Early American Rebels: Pursuing Democracy from Maryland to Carolina, 1640–1700 by Noeleen McIlvenna

Abstract

Reviewed by: Early American Rebels: Pursuing Democracy from Maryland to Carolina, 1640–1700 by Noeleen McIlvenna Owen Stanwood Early American Rebels: Pursuing Democracy from Maryland to Carolina, 1640–1700. By Noeleen McIlvenna. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Pp. xiv, 168. Paper, $24.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-5606-9; cloth, $90.00, ISBN 978-1-4696-5605-2.) The seventeenth-century Chesapeake abounded with rebels. From Ingle's Rebellion in 1640s Maryland to the intercolonial uprisings in 1689 following [End Page 515] the Glorious Revolution, political strife hit the colonies with some regularity, even bringing down Maryland's proprietary government and threatening to do the same in Virginia and North Carolina. Aside from Bacon's Rebellion, usually considered a key event in early American political development, most of these uprisings have received little attention from historians. In her new book, Noeleen McIlvenna seeks to fill this gap by offering a linked history of political unrest across the later half of the seventeenth century. In her telling, these rebellions were nothing short of attempted revolutions, attempts by "small farmers" to establish "a republic of equals" in the early American South (p. 4). The American story started as an outgrowth of England's own mid-seventeenth-century revolution. In particular, the rise of Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army introduced new, egalitarian impulses into English life, often linked with the liberating theologies of an ascendant radical Protestantism. While previous scholars have paid more attention to connections between revolutionary England and New England, McIlvenna finds radical traces in the Chesapeake as well. In particular, she pays close attention to the Gerard clan, a Maryland family that was active in Maryland politics and soon spread its tentacles around the region, mainly through a series of strategic marriages. McIlvenna uses this family story to underscore the role of women in political movements. While it was the Gerard daughters' husbands who often took the lead in the rebellions, McIlvenna makes the fascinating suggestion, based on a few tantalizing bits of evidence, that many of the most radical ideas came from women rather than men. These rebels had their work cut out for them. On the other side, the royalist Virginia governor William Berkeley and Maryland's proprietors, the Calverts, sought to build a hierarchical society more in line with Stuart England. The struggle between these two visions could become violent, whether in Maryland's battle of the Severn of 1655 or Nathaniel Bacon's burning of Jamestown, Virginia, a decade later. All of these rebellions, obviously, were multifaceted and complex, but McIlvenna contends that they were fundamentally about democracy. Both Virginia and Maryland were notably democratic in their early years—neither had property requirements for voting—and it was rebels like the Gerards who kept this egalitarian vision alive. It was only somewhat later, with the clear move toward chattel slavery, that the dream of a democratic South was more permanently deferred. There is much to admire about this book. McIlvenna deftly links English and American events, and her attention to genealogical detail clarifies the importance of family ties in seventeenth-century American politics. Still, it is hard to accept that the rebels in this story acted in the name of democracy. After all, most were middling (or upper-middling) farmers themselves, and the greatest evidence for their radicalism came from their royalist opponents, who considered leveler and Oliverian to be biting insults. In their own manifestos, moreover, the rebels tended to portray themselves in much more moderate terms, as critics of corruption by "unworthy Favourites and juggling Parasites" (p. 83). More than that, they usually presented their struggle not so much against the king and aristocracy as against diabolical outsiders, almost always Native people and Catholics. In short, one sees not so much an origin story for American democracy as for American populism—the effort by [End Page 516] ambitious politicians to build a movement by exploiting fears of ethnic and religious others. Owen Stanwood Boston College Copyright © 2021 Southern Historical Association