Revolutions in the Atlantic World: A Comparative History. By Wim Klooster. (New York: New York University Press, 2009. viii, 239 pp. Cloth, $65.00, ISBN 978-0-8147-4788-9. Paper, $22.00, ISBN 978-0-8147-4789-6.)

Abstract

Fifty years after R. R. Palmer's The Age of the Democratic Revolution (2 vols., 1959, 1964), Wim Klooster has accepted a daunting challenge: writing an updated monograph on what we now consider the four main Atlantic revolutions—the American, French, Haitian, and Spanish American. His narrative offers a chapter on each, as well as an argument about the revolutions' commonalities. The research necessary to chronicle all four revolutions is intimidating, and Klooster has done a herculean job, with impressive reading in multiple languages. He integrates economic, social, political, and military history and incorporates marginalized groups such as women and blacks (the American Revolution chapter also discusses the fates of Native Americans). Each chapter offers lively writing and is a model of clarity, providing helpful background on the prerevolutionary decades as well as on each revolution's development and legacy. Klooster offers four main arguments. First, the revolutions cannot be understood outside of international politics. Second, none was preordained. Third, each involved divided loyalties and civil war. Finally (and perhaps most notably), Palmer's paradigm of “democratic revolutions” is misleading: “none of the revolutions aimed at creating a democratic society. The chief objective of revolutionary leaders was usually sovereignty, and the nature of postrevolutionary rule was usually authoritarian” (p. 165). Klooster also makes an important observation about the Enlightenment. While its connection to each revolution is debatable, the Enlightenment was so multifaceted that its impact was not uniform; every group of revolutionaries “selected texts or slogans” that best served them (p. 169).