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Summary: The American Revolution from a British point of view.
Review: A very enjoyable and thought provoking book. This is definitely not how we teach the origins or the progress of that lengthy struggle here in the US. Our dearly held romanticized view of the founding fathers motivations and methods takes a bit of a beating, as does the early generalship of Washington. King George III and the other Parliamentary leadership are portrayed not as bumbling oppressors but as overindulgent uncles really unwilling to harshly punish the transgressions of a wayward nephew. While I don't buy it all its certainly another viewpoint that is quite valid and the book is well worth reading.
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Summary: A Partisan, but Likeable Book
Review: Harvey's book is the first I've read, "from a British point of veiw", that is unabashedly pro-British. Although he seems, sometimes, to take a stand simply to take a stand, its thoroughly readable, and may induce our British cousins to actually learn something about the War for Independence. Hey, you did your best!
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Summary: Arguing with the ghosts of historians past
Review: History is written by the winners, and this is British journalist Robert Harvey's attempt to rewrite it from the losers' perspective. Highly readable (often compellingly so), Harvey's account of the American Revolution has much to recommend it, and his narrative offers a nice refresher course in military history. The volume also includes extensive excerpts (with modernized spelling) from contemporary chronicles, lending the book a "you are there" touch. Throughout, Harvey inveighs against Americans' "heroic view of the Revolution" and "the remarkably enduring nature of the myths." But many of his versions of episodes in American history seem to have been culled from textbooks written fifty years ago. (Of the more than 160 works listed in the bibliography, only 14 were written after 1980.) Not once does Harvey identify the writers with whom he is arguing: his summary of the "prevailing myths" are always prefaced by "It is asserted," "It is claimed," "It is widely believed." For example, he claims that "one of the darkest and least researched corners of the American Revolution was the treatment of the loyalists," but he seems entirely oblivious of the scholarly studies by Christopher New or William Nelson or even of the standard popular account by Christopher Moore. Although Harvey seems to regard his revisionism as startlingly original, there is little that is new here. Instead, he seems to be debating the ghosts of such long-dead historians as Carl Becker and George Trevelyan. At times, too, he is so intent on offering a contrary view that he traps himself in a corner. For example, he argues that historians "have traditionally ascribed" Burgoynes's disastrous expedition to Albany and surrender at Saratoga "to massive incompetence on the part of the British." Instead, Harvey contends, the British loss "can be more readily explained by the professional jealousy of two rival commanders." Let's set aside the hair-splitting question of whether military leaders who favor spite over victory can still be considered "competent." I defy anyone to read the subsequent fifty pages and still conclude that Burgoyne, Clinton, and Howe were anything other than stupendously inept. Even Harvey seems to abandon his initial claim, finally admitting that defeat was "due to Burgoyne's suicidal impulse to advance and attack." The bulk of Harvey's book focuses on military strategy and the specifics of various battles. He gives relatively short shrift to the ideological, social, economic, or political underpinnings of the conflict. When he does offer such analysis, though, his reliance on work published in the United States undercuts his thesis that Americans have an uncritical view of their own origins. His section on the frontier war is little more than an abstract of Colin Calloway's "The American Revolution in Indian Country," and the chapter on the hypocrisy of slave-owners fighting for liberty summarizes Benjamin Quarles's 1961 study, "The Negro in the American Revolution." (The author seems unaware of the dozens of studies published since Quayle's that recount in far more critical terms the treatment of blacks by American rebels.) Harvey characterizes American complaints against British rule as whining hypocrisy, and he (correctly) points out that British colonial rule was so minimal as to be hardly "oppressive"--in large part because London was unable to rule the colonies effectively from across the Atlantic Ocean. He also claims that the rebels barely won the war and, if it weren't for the French, probably would have lost it. Yet, even if the British had prevailed in the 1780s, it is certain America would have won independence in some future decade--as did Canada, Australia, South Africa, Ireland, India, Iraq, and every major colonial possession ever governed by the United Kingdom. Harvey never pauses to step back and look at the bigger picture: that while British rule may not have been so bad, it was untenable, unwanted, unnecessary, and ultimately doomed to failure. Overall, then, Harvey's stirring prose and strident arguments can't overcome the fact that his book is both fifty years behind the time and ill-considered in its implicit defense of colonialism.
