The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution
Product Description
George Robert Twelves Hewes, a Boston shoemaker who participated in such key events of the American Revolution as the Boston Massacre and teh Tea Party, might have been lost to history if not for his longevity and the hi… More >>
The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution
This book is worthwhile. Although it is an interesting examination of a regular person’s involvment in large historical events, it is repetitive and needs to be edited. The book seems to have been written to drum into a reader’s head the writer’s opinions, rather than share his great discoveries. He uses the word “conservative” so many times that it becomes meaningless. Hopefully, the writer can free himself of these habits to write an even better book.
Rating: 3 / 5
Based on the oral and written accounts of the event by its last survivor, George Robert Twelve Hewes, this is as close as any reader can get to the reality of the Boston Tea Party. I would have sworn that I’d reviewed it years ago; it’s one of my favorite studies of the American Revolution, with two levels of interest.
First, there’s the inconvertible evidence that, for many of the participants, the Tea Party and the revolution at large were indeed radical working-class struggles, and not simply the middle-class protest against ‘big government’ that the right-wing tea-party tax protesters of 2009 assume. Despite what they and “we” have learned in high school history, the Revolution wasn’t all about taxation without representation. It was about representation, that’s certain, but it was also about LACK of government, slavery, policy toward the western frontier lands, and many other grievances. And it was led, especially in the pre-fighting phase, from the bottom, by artisans and apprentices. The problem with representation, by the way, was primarily over the unfair distribution of it, with cities getting less than their share and ‘territories’ excluded. You might say that the current distribution of Congressional representation rather accurately replicates what the colonists resented; cities and states with large population are startlingly UNDERREPRESENTED in the Senate and even in the House. Isn’t it odd, therefore, that the over-represented and undertaxed “red state” crowd has been duped into this current Fox Noise fandango!
The other aspect of the book is the sort that will interest serious students of history as a ‘craft’. It concerns the interaction of historical memory with popular imagination. In the material available concerning Hewes, it’s uniquely possible to trace the man’s changing perception of his own actions and attitudes through the decades following the Revolution. Hewes was an extraordinary figure, fully as interesting as Paul Revere or Ethan Allen, to name two other ‘radicals’ whose fame has lasted better. Right now, this is a book everyone should be reading.
Rating: 5 / 5
How did the idea of a revolution take hold among those who cared little about a tax on tea? The story of an apprentice shoemaker, (the lowest of the trades, we learn) who, one year humbles himself at the house of a successful Bostonian businessman, and, the next year refuses to doff his hat to a British ship’s captain on the street. What changed him? Divided into two parts, the first half of this book is excellent, the second half less so. More academic than a pop history, but still a good read, I’m glad I bought it. The kind of book that leaves you feeling you learned something and read a good book at the same time.
Rating: 5 / 5
As I get older, I get less & less likely to read those American History “survey” books than ever, and to find my solace in “little books” about real events that the historians use as a lever to explain, to explain intensely, a slice of the past. The Shoemaker & the Tea Party is just such a volume of interpretive history. The book consists of two historical essays, the first of which dredges everything we could possibly find out about the Shoemaker & his involvement in historical events … the second which evaluates how the Tea Party has been viewed through history as different “powers” have had their hands on the rudder of historical interpretation. This book, like others about the early Republic, shows how our revolution was a profoundly conservative event, not an event that challenged the social structure of the colonies (except insofar as assets from the Tory elite were confiscated by the revolutionary elite). Although the revolution was made by both the elite & the workingman (tradesman & farmers), it was naturally the elite who chose to view & to institutionalize that view, historical events through their own eyes. The importance of social stability was paramount, hence the mob’ist origins of the revolution were downplayed or ignored. By the time this fellow, the Shoemaker, reemerged in the 1830s, the course of our American History writing about this topic was set in stone. The revolution was not a chaotic, angry event, but a smooth, patriotic one. This is a short book, alittle pricey for its length, but well worth reading.
Rating: 5 / 5
Young creates two essays; one that recalls George Robert Twelves Hewes participation in nearly every important event of the Am. Revolution, a sort of Forrest Gump of his time, and one that delves into the existance of historical memory- the true service of this book.
Young relates the events of Hewes life through contemporary biographers who had on hand the last of the revolutionary warriors. Contemporaries, intent on justifying and embellishing the memory of the revolutionary fathers, left a clear track of what the people of 19th century America wanted to know and to believe about their forebearers. It matters little that it would have been extremely unlikely that Hewes was present at every event he recalled.
That is Young’s point. Sometimes, the story tells us as much about the historian and the market for his writing as it does about the event being recorded. Historical interpretation is recollection of events and placing them in context. Even immediately after an event, the eyewitness accounts vary. Today’s historian may fall prey to superimposing current attitudes and values on prior events as those these are determinants.
Young’s Shoemaker is a valuable caution to interpreters of history.
Rating: 4 / 5