Occupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of Revolution by Donald F. Johnson

Abstract

Reviewed by: Occupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of Revolution by Donald F. Johnson Troy Bickham Occupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of Revolution. By Donald F. Johnson. Early American Studies. ( Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. Pp. viii, 256. $34.95, ISBN 978-0-8122-5254-5.) With Occupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of Revolution, Donald F. Johnson offers a worthy contribution to the renewed interest in the social history of the American Revolution as an experience lived by soldiers and civilians alike. Life under British occupation is not a new subject, but it offers fertile ground for examining how and why colonists chose sides during the conflict. After all, the British strategy was to occupy the rebelling colonies' major towns and cities, particularly ports, in hopes of strangling the colonists into submission. The British were successful in that the army occupied every significant port town in the rebelling colonies at one point or another during the war; the strategy failed because it grossly overestimated the importance of urban areas in colonial America. Whereas recent studies have focused overwhelmingly on specific towns or cities, Johnson takes a refreshingly broader approach by considering the colonies as a whole. Johnson sensibly tackles the subject with a semi-chronological thematic structure rather than a series of chapters on a selection of towns and cities. This approach enables both comparison and an argument for a wider, shared experience of life under British military rule. Such an existence was not pleasant. Although many colonists initially welcomed the British army as liberators, and loyal refugees flocked to the towns it occupied, the harsh realities of wartime life—food shortages, inflation, unemployment, and cramped conditions—quickly set in. Although appealing, Johnson's argument that these negative experiences turned ordinary colonists against the British and contributed to the American Patriots' victory is difficult to prove. After all, life under Patriot occupation was hardly pleasant and, in many ways, far worse, driving Loyalists into British-occupied cities and, ultimately, out of the United States. In fact, Johnson makes an excellent case for the lack of agency and the ambiguity of allegiance of many colonists, the subject of chapter 5. More compelling is Johnson's epilogue, in which he argues that experiences of occupation were consciously set aside in the early historical accounts and national memory as part of the postwar healing process. Modest support of British occupation was framed as survival and overshadowed by an individual's contributions to the Patriot cause. Thus, George Washington's postwar occupation of New York, a city that had been occupied for almost the entirety of the war and was packed full of people who had collaborated with the British in one form or another, could be celebrated as a liberation of oppressed compatriots. In this light, Evacuation Day, celebrated in New York as its day of independence for generations, was an important assertion of the narrative that the city was a victim of foreign occupation and home to resilient Patriots. Johnson truly shines in his meticulously researched and vividly written descriptions of individuals' struggles and resilience under occupation. The [End Page 145] people in his account are collaborators, resisters, entrepreneurs, victims, and martyrs—often an assortment thereof. And they do not all hail from the colonial elite. Rather, they represent the social, racial, and gender diversity of colonial America; occupation was not simply a rich man's problem. Engagingly written and concise at just over two hundred pages of text, Occupied America is accessible to academics and students alike. Ultimately, Occupied America is chock-full of fascinating tales of survival that bring to life the mix of miseries, complexities, and cruelties of wartime that will resonate with anyone interested in military occupation from any period or place. Troy Bickham Texas A&M University Copyright © 2022 The Southern Historical Association