| Rating: | ★★★★ |
| Category: | Books |
| Genre: | History |
| Author: | Gary Wills (1999) |
In "A Necessary Evil", Mr. Wills sets about exploring the vein of anti-government sentiment that has been ingrained among many, right and left, in the American Federal system since its inception after the Articles of Confederation were abandoned and the process of creating "a more perfect union" began in 1787 with the convening of what came to be known as the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
The tradition of regarding government as somehow best scorned is, Wills writes, " a tradition that belittles America..that asks us to love our country by hating our government, that turns our founding fathers into unfounders, that glamorizes frontier settlers in order to demean what they settled, that obliges us to despise the very people we vote for."
In going though his narrative Wills debunks a great number of myths about American history, including the notion that American freedom in the Revolution was won by the minutemen or the state militias. (It was not--as the negative comments about the battle-readiness of the state militias from none other than George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton in "The Federalist #25, etc--makes abundantly clear.) Despite rosy poetry by Longfellow and others, the Revolution was won in the main by the Continental Army, a disciplined force under Washington and his subordinates, and a unit that had no use for part-time "Summer soldiers". The fabled militias were actually at their best as a sort-of indigenous police force, keeping slaves on their plantations by threat of arms when the British Army was trying to foment rebellions on plantations, concentrated mainly in the Piedmont and Tidewater regions of their rebel colonies.
Wills also explores some of the myths of the Old West--surprise, both 1870's Dodge City, Kansas, and Tombstone, Arizona, in their "rugged individualistic" heydays had locally enforced gun control, strictly enforced!--and many of the Western towns that sprang up on the frontier sprang up nearby US Army Forts.
Also, it was the northern states, not the Dixie Region, which were the first section of the country to seriously contemplate leaving the Union (at the 1814 Hartford Convention, convened in the course of America's War of 1812 in response to the loss of British trade for American goods and raw materials.)
Wills takes the whole history of small-scale rebellion into focus, from the free settler/slave holding skirmishes of 1850's "Bleeding Kansas" and John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859 to the bombing by Timothy McVeigh of the Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building in 1995--and shows how the fervor of distaste for government can, at its extreme, develop into a formula for violence and anarchy. The Civil War is only lightly touched on here, which is just as well since it has been covered extensively elsewhere.
Wills defines the general values of pro-government and anti-government movements through American history as follows:
Anti-governmental Values:
Provincial
Amateur
Authentic
Spontaneous
Candid
Homogeneous
Traditional
Populist Elite
Organic
Rights-oriented
Religious
Voluntary
Participatory
Rotating labor
Pro-Governmental Values:
Cosmopolitan
Expert
Authoritative
Efficient
Confidential
Articulated
Progressive
Mechanical
Duties-oriented
Secular
Regulatory
Delegative
Dividing labor
These characteristics, while a bit generalized, explain a good deal of why the contrarian side of the American government debate has always seemed more romantic and, just as often, less successsful in influencing the future course of the nation. I would take exception with Wills on labeling religion as anti-government, however, but certainly Slave-Owning Confederate Politicos in the 1860's and black Civil Rights Activists 100 years later used spiritual text to justify their efforts, although to very different ends.
The book is neither a statist treatise or a labeling of guilt on one any one American region or political ideology: it does what a good critical American history book should do--hold the mirror of our past up to the reader to see how we have come to the thorny situation we call the present.
Overviews of the history of the United States (or any other country) that cut across the 'official' account are important as you say Doug to put present day events in their wider historical context. From my perspective as an outsider, the US has never been a 'land of the free' anymore than my native England has ever been a 'land of hope and glory'.
ReplyDeleteDemystifying and demythologising official national histories unravels the fabric of jingoistic patriotism and misplaced 'national pride' traditionally the motors of violence and oppression aimed at the 'other'.
To make a controversial point I would argue that the Revolution was not particularly an American event at all, but the rebellion of British colonists, particularly amongst the slaveowning middle class against the Hanovarian/British Crown.
It was in my view primarily a bourgeois uprising (closely resembling the English Civil War) which resulted in a mass migration to British North America (subsequently Canada) by American colonists (mostly the less well off) who did not see their interests best served by independence.
These are complex 18th century geopolitical issues involving Britain, France and the colonial land grab in North America.
It is interesting to note for example that British naval supremacy in the Atlantic which guaranteed imperial expansion, would have been impossible without the retention of Halifax, Nova Scotia, one of the 4 fuelling stations that meant for a while Britannia did infact 'rule the waves' of the Atlantic.
This history of the Revolution and it's aftermath are also the history of the 'special relationship' between the US and the UK i.e. the history of America itself can only be understood I think in terms of a victory of the British empire over France, Spain, Germany and all of the indigenous peoples of North America. In short, the construction of the anglophone 'west' or Orwell's 'Oceania'.
I would therefore contend that the history of the United States up until today is the history of a 'Great(er)' Britain and the empire that was founded upon an agrarian revolution and the subsequent industrial revolution throughout that empire.
Thanks for posting this review Doug, I think both the Americans and British have a lot of catching up to do if we are to honestly and soberly confront the big issues of our time. This book is clearly another perspective of the past that undermines the certainties of legends and fables that we were taught as our 'history' at school.
I think a number of American historians would agree with you. The "original sin" of slavery in America hangs over US history like a shroud. Thomas Jefferson, one of the best minds the "master class" produced, attacked the slave trade in the 1776 Declaration of Independence, putting his onus on George III.
