be likely to admit.
I'll have to think about this.
