Orders from France

872 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Orders from France: The Americans and the French in a Revolutionary World, 1780—1820. By Roger G. Kennedy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989. Pp. xiii527; illustrations, notes, appendixes, bibli­ ography, index. $39.95. In the Federalist era, and in the days of the Virginia Dynasty, the United States was an undeveloped country. Like similar countries in all periods, it needed infusions of capital and technology to grow. The ambitious purpose of this volume is to evaluate the influence of French building culture and technology in the New World. In a sense it is a companion volume to Howard Mumford Jones’s old but still valuable American and French Culture, 1750—1848 (1927). But whereas the focus ofJones was mainly literary, the interest of Roger Kennedy is in architecture: who designed it, who built it, and how it was paid for. Because the influx of French architects, soldiers, noblemen, and adventurers was substantial, his task was complicated, and his canvas was broad. Architecture is thus his frame of reference for under­ standing the effect of French culture in the period. “Orders” is to be taken in a double sense: in broad cultural terms and in a more narrowly architectural meaning. After the period of the French alliance in the Revolutionary War, Kennedy distinguishes two major groups of refugees/adventurers in the United States: those whose sympathies were largely with the ancien regime of the Bourbons (represented by Talleyrand) and those who were supportive of Napoleon (Joseph Bonaparte and General Charles Lallemand). The latter were generally more able, ambitious, and energetic than the former. Sprinkled through both groups were architects like Maximilian Godefrey and Joseph Ramee. Each man received important commissions in the New World (i.e., the first Unitarian church in Baltimore and the original design for Union College), but both returned to Europe to do further work after their American careers. Architecture in Kennedy’s view is as international in this period as merchant banking, and he gives it the same kind of scrutiny as he accords to the great Mexican silver scheme managed by the House of Baring in London. This fantastic operation, unknown to historians until recently, was essential in supporting the successful Peninsular’ campaign of the British army against Napoleon’s forces in 1808—14. Indeed, the whole period was one in which fantastic schemes were abundant. As Kennedy has properly noted, these often included the establishment of baronial domains in remote quarters of the Ameri­ can continent. Of these, the “Western Empire” of Aaron Burr is undoubtedly the best known. More surprising are the holdings of the Leray family in upstate New York (the commanding general of the 10th Mountain Division at Camp Drum lives in a neoclassical villa!) and the amazing Vine and Olive Colony in Texas. All of these vast TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 873 enterprises involved a French connection, and some of them involved French (or international neoclassic) architecture as well. One emerges from the reading of this book with the feeling that the effect of this early infusion of French architecture into the main­ streams of American building was significant but not in the long run of controlling importance. The sophisticated neoclassicism of the French was displaced, after 1820, by the homegrown, and immensely popular, Greek revival of Robert Mills, William Strickland, and a host of more provincial architects. It may well be that the most important migration from France to the United States in the early years of the 19th century was that of the du Pont family. The du Ponts had an architectural associate, Pierre Bauduy, who, Kennedy shows, has never received proper credit for his contributions to their grand enterprises in building, finance, and manufacturing. In this instance, as the author properly notes, there was a transfer of both art and technology. In sum, this book is a remarkable combination of economic, architectural, and social history. Kennedy has a firm grasp of the economic basis of architecture, and his work will be required reading for any scholar who has to thread his way through the tangled web presented by the early years of the American republic. Leonard K. Eaton Dr. Eaton

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