690
pages, HarperCollins, ISBN-13: 978-0060083137
Author
Jay Winik certainly loves his adjectives and gives them a real workout in The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of
the Modern World, 1788-1800, an informative and entertaining – but ultimately
disappointing and hyperbolic – account of the events that roiled the end of the
18th Century. Want an example? Okay, how’s this: “…how to comprehend the greatest generation
of talent in American history: the visionary Hamilton, the sublime Jefferson,
the iconoclastic Adams and the sober Madison, than to see them in relation to
the great revolutionary spirits of France, like the aristocratic Mirabeau, the
fulminating Marat, the audacious Danton, and the intense Robespierre – or, for
that matter, the dashing Polish hero Kosciuszko, or the inimitable Russian,
Prince Grigory Potemkin?” The whole book is like this, and believe you me
it doesn’t take long for these superfluous utterances to become exhausting. The
main problem, however, is that, despite the title, The Great Upheaval is focused mostly on the French Revolution, with
the American Revolution and the empire-building ways of the Russians thrown
in…and therein is the problem, for while Winik has purported to have written a
work in which the American Revolution was supposed to have been shown in the
context of the larger world, over the almost 700 pages of his book he doesn’t
manage to make much of a connection among the three, except to say repeatedly
that these were exciting times all over and that the parties concerned were all
paying some attention to what was going on elsewhere.
In
long strings of clauses laden with the afore-mentioned excess verbiage, Winik
describes the history of the times by recounting the “unmitigated horror”, the
“momentous decisions”, the “dreaded specter”, the “clarion call” – well, you
get the idea. His clauses sometimes sound like personals ads: “incorrigibly
flawed yet ironically suited”, “inspired yet quixotic”, “uncommonly brave yet psychologically
frail”. Triteness is not a barrier to Winik, as he has no qualms about
describing “golden shores”, “quickening pulses”, or “words dripping with
emotion”; nor about exclaiming that “behind this legend was a man” who was “of
fabled status”, or “it was a fateful day” but “it was not to be”. Alliteration
also has great appeal in his tour of the adjectives: “audaciously assumed”,
“terrible toll”, “defiantly demanded”, “frenzied fighting”. But where he waxes
most florid in his verbal outpourings is in the tales of war: “ghastly massacre”,
“blood flowed like rivers”, “bestial fighting”, “crushing defeat”, “murderous
enemy”, “brutally decapitated” (is there such a thing as a non-brutal
decapitation?). But then this is a book where nothing happens quietly. Food is
not just consumed; it is demolished. The sun does not shine; it blazes. Cannons
not only fire; they boom.
So
much for style. What about the substance? Winik’s thesis is that the years 1788
– 1800 saw the birth of the modern world and he looks at this period through
the prism of events occurring in France, Russia and the United States. In two
of these cases there were certainly events with far-reaching consequences – namely,
the French Revolution and the founding of the United States – but in the case
of Russia, it is harder to see the significance of these years in comparison
with some other periods. While there is no intrinsic problem in using, as Winik
does almost exclusively, secondary sources in his book, it still contains
little that is new or insightful concerning this era. There are several vivid
descriptions of the Terror in Paris and other parts of France in the early
1790s. That Winik is most interested in the events in France and Russia is
obvious as the histories of both countries dominates the book, while events in
America during this time place third fiddle – indeed, from halfway through the
book until the end the U.S. is hardly mentioned at all. When I wasn’t rolling
my eyes at the overwrought writing, for the most part I was enjoying the retelling
of familiar history: a blow-by-blow account of the lead-up to the guillotining
of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette may not be among the most important aspects
of the French Revolution, but it sure makes for good drama; likewise, the story
of Catherine the Great’s suppression of a peasant revolt amid the complications
of her love affair with Grigory Potemkin is quite interesting. But for all of
that what I was expecting – because that is what I was sold – was a history of
the American Revolution as it related to the rest of the (read: Western) World;
what I got instead was a dual-history of France and Russia in which the United
States was nothing more than a sideshow.
No comments:
Post a Comment