War, Revolution and People

Abstract

Edward Countryman. A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in Hew York, 1760-1790. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981. 388 + xviiipp. Adele Hast. Loyalism in Revolutionary Virginia: The Norfolk Area and the Eastern Shore. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982. 227 + xii pp. Robert Middlekauff. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. 696 + xvi pp. William Pencak. War, Politics & Revolution in Provincial Massachusetts. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1981. 314 +xvi pp. Charles Royster. Light Horse Harry Lee and the Legacy of the American Revolution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981.301 + xiv pp. The eighteenth century, much like our own times, was a century of total war. Periods of peace were brief and infrequent. Periods of conflict engulfed the continents of both Europe and North America and surged along the major trade routes of the world. Wars for empire, native uprisings, colonial rebel- lions and civil wars were all part of the century's history. Canada was trans- ferred, India conquered, America liberated, France convulsed and England made very, very rich. Under the repeated hammer blows of war, social and political structures were pounded thin, pierced and then reconstituted to admit new groups and new values. The enduring fascination of these wars is the insights they provide into the nature of global conflict and the changes which individuals and societies undergo in times of such severe stress.