WINNER OF THE 2015 GEORGE WASHINGTON PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE 2015 PULTIZER PRIZE IN HISTORY In this powerful narrative, Nick Bunker tells the story of the last three years of mutual embitterment that preceded the outbreak of America's war for independence in 1775. It was a tragedy of errors, in which both sides shared responsibility for a conflict that cost the lives of at least twenty thousand Britons and a still larger number of Americans. Drawing on careful study of primary sources from Britain and the United States, An ...
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WINNER OF THE 2015 GEORGE WASHINGTON PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE 2015 PULTIZER PRIZE IN HISTORY In this powerful narrative, Nick Bunker tells the story of the last three years of mutual embitterment that preceded the outbreak of America's war for independence in 1775. It was a tragedy of errors, in which both sides shared responsibility for a conflict that cost the lives of at least twenty thousand Britons and a still larger number of Americans. Drawing on careful study of primary sources from Britain and the United States, An Empire on the Edge sheds new light on the Tea Party's origins and on the roles of such familiar characters as Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, and Thomas Hutchinson. At the heart of the book lies the Boston Tea Party, an event that arose from fundamental flaws in the way the British managed their affairs. With lawyers in London calling the Tea Party treason, and with hawks in Parliament crying out for revenge, the British opted for punitive reprisals without foreseeing the resistance they would arouse. For their part, the Americans underestimated Britain's determination not to give way. By the late summer of 1774, the descent into war had become irreversible.
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1st edn 1st printing. 8vo. Original silver lettered red cloth (Fine), dustwrapper (Fine, not price clipped). Pp. x + 429, illus with b&w photos and maps (no inscriptions).
The origins of the American Revolution have been much studied but remain complex and controversial. A new book by an English writer, Nick Bunker, "An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America" (2014) studies the event leading up to the Revolutionary War from a British perspective. Bunker began his career as an investment banker before becoming a journalist. He has written an earlier book, "Making Haste from Babylon" (2010) which is a history of an earlier iconic American event involving the Mayflower Pilgrims told from a British perspective.
Bunker's history of the origins of the Revolution is both meticulously researched, factually detailed, and thoughtful. It focuses on the years 1772 -1775 with enough background from earlier years to give continuity to the history. The author does not shy away from judgments and commentary on events. Bunker frequently alternates the flow of the history with discussions and analysis of why things might have happened as they did. His understanding of events is largely judicious and even-handed. Bunker writes with understanding for both Britain and the colonies. His sympathies are clearly with the Americans and the new understanding of freedom that they created with their Revolution.
The book focuses on British participants in the Revolution. Bunker offers portrayals and measured assessments of the British Prime Minister Lord North, of Lord Dartmouth, and of King George III, among others. He portrays British opponents of their government's policy led by Edmund Burke. The British presence in the colonies focuses on General Gage, who badly misread the extent of the colonist's dissatisfaction with Britain, and on the Governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson. For the colonists, Benjamin Franklin who lived in England during the years in question and played an important role in events gets a good deal of attention as do John Hancock and Samuel Adams in Massachusetts. A large group of political leaders are aptly portrayed in this book.
If there is a single pivotal event discussed in the book, it would be the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773. But a valuable aspect of the book is the focus Bunker gives to an incident involving a British ship, the Gaspee, which tried to prevent colonial smuggling. An organized group of colonists in Rhode Island set the Gaspee on fire in 1772, marking an earlier revolutionary act against Britain than the famous Boston Tea Party.
The Tea Party has long assumed an iconic stature as the event which led immediately to the Revolution. Bunker sets the stage for the Tea Party by offering a lengthy account of the British East India Company and its activities in China and in India. He describes a period of intense speculation and greed, followed by recession, in the England of the 1770s which sounds possibly too eerily contemporary. Bunker describes at length the Parliamentary debates that led to the fateful decision to send the East India Company's tea to the colonies with the tax of three cents per pound intact. He describes the reaction on both sides of the Atlantic, the Tea Party, the subsequent Coercive Acts passed in Britain, and the colonists' moves towards independence.
Much of the book describes the inherent and probably insurmountable difficulties Britain faced in governing a widely disparate set of colonies an ocean away given the slowness of communication in the 18th Century. For most of their history, Britain treated the colonies with neglect rather than oppressively. Bunker finds, however, that Britain constantly underestimated and misunderstood the colonists even through the events of 1774. Britain suffered from a lack of information and more importantly from a lack of wanting to know. But the more important source of the Revolution was, Bunker argues, the new concept of freedom advanced in the colonies in which, with all its gross deficiencies such as the institution of slavery, every person would get their political voice. He contrasts this with Britain in the 18th Century with its politics controlled by agricultural communities and the owners of large estates. Bunker quotes Benjamin Disraeli who described the Britain during the Revolutionary years as a constitution based upon property in land -- in which the mindset of the governing class was that of the landed gentry. Bunker writes in commenting upon the vacillating, visionless, if well-meaning activities of Prime Minister North:
"[T]he territorial constitution had its vices too, which far outweighed the benefits it yielded. Hypocrisy and pride were merely the most obvious. The crisis that led to the revolution in America had many causes and ranking high among them was the narrowness of vision that afflicted North and his colleagues. ... The system set mental boundaries that they could not transcend raised as they were in a culture where the landscape and the parish church had been everywhere the signs of privilege. ..... An English parish in the 1770's bore not the slightest resemblance to a township in the colonies. The attitudes that each engendered were profoundly different too."
I had the opportunity to read this book and to think about the American Revolution over the week of the Independence Day holiday. The book needs slow, careful reading. I was moved in reading the story of the Revolution and its origins told so eloquently and well by a British writer with an obvious love for his country. In today's difficult times, I was glad of the opportunity to rethink the American Revolution and its continued importance as a beacon for a new understanding of freedom and liberty.