ReplyDeleteNot slavery itself, mind you, although he later compared the "peculiar institution" to "having the wolf by the ears". He must have known that "the wolf" was a grave situation that could not end well. As the talented American humorist Sarah Vowell later wrote in her book, "Asassination Vacation", Lincoln undoubtedly looked back at Founding Fathers like Tom and George during the Civil War he inherited from their reluctance to end slave-holding and thought "Wish you guys were here now."
I would add that some of the American rebels (John and his cousin Sam Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, et al) had little use for slavery and that Hamilton, though an elitist to the core, spoke hotly against it.
I've always liked Dr. Johnson's qoute about the American "revolt": "Why is it that we hear the greatest yelps for liberty amongst the drivers of Negroes?" The lack of any apparatus for freeing slaves in the Constitution lends credence to your thesis.
Much as the American in me resists the notion that early American history is a sideshow to the greater "headliner act", the British Empire, it surely is true that without the 1756-1763 Seven Years War (or "The French and Indian War" as kids my age were taught about it in grade school) America wouldn't have gained independence until much later in history. Although the American forces could fight and beat the "redcoats" on American soil at key points--Saratoga in October, 1777 being the key battle of the whole bloody contest-- it was only with the help of the French naval and ground forces that the real tide was turned.
ReplyDeleteThe special realtionship came strongly into focus in World War II and the subsequent Cold War, thanks to the partnership of Roosevelt and Churchill and the Japanese forces in 1941 settling our status from Lend-Lease friendliness to a flat-out ally committed in blood and toil. That the American and British senior staff officiers under Eisenhower and Montgomery commands' enjoyed little of the "bliss" of the "special realtionship" FDR and Churchill shared in the actual direction of the war on Hitler is an amusing sidelight to read about is an otherwise grim account of a terrible war.
Before Pearl Harbor, the friction between many Irish-Americans and some German-Americans against Britain had dampened FDR's attempt to get America into the war before Britain could be choked off from resupply from Canada and/or other points in her Dominions.
The idea that America was the inheritor or the new major adjunct of the Pax Britainnia after 1945 still has force in many American minds. It was essential in Europe perhaps, given the kind of Stalinist totalitarian forces in play during the struggles over middle Europe. It's the neo-colonial aspect of this shouldering-the-Empire policy that got us in trouble. (Wisely, PM Wilson didn't join Lyndon Johnson in his crusade in Vietnam, despite Johnson's no doubt all but threatening him. Been there, done that, or close to it, I'm sure many in the Cabinet at Downing Street must have thought.)
Today, the USA has Armed Forces in the same places the old Victorian Superpower has already been and, in the case of Iraq, we have gained little advantage from the effort. Blair's devotion to Bush's miscues into Baghdad will not be soon forgotten nor forgiven of him by the electorate.
Personally, I wish we had taken more cues from British domestic/social policies under Clemett Attlee and Harold Wilson and "Old Labor" than in foreign policy. This meddling in the endless bloody soap opera that is the modern Middle East is a prime example. We are still the only major nation without a true public health care system, equating needed medicine and treatment for illness much as we treat any ordinary consumer product.
I got a kick out of one lady during the last British General Election who asked Tony Blair at a town meeting why he insisted on being so chummy with "his best mate, George Bush". That's what I call "speaking for England."
Points well made Doug. I would be interested to know Gary Wills view of the role of Tom Paine.
ReplyDeleteThere is a point you make here though that I would like to explore a bit further. In parenthesis you say "Wisely, PM Wilson didn't join Lyndon Johnson in his crusade in Vietnam, despite Johnson's no doubt all but threatening him."
It is true that Wilson had publicly refused to commit troops to Vietnam, but Britain did much to aid the US in it's prosecution of the war.
Wilson for example approved US requests for MI6 assistance in Vietnam. MI6 retained a station in Hanoi which was very important to US intelligence operations.
The SAS secretly participated in the war under the umbrella of Australian and New Zealand SAS squads.
Britain also undertook 'secret' arms deliveries from Hong Kong especially napalm and 500lb bombs.
Counter insurgency specialists from Malaya were dispatched to Saigon as part of a British Advisory Mission, some of these were also seconded to Fort Bragg.
Interestingly however the major British contribution to the Vietnam war was intelligence gathering mostly through the monitoring station at Little Sai Wan in Hong Kong which supplied information to the US military until 1975.
This situation remains the case today and across the world British intelligence supports US led military adventures punching well above their apparent weight in that respect. The position of successive British governments in the 60s and 70s were covertly supportive of US aggression in SE Asia whilst spinning propaganda to conceal that fact.
None of the PMs involved Tory or Labour were more supportive or helpful than Harold Wilson.
In March 1965 Wilson said "We fully support the action of the United States in resisting aggression in Vietnam" by which he meant the Rolling Thunder bombing and chemical weapons terror campaign.
I would propose therefore that British duplicity on this issue has until comparatively recently obscured it's role in Vietnam.
The only real spat in the special relationship was Suez in 1956, although there have been minor private tiffs since then like Grenada caused some irritation in Whitehall, but otherwise it has been seamless I think and still is.
This is the reason for suggesting that America has perpetuated British military and geopolitical objectives for a very long time and the empire is in a very real sense an Anglo-American one.
The Wills book doesn't make mention of Paine. I'll have to check back on some of his other books and interviews on that.
ReplyDeleteFascinating stuff about Britain's covert role in the Vietnam War! When conservative pundits used to slap Britain's Left governments, as I recall, their recognition of Hanoi and Peking (Beijing) during the war was usually high on the list. Thanks for your extra background on that period.