The Minutemen and Their World (American Century) | Robert A. Gross

The Minutemen and Their World (American Century) | Robert A. Gross | Review by An Intellectually Curious Adult

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	The Minutemen and Their World (American Century) Robert A. Gross Hill and Wang, 2001 - 242 pages average customer review:based on 22 reviews view larger image
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Winner of the Bancroft Prize

The Minutemen and Their World, first published in 1976, is reissued now in a twenty-fifth anniversary edition with a new Foreword by Alan Taylor and a new Afterword by the author.

On April 19, 1775, the American Revolution began at the Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts. The "shot heard round the world" catapulted this sleepy New England town into the midst of revolutionary fervor, and Concord went on to become the intellectual capital of the new republic. The town--future home to Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne--soon came to symbolize devotion to liberty, intellectual freedom, and the stubborn integrity of rural life. In The Minutemen and Their World, Robert Gross has written a remarkably subtle and detailed reconstruction of the lives and community of this special place, and a compelling interpretation of the American Revolution as a social movement.

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a pleasure to read? absolutely

I agree wholeheartedly with editorial reviewer David Hackett Fisher. This book reads almost like a novel, and yet it is a work of history--with solid research and scholarship, at that.

Gross argues that the Revolution provided Concord an opportunity to re-assert control over the community and its destiny. In the years preceding 1775-1776, great changes were sweeping across the colonies, particularly in traditional New England towns like Concord. For example, there was the problem of decreasing supplies of land, and fathers, with sometimes large numbers of sons, had difficulty providing for all his heirs (without dividing the land and, hence, making it less sustainable). Other issues were occurring specifically in Concord--such as the desire of its residents farther from the town to hire their own minister. So threatened, Concord was experiencing not just stasis but actual decline in these pre-Revolution years.

Therefore, with all these fluctuations and challenges, participation in the Revolution offered Concord a chance to seize initiative and regain control over its political and communal life, to restore its autonomy. Gross writes, "The men of 1775 had not gone to war to promote change but to stop it."

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Review by An Intellectually Curious Adult

It's too bad that Minutemen has received so many reviews on Amazon written by intellectually lazy, immature undergraduates, who apparently aren't interested in people unless they appear on the covers of Sports Illustrated or People. Robert A. Gross, in 1977, received the prestigious Bancroft Prize awarded by Columbia University for outstanding work in the field of American history but, alas, no MTV award. This is a 25th anniversary re-issue of his book which is highly readable, engrossing, thought-provoking and entertaining.

We know that history is really made by ordinary people, that history is far more than wars, dates, treaties, and big-name leaders. But the stories of ordinary people are seldom available to us, especially 200 years (or more) after the fact. Using the techniques of social history research, Gross brings to life the real people who lived in Concord before, during, and after the events that started the actual fighting that was the Revolutionary War. I've always believed that no fiction can be as juicy as real life. Gross certainly gives us a juicy story of the lives and concerns of early Concordians. Conflict, sex, hope and failure. It's all here. And more. Gross also gives us a personal, moment-by-moment description of the events of April 18-19, 1975 in Lexington and Concord from the time British Redcoats left Boston, through the massacre in Lexington and the confrontation -- and first shots by the Patriots -- at the North Bridge in Concord, through the British retreat. And what about afterwards? What impact did these events have on the citizens in the years following? Gross lets us know.

What was special for me was discovering that Rev. William Emerson, the pastor who lived right next to the North Bridge and encouraged the Minutemen throughout their struggles, is the grandfather of Ralph Waldo Emerson who was friend to Hawthorne, supporter of Thoreau, and influence on Alcott. All this from one small town!

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Book Review

The following is my book review for a history class. It is far from perfect but perhaps can help you start your own critical analysis.

The book tells an unconventional story of the American Revolution by analyzing the ordinary city of Concord, Massachusetts as a microcosm of colonial America. Gross argues that the struggle for independence from Britain was not a revolution but a conservative social struggle - a struggle with patriarchal control, religious zealotry, individualism, and localized control of government.

The first point of contention in Concord was unequal representation attributed to citizen's proximity to the town meeting hall - those who were physically closer dominated public opinion and policy. The town would also struggle with church and state - ministers were subsidized by the town and it was not possible to keep each citizen happy with the majority's choice. Local representation was another source of disagreement - the mid-eighteenth century government was influenced by (if not controlled from) England, an ocean away. Representation was worsened when the British levied heavy taxes to finance the Seven Years War. The popular majority fought against the colonial government who favored the hand that empowered them, if not fed them. Primary documents note the latter: "there is no greater...corruption...than when...executive officers depend...on a power independent of the people".

In the afterword, Gross explains his left-leaning ideological influences and how they shaped the topic of his research, his approach, and conclusions. Gross uses historical public records to tell a story, attributing emotion and motivation to statistical trends. Personalizing quantitative data will naturally have a bias, but Gross manages to keep from overwhelming the reader with his own conclusions by letting the reader draw his own. Academics have used Gross's work to compare Vietnam to the American Revolution - Gross acknowledges the idea but leaves it out of the main text.

The most compelling argument Gross makes demonstrates the loss of patriarchal control in Concord, and presumably across the colonies. He describes how sons rely on fathers for land, and daughters rely on fathers for dowries. As the economic climate changes, dowries are reduced, local fertile land becomes scarce and grown children have incentives to leave the family to pursue the frontier. This costs the father his source of labor (as slavery was not the dominant labor in Massachusetts) and costs the children the source of inheritance and stability.
Gross approaches each argument in a similar manner - he tells a personal story backed by quantitative research. In the patriarchy argument he tells of the emigration of Purchase Brown, unable to sustain himself on his father's meager farm. Quantitatively, Gross notes that 1 in every 4 taxpayers moved away from Concord in every decade from the 1740s onward.

The Minutemen and Their World was revolutionary in personalizing a Revolution. The author stretched historical records and statistics into a compelling narrative of people both average and great. The arguments are solid because of the heavy quantitative research, but even the author wonders "if the Minutemen would recognize themselves in my mirror". The author added to the understanding of the Revolution by adding intricate personal detail and motivations to all of Concord's citizens - memorable men, but also poor men, widows, spinsters, ministers, blacks, farmers, blacksmiths, intellectuals, substitutes, and dissenters.

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Fairly Good, Worth the Read

This work is rather comprehensive for its relatively narrow view. It focuses entirely on a single town and uses it to draw conclusions about the rural countryside around Boston as a whole. The writing is well done and well edited, if a bit dated.
Overall, I recommend this to any student of the period.

Brilliantly Written, Brilliantly Boring

For a freshman history class in college, I had to read Robert Gross' The Minutemen and Their World. I thought it would be an engaging book about the lives of the Minutemen of the Revolutionary War period. It was more about the life of residents of Concord Massachusetts and how it was before, during, and after the American Revolution. Gross thoroughly researched the facts for this book - I have no doubt of that. It is intricate enough to include the particulars of the lives of individuals living in Concord as well as the overall sentiments of the town (and other Massachusetts towns/villages).
Filled with many facts, this book is great if you have an interest in such a thing. However, it is a most dry read in that it is in this general layout:
Fact, fact, information on a particular Concordian, fact, fact, fact
The bottom line: This book is great for researching life in Concord/Massachusetts. However, it's not very good for being an exciting read.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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