This paper reviews Robert Middlekauff's The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789, the first volume in the Oxford History of the United States. The review evaluates Middlekauff's two central theses: that revolution was inevitable given the colonies' founding conditions, particularly widespread landownership and political participation, and that the colonists were militarily overmatched by British forces. The reviewer also assesses Middlekauff's scholarly, even-handed approach, his comprehensive treatment of Revolutionary battles, and his unusually deep exploration of colonial life prior to the war. Minor critiques address the author's dry writing style.
The paper models thesis-driven book review writing: rather than simply summarizing the book's contents, the reviewer extracts and evaluates Middlekauff's central arguments, then assesses how effectively his evidence and structure support those arguments. This moves the review beyond description into genuine critical analysis.
The review opens with a brief author biography and book introduction, then proceeds to analyze Middlekauff's first thesis (inevitability of revolution rooted in colonial history) and his second thesis (military imbalance). It then evaluates the author's scholarly methodology and objectivity before closing with an overall assessment that weighs strengths against a single stylistic weakness. The argument flows logically from context to analysis to evaluation.
In The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789, the first volume in the Oxford History of the United States, author Robert Middlekauff provides readers with an in-depth view of the American Revolution. Middlekauff, the Preston Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, has written several histories of the United States and typically concentrates on examining the underlying causes of political and social events. In The Glorious Cause, he focuses that quest for insight on the American Revolution.
As the title suggests, the book describes the American Revolution. However, the title is actually somewhat misleading, because the scope of the book goes far beyond the years delineated in the subtitle. Middlekauff opens with an extensive history of colonial life, which helps explain the causes behind the war and makes clear that some form of drastic change was inevitable — and that this discontent had been fermenting long before what one typically considers the first acts of the Revolution. He also provides an in-depth examination of the Revolution's battles, which becomes necessary once one appreciates how unlikely a colonial victory truly was. In fact, Middlekauff's treatment of the battles may be the most complete single-volume treatment available. Nevertheless, his book is not a military history per se; while it focuses on battles, it does not do so at the expense of other historical context.
Middlekauff's approach supports all of his major theses. His overarching thesis appears to be that revolution was inevitable, given the very reasons the colonies were established. Although Middlekauff's history does not support the simplistic notion that the colonies were founded solely to provide religious freedom, he offers substantial evidence that the colonists were people seeking freedom — religious and otherwise — from the Crown. While early settlers were indeed fleeing the Anglican establishment, Middlekauff reminds the reader that it was virtually impossible to separate church from government, and that these colonists were running away from governmental oppression at least as much as they were running toward religious liberty.
Once in America, however, these colonists discovered an unexpected freedom: the freedom to become landowners. Middlekauff points out that in England, with its small land area and entrenched patterns of ownership, very few people could own real property, let alone become substantial property owners. In the colonies, by contrast, land was extremely inexpensive. This was a significant fact because landownership was tied to the right to vote and to participate in the democratic process more broadly. As a result, roughly half of all colonists were able to participate in colonial parliamentary government — more than twice the percentage able to participate in England's own parliamentary democracy.
This expanded political freedom meant that colonists were more likely to feel the direct effects of imperial oppression than the people who actually resided in England. Combined with the fact that colonial representatives genuinely worked in their constituents' interests rather than Britain's, it became clear that any significant catalyst would lead to serious conflict. That catalyst came in the form of the Seven Years' War and its aftermath, when the English government grew acutely aware of the tremendous profit potential in the colonies.
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