cover image The Creation of America: Through Revolution to Empire

The Creation of America: Through Revolution to Empire

Francis Jennings. Cambridge University Press, $88.99 (400pp) ISBN 978-0-521-66255-0

A longstanding historian of colonial America, Jennings (Benjamin Franklin, Politician, etc.), the former director of the Center for the History of the American Indian at the Newberry Library, is tired of the traditional celebratory story of the American Revolution. ""My book,"" he writes, ""is an effort to tell the Revolution for adults."" Jennings examines nearly every aspect--region by region; battle by battle; and through the eyes of Indians, the British and the colonists. Along the way, he nimbly demonstrates that the colonists, though they claimed to be fighting for liberty, were fighting for the sort of liberty that didn't extend to Native Americans or black slaves. Hardly disinterested servants of the public good, he further argues, the founding fathers were politicians looking out for their own interests. Indeed, they weren't fighting for abstract principles; the colonists didn't, in truth, favor a democratic republic over an empire. To the contrary, according to Jennings, they were very devoted to the idea of empire--they simply wanted to run it themselves rather than ""acting as agents for Great Britain."" Throughout, Jennings looks especially at they ways in which ideas about race helped the colonists justify certain kinds of conquest. And although he does not say much that has not been argued dozens of times before, his synthesis is provocative, useful and clearly stated. (Sept.)