![]() ![]() “American Revolutions” is a sequel to Taylor’s book “American Colonies,” and it is written against histories that treat the two eras as disjointed. It is, as the title says, an account not of one revolution but several revolutions - not all of which were, or are, completed. It is a book about multiple groups of people acting according to their interests and the struggles that arose as those interests overlapped, diverged and clashed, sometimes violently. This is not a book about the evolution of political institutions, or ideology, or - especially - the romantic mythology of the American founding. It was, Taylor writes, “our first civil war, rife with divisions, violence and destruction.” The war was a messy conflict, inchoate and confusing, often fought by reluctant actors without a strong sense of national identity. ![]() The stranger’s face is painted half-black, half-red, “as if two individual devils, a fiend of fire and a fiend of darkness, had united themselves to form this infernal visage.” To Hawthorne - and to Taylor - this face is emblematic of the revolution. A stranger appears, a member of a mob that is tarring and feathering a royalist. Alan Taylor begins “American Revolutions” instead with a scene from a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. ![]()
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