Many Identities, One Nation: The Revolution and Its Legacy in the Mid-Atlantic (review)

Abstract

Many Identities, One Nation: The Revolution and Its Legacy in Mid-Atlantic. By Liam Riordan. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007, Pp. 353. Cloth, $49.95.)Reviewed by Patrick SperoWhat can three disparate towns of late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries tell us about multiculturalism today? Some may consider anachronistic to apply current debates about diversity, inclusion, and multiculturalism in globalizing world to earlier American experiences. Liam Riordan, associate professor of history at University of Maine and author of Many Identities, One Nation, contends, however, that it is imperative to move beyond superficial connotations of that term, one of most debilitating of which assumes that controversial public awareness about identity has primarily been recent phenomenon and that a historical perspective on multiculturalism is essential not only to properly locate cultural diversity as central theme of American history but also to demonstrate how politicization of identity has changed over (12-13). Riordan marshals this argument over seven chapters, and his end product should be considered contribution to growing field of nineteenth-century political and religious studies.Many Identities takes reader on journey that traverses space and time through Delaware Valley. New Castle, Delaware, southernmost and oldest town studied, was home to most diverse populace, including large numbers of Anglicans, Scots-Irish, and both free and enslaved African Americans. Further north, Burlington, New Jersey, which like New Castle was its colony's capital, had large population of Quakers and Anglicans. Many wealthy Quakers had chosen Burlington for their country retreat, making wealthiest town of three. Easton, Pennsylvania, sitting at confluence of Delaware and Lehigh Rivers, was youngest town. Laid out through proprietary initiative in 1750s, attracted Germans looking for farm land and waterway to carry goods to market.Riordan's approach to understanding history of these towns from their colonial origins to Jacksoman era is sound, and his research is impressive. He deploys methodologies of social history, cultural history, traditional political history, and religious history to give reader full understanding of each town's social milieu. Riordan arranges his chapters by chronology and theme rather than place. This allows readers to place each town's experience within broader historical moments and historiographical debates, thus illuminating each locale's history while also casting new light on national phenomena and historians' understandings of past.Although towns may appear different, for Riordan they shared one profound experience that shaped creation of identity and cultural transformations in early republic: In each place, War for Independence divided rather than unified society. Over course of four chapters, Riordan traces how group identity from Revolutionary War influenced political allegiances and fundamentally shaped early national consciousness in Delaware Valley (83). This argument, particularly as developed in chapters 5 through 7, is work's most provocative.By focusing on local history rather than national narratives, Riordan links foundation of second party system to local experiences of Revolutionary War rather than to broad national trends, thus upending standard narratives of Jacksoman America. For Riordan, the Revolutionary War remained alive and bitterly contested (212) through electoral on local level; in Easton, for instance, the powerful localism of Revolutionary mobilization found its institutionalization in partisan politics (244). The origins of second party system, he concludes, are best understood within context of transformed and ongoing Revolutionary values among ordinary people who increasingly relied on ethnic, racial, and class-based language to explain electoral politics (247). …