Accommodating Revolutions

Albert H. Tillson Jr.’s history of the Northern Neck of Virginia in the era of the American Revolution extends what is already known about the revolution to a particular portion of the Old Dominion that had not been chronicled before. Readers already familiar with the accounts given by Rhys Isaac, Woody Holton, Mechal Sobel, T. H. Breen, and the like will not find new theses but will find further validation of established ones. Tillson's chapters are titled “A Troubled Gentry,” “Beyond the Plantations,” “The World(s) Northern Neck Slavery Made,” “The Scottish Merchants,” “Controlling the Revolution,” “The Evangelical Challenge,” and “The Preservation of Hegemony.” For scholars, those titles will foreshadow what the chapters say. Tillson clearly has performed herculean labor in the relevant archives, using the particulars of the economic and social difficulties faced by Northern Neck gentry, for example, to flesh out the familiar story. His social history contributes strongly to our understanding of Virginia's American Revolution

Archaeology · Art history · Dominion · English Revolution · Genealogy · Gentry · Hegemony · Political science · Politics · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American Environmental and Regional History · American History and Culture · History · Law