On the Varieties of Political Experience in Eighteenth-Century America

My first impression upon finishing this text was that politics in eighteenth-century British North America are nearly incomprehensible. After thinking about that a moment, I changed my mind. While they aren’t incomprehensible, they are complex and it seems nearly impossible to make generalizations.

When I picked up this book, I expected Beeman to teach me a bit about different archetypes that could be used to represent forms of politics on the ground (as opposed to ideals), in the same way that Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. Well, we don’t get archetypes. In this book, Richard Beeman argues that there was no single political experience for all people of British North America. Instead, a relatively united style of politics did not emerge until the early 19th century (I’m skeptical that it even emerged as early as that). With this in mind, Beeman depicts a few different styles of political behavior that could be found in colonial America.

The people of Virginia and Massachusetts both had a very strong interest in representative institutions and, to maintain them, they sought to keep power in the hands of the “virtuous” (realistically, this might be an ideal to go back to, with some modification of the idea of “virtue”). They respected British institutions, but at times were skeptical of them, as in the case of Massachusetts.

The politics of New York and South Carolina effectively functioned as aristocratic oligarchies—even moreso than Virginia. Elite New Yorkers had enormous plots of land—two families, the Van Rensselaer and Livingston families held nearly a million acres between them—and they translated this into coercive power. South Carolina, on the other hand, was a highly stratified class society divided between the opulent aristocracy, which wielded absolute power, a white peasantry that lived in abject poverty, and enslaved Africans who had no rights at all.

The backcountry was epitomized by tensions between frontier settlers and those who lived in cities. In the southern backcountry, this became most apparent as a result of the strength of evangelical frontiersmen who fought against Virginia’s Anglican authorities. These tensions were a bit weaker in the northern frontier, where New Englanders who made their way to Maine and New Hampshire did retain contacts with Boston while maintaining their autonomy. Lastly, those of the Pennsylvania backcountry wanted the blood of legislators in Philadelphia. They wanted to be able to take all of the Native lands they wanted while being protected from Native American hostility and/or retaliation, but the Quakers who dominated the Pennsylvania legislature—as pacifists—refused to have anything to do with defending settlers. Unfortunately for the Quakers, settlers (many of whom were known as “Paxton Boys”) waged a pamphlet war against elected officials and they, ultimately, replaced the legislature with one that was more amenable to western settlement. While there were class distinctions, the level of inequality was likely the lowest in the country.

The final category of politics is the one we find the most recognizable today: that of colonial America’s northeastern cities. Beeman argues that the politics of the American Revolution have their origin in the intellectual and social milieux of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. He is also of the view that the real revolution occurred before the “Revolution”—that is, the rapid transformation in American society took place before the war with Britain. The fight for independence was effectively a break with the home islands because the present-day United States had changed too much for it to maintain their commonalities. This is an interesting case to make, although I’m not sure that I agree. My own view is that the (domestic, not war) Revolution took place concurrently with the the War for Independence as well as in the decade after the Declaration of Independence. I’m curious to read more about the case that the American Revolution preceded the War for Independence.

This book is worth reading, but it is very slow. Moreover, it is much more difficult than many other monographs simply because of the near-impossibility to generalize here. That is a strength of the book, but it also makes it so much harder to retain. Take your time with it, and give yourself some time to think while you read.