The Quakers, 1656–1723: The Evolution of an Alternative Community by Richard C. Allen and Rosemary Moore

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Quakers, 1656–1723: The Evolution of an Alternative Community by Richard C. Allen and Rosemary Moore Cameron Seglias The Quakers, 1656–1723: The Evolution of an Alternative Community. By Richard C. Allen and Rosemary Moore with specialist contributors. (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018. 296 pp. Notes, appendix, bibliography, index. $39.95.) Quakerism's neglected "second period" traditionally has been considered a turn toward quietism and bureaucratic tightening, which stands in stark contrast to the nascent movement's enthusiastic early years during the social and political upheavals of the English Civil War and Commonwealth. The picture that emerges throughout The Quakers, 1656–1723, however, reveals how a community under constant threat from religious and civil authorities was able to survive because of the dynamism of its organizational and disciplinary practices. Richard C. Allen, Rosemary Moore, and their contributing coauthors synthesize decades of scholarship on Quakerism's second period in a single, readable volume. This work seeks to revise earlier standard accounts by Rufus Jones (1909) and William Charles Braithwaite (1919; revised 1961), both of which remain reference points for scholars of Quakerism. Questioning the chronologies and blind spots inherited from these century-old works, the authors pay particular attention to the role played by women in establishing Quakerism as a transatlantic movement. Although the book is broadly chronological, individual chapters cohere around their own thematic centers, covering such topics as organization, disputes with other dissenting religious groups, and changing relationships to politics and the law. Despite its many strengths as a general history of Quakerism from the mid-seventeenth to the early eighteenth century, the volume has several drawbacks. Emphasis is clearly on the seventeenth century, while the years between 1700 and 1723 are sketched rather hastily throughout the final chapters of the book. However, this temporal emphasis is understandable given the range and significance of events that took place in the second half of the seventeenth century, including sectarian controversies, changes [End Page 87] in print culture, the establishment of Pennsylvania, and legislative landmarks such as the 1689 Toleration Act. PMHB readers might be disappointed by the geographical focus on the British Isles. But this focus is explained by the significance given to legislative battles and the problem of organization, which became centralized around Quaker leader George Fox and the London Yearly Meeting. In reality, this uneven geographical handling is a function of the book's strength in telling a unified story of British and American Quaker history, while still managing to shed important light on Quaker settlement in the Caribbean, New England, and the Delaware Valley. Of exceptional interest here is a discussion of Pennsylvania's Keithian controversy of the 1690s, with its dual importance for later Quaker positions regarding political withdrawal and slavery. More generally, the authors unpack Quaker involvement with slavery and the slave trade and contribute to a growing literature that acknowledges complicity even while it documents the efforts of the few scattered voices that helped to prepare the way for late eighteenth-century Quaker antislavery consensus. Even if The Quakers, 1656–1723 is unable to offer the regional and historical detail readers steeped in Pennsylvania history might desire, this volume nevertheless presents invaluable background and context. In this respect, the contributions by Allen, Moore, and the experts contained in this volume establish the place to begin for both the specialist and general reader looking to delve into this fascinating period of Quaker history. Cameron Seglias Freie Universität Berlin Copyright © 2021 Historical Society of Pennsylvania