Rating: 
Summary: Journalism is Not History
Review: I enjoyed the book because it was fresh -- but not fresh enough to recommend it to others due to significant inaccuracies in the historical record which forces you to consider how mch of the book is inaccurate. These stem from the author's reading mostly secondary sources, many of them old (only a few were written in the past few years). For example, while excoriating the colonies for slavery and treatment and rejection of black troops, he ignores a regiment in Rhode Island and passes over a recently uncovered plan to infect as many as 25,000 slaves in Virginia, on purpose, with smallpox -- and this may have worked, which would put the death toll greater than all deaths on the colonial side in the war. Rather than go through everything, the wrost part is this secondary scholarship, the best is a journalist's ability to see through too many facts, in particular his drawing up of Washington as a 100% political figure with clear personal aims and motives in much of his behavior. Unless you have read ten or more other books on the Revolution, leave this off your list.
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Summary: George Washington schlepped here...
Review: The American Revolution and the constitutional settlement that followed it have come to serve as a sort of Rohrschach Test in which anyone can see whatever vision he or she is disposed to see by way of ideological inclination. American political movements from the very time of these events have often evoked the revolution and Constitution as a rhetorical shorthand for whatever public virtues they happen to be hawking at the moment. But then comes the rare bird who seeks not to misappropriate the revolution and Constitution for his own political aims as much as to discredit it in toto. Until now, that role had been reserved for National Socialists, Communists and Islamist absolutists, who believed their own political legitimacy rose in proportion to "debunking" the story of the founding of the United States. It might never have occurred to any average American that the outcome of the American Revolution could sting so deeply in the British psyche that it could spur an English heart to spend a considerable amount of time and effort trying to settle out scores nearly two and a half centuries after the fact. Thank goodness we have Robert Harvey to plead the British version of what happened prior to, during and after the American Revolution. Contrary to what the professional reviews say, this is not an even-handed, balanced account of the American Revolution. No, what we have here is nothing less than an Oxbridge version of a drive-by shooting. The merit of this book, however, is two-fold. First, Mr. Harvey has a deft hand when it comes to narrative and that alone would lead me to recommend the book. Second, Mr. Harvey provides us with plenty of first-hand documentary evidence from the actual participants themselves. Those strengths, however, must be balanced against Mr. Harvey's incessant attempts to discredit every aspect of the American side of the revolution. This leads to some fairly strange -- and strained -- conclusions. Mr. Harvey will no doubt be shocked to find out that the Eastern Band of the Cherokee nation prospers in its original homeland in the North Carolina mountains. He may also be surprised to find out that Scots soldiers were not seen as menacing brutes by the colonials since, well, you see, thousands of Scots -- highland, Gaelic-speaking, Jacobite Scots -- had settled in the colonies in the decades before the revolution erupted. This book is a delight to read and Mr. Harvey's contorted efforts to put paid to the colonial record make for some laughs. I eagerly await his book on the Irish potato famine, which will no doubt go to equal lengths to show how enlightened British public policy was toward its Irish Catholic minority and how the bastards threw it back in London's face by dying of starvation in their millions or emigrating to foreign shores in search of enough to eat.
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Summary: Controversial, Entertaining, Flawed
Review: The varied reader reactions contained in the reviews below aptly illustrate the nature of Harvey's book. Personally I enjoyed it. It's an entertaining read, despite its academic flaws (see other reviews). Yes, it is definitely written from a personal point of view, but that's part of what makes it interesting. The very low ratings given by several reviewers appear to reflect either their own personal points of view or a misunderstanding of the book's projected audience. It is not an academic book but a popularization, in the vein of a mildly controversial and amusing PBS documentary. (Not the ten-hour "definitive series", just "An Idiosyncratic View of the War by Robert Harvey".) I certainly wouldn't recommend it as the first or only book to a novice, but it has some undeniable strengths. Not the least of these is the colorful manner in which he portrays British commanders who all too often appear in American books as flat cardboard characters. A fun read.
