Books >> History
 

Partly, I got what I wanted, the book is non-technical, can be read without wide background knowledge. However, it is utterly boring, and not very well edited: the obsession to keep a chronological order makes understanding less than more easy.

The books arguments are not convincing for me. First of all, the author makes no reference on the methodology he chooses his arguments, sources, an underlying theory behind his convictions, and even in such a genereal interest book it worths mentioning in a preface or at least in footnote. The book makes some sweeping claims on a probably vulgarized Marxist social theory with materialistic economic forced at work behind the Framers, but probably it is just some unreflected common sense with a bias. The forces at work are not convincing, the argument for a European reader is one of the we-saw-many-such-narratives.

The book tries to follow the trend and include all people, regardless of race, origin, gender, etc in the great story, however, it is just misguided political correctness, in fact I did not learn anything about the Indians, black people or women in the examined period.

The highest point in the essay is the emphasised problem of the breaking up of the British identity in the ex-colonies and the different social and institutional forms of the would be United States before the federation. This is very valuable and interesting, again, not very deep: I just grasped the significance and the excitement but I did not get a credible narrative. I do not understand how the British identity vanished and the Amercian emerged. Coming from a country with over a 1000 years of recorded history, continous identity crisis and reading the book in the year of the European Convent that drafted our constitution I am very sensitive to this issue and find Countryman's account very shallow.

There is one invaluable part in the book that made it a good deal for me: the bibliographical notes that give a very brief, again chronological overview of the history of American history-writing. It will help me choosing another one to better understand the American Revolution.

Certainly the book doesn't contain as much new research as some scholars would expect, and is instead a synthesis of previous work on different aspects of the period (as Countryman's Acknowledgements and Bibliographical Essay suggest). That includes his own research on New York that won the Bancroft Prize in 1982.

If you're uncomfortable with the lack of footnotes, Countryman isn't the only one to do this. John Fairbank did the same with some of his books on China (but of course you'll reply that Fairbank was a giant in his field). In any case, most of Countryman's facts can be verified by referring to earlier works in this field. His assertion about pre-marital pregnancies was borrowed from Robert Gross' "The Minutemen and their world", where the proper statistics are included in detail.

If you find jumps in chronology and unconventional details distracting, that would rule out much of the fine historical writing of the last 40 years, wouldn't it? Countryman was aiming for a thematic, rather than purely narrative, history of the Revolution, and military history was secondary to his argument - hence the sparse attention paid to it. Personally, I'm glad I got this book as it's a lively and stimulating read for anyone new to the subject - unless you love reading footnotes, that is.

Many layers of government would separate "citizens" from the global meta-government and that would help the rulers override objections to redistributing the wealth created by people of European ancestry and using it to buy the votes of the backward peoples of the world. If the world government didn't redistribute the wealth in this way Marxists would overthrow it. Probably an "economically dominant" minority (as described in "World on Fire" by Amy Chua) would allow a leader of the backward "colonized" peoples to come to power democratically and then bribe him for protection while he stays in power as a dictator (like Ferdinand Marcos, according to Chua). Marxists would favor Kohr's plan because it would produce a highly unstable world government that they could take over. "Economically dominant minorities" would favor it because it provides a pseudo-altruistic cover story for a bid for world power. They could manipulate such a government even more easily and safely than the existing democracies. Hard-core capitalists would favor Kohr's plan because it would create a global free market with no obstacles to the race to the bottom.

I think that both parties in USA favor massive immigration because they are controlled by economically dominant minorities, hard core capitalists and Marxists. When USA breaks up Kohr's plan will influence where the new borders are drawn.

Sometimes I think some intellectuals are trying to create a meta-religion to bolster a world federal government. Read "Explorations at the Edge of Time" by Richard Falk and decide for yourself.

Yussuf Kly has written a book, "A Popular Guide to Minority Rights," where he advocates non-territorial (portable) ethnic autonomy enforced by the United Nations. That would be just the ticket for an economically dominant minority that is dispersed across many countries. They could use this newly minted civil right to get protection from the global federal government when there is a backlash from the indigenous people. Few would argue that "group rights" are not a major factor in USA even though they have nothing to do with the individual rights of classical liberalism. We are moving closer to Kly's proposal all the time.

According to Amy Chua the ethnic Chinese make up 1% of the population of the Philippines and control 70% of the economy. The whole world could end up like that with an economically dominant minority ruling through a dictator drawn from one of the backward groups, like Ferdinand Marcos.

I would prefer a world of nearly homogeneous nation-states that are as economically independent as possible. Ethno-nationalism isn't evil. I think an ethnic bond is the best way, in the long run, to bridge class differences and avoid putting all humanity's eggs in one basket.