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Summary: Entertaining Revisionist History
Review: This is an interesting book if you are interested in revisionist history. The author exhibits the same blindness on the causes and motivation of the American colonists exhibited by his direct ancestor, Lord George Grenville (of Stamp Act fame) that cost Great Britian the war in the first place. The Americans were unreasonable minor players, the French actually won the war, and the U.S. Constitution "imposed a measure of central control, taxation and military enforcement greater than any previously attempted by the British..."
I highly recommend that you read this book with several grains of salt - and other sources of historical information - at hand. If you are truly interested in the causes of the American Revolution, there are many other excellent sources of information available. I highly recommend H.W. Brands' The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin as a place to start.
Rating:
Summary: Some things to think about here.
Review: This is not a light book, nor is it the objective historical record. It has a point of view, perhaps one might say two or three points of view. Some of it is old hat. The discussion of Lexington and Concord brings to mind Bill Cosby's routine about flipping the coin at the beginning of a game, "The colonials win the toss. They get to stand begind rocks and trees and shoot. The British must wear red uniforms, beat drums and march in rows." And when we get to Guilford Courtyard, the author would have us believe that Cornwallis' action of firing on his own men reveals his tactical skill, not his contempt for the pressed, enlisted and mercenary troops he commanded.
Still it is a useful book. Clearly it reveals that the experience of Vietnam is not an isolated fact. Determined locals, controlling vast territory (or having an available sanctuary) - the Carolina swamps , for example- can play havoc on a professional amy with doctrines of combat, rules of engagement, and extended supply lines. Especially when that local force has the element of time. And this brings up public opinion at home. The text has a wealth of documents from the period demonstrating a situation not unlike that which we experieced in the sixties and seventies. The slow turn of public opinion, the mounting cost in men, money and morale. It was all there then.
The final point, one worth our consideration in an era of disputed vote counts and court interference is the idea that the radicalism of the American Revolution was hijacked by the aristocratic and moneyed classes of this nation via such devices as the ecectoral college. A sort of "we had to destroy this revolution to save it" philosophy. Not a really new idea, but well put here. I am not so sure this book makes as much apology for the colonial system as other reviews imply, but it is after all the work of the losing side ( a rare thing in history), but maybe it's the work of the other winning side.
Rating:
Summary: Some things to think about here.
Review: This is not a light book, nor is it the objective historical record. It has a point of view, perhaps one might say two or three points of view. Some of it is old hat. The discussion of Lexington and Concord brings to mind Bill Cosby's routine about flipping the coin at the beginning of a game, "The colonials win the toss. They get to stand begind rocks and trees and shoot. The British must wear red uniforms, beat drums and march in rows." And when we get to Guilford Courtyard, the author would have us believe that Cornwallis' action of firing on his own men reveals his tactical skill, not his contempt for the pressed, enlisted and mercenary troops he commanded.
Still it is a useful book. Clearly it reveals that the experience of Vietnam is not an isolated fact. Determined locals, controlling vast territory (or having an available sanctuary) - the Carolina swamps , for example- can play havoc on a professional amy with doctrines of combat, rules of engagement, and extended supply lines. Especially when that local force has the element of time. And this brings up public opinion at home. The text has a wealth of documents from the period demonstrating a situation not unlike that which we experieced in the sixties and seventies. The slow turn of public opinion, the mounting cost in men, money and morale. It was all there then.
The final point, one worth our consideration in an era of disputed vote counts and court interference is the idea that the radicalism of the American Revolution was hijacked by the aristocratic and moneyed classes of this nation via such devices as the ecectoral college. A sort of "we had to destroy this revolution to save it" philosophy. Not a really new idea, but well put here. I am not so sure this book makes as much apology for the colonial system as other reviews imply, but it is after all the work of the losing side ( a rare thing in history), but maybe it's the work of the other winning side.
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