Jack Tar vs John Bull: The Role of New York Seamen in Precipitating the Revolution. - Review - book reviews

Jack Tar v John Bull: The part of New York Seamen in Precipitating the Revolution JESSE LEMISCH, 1997 of recent origin York and London: Garland pp xx + 157 $4500

The appearance of Towards a of recent origin Past: Dissenting Essays in American History in 1967 marked a significant turning point in the way American history was written. A collection of essays through nine different authors, edited by dint of Barton J. Berstein, it brought the budding radical scholarship upon America's history to widespread popular attention. single of the most influential essays in this collection was Jesse Lemisch's "The American Revolution Seen from the Bottom Up" a phrase that became the credo of the of recent origin social history of the 1970 In 1968 Lemisch published "Jack Tar in the Streets: Merchant Seamen in the Politics of Revolutionary America" in the William and Mary Quarterly, an article that was widely anthologized, and that was pick outed in 1993 as one of the eleven greatest in quantity significant articles to appear in that journal in the last 50 years. The nearest year brought another very widely known article: "`Listening to the Inarticulate': William Winger's Dream and the Loyalty of American Seamen in British Prisons," published in the Journal of Social History. Although Lemisch has had virtually no scholarly publications in the last 25 years, his early work placed him with the greatest in quantity influential historians of his generation.

Garland has now published, unrevised, Lemisch's 1962 Yale University PhD dissertation with an introduction through Marcus Rediker. Jack Tar v John male is short--108 pages of body and 50 pages of notes. As the ratio of notes to body suggests, the book is based upon extremely impressive research. And it is true well written--Lemisch is a born storyteller with a flair for the well-turned phrase, a gift that would labor for him well in the polemics of the late 1960 Originally intended to be part of a general research on merchant seamen in revolutionary America, the dissertation focuses upon sailors in New York City and their character in the protests against English policy between 1765 and 1773

Lemisch begins by dint of looking at who the seamen were: while their motives for going to sea were diverse, greatest in quantity were young, propertyless and without family ties. Lemisch then examines the widespread Royal Navy policy--technically illegal--of impressing American sailors into their ranks. The seamen fought back against impressment, many times violently, and often with widespread support from non-seafaring of recent origin Yorkers. Impressment to Lemisch is crucial: it revolveed the seamen against an English regulation that allowed such a practice to continue; it made English tyranny real to them.

The economic fall through after the end of the French and Indian War caused widespread unemployment among of recent origin York seamen. Their bitterness toward the English was heightened through the policy of allowing soldiers from novel York's garrison to work for wages, depriving sailors of scarce piece of works With few institutions to aid him, Jack Tar increasingly "met society upon dishonest, even criminal terms and became accustomed to expressing himself in violent ways" (62) When the Stamp Act avers began seamen were in the forefront. Sea captains Alexander MacDougall and Isaac Sears were radical leaders, and ordinary sailors compos a substantial proportion of the lawless crowd that attacked homes of royal officials and reduce to ashesed the stamps. After the Stamp Act was repealed sailors took a prominent part in the battles to shield New York's liberty pole against attempts of soldiers to throw down it.

Jack Tar v John male was written in 1962--a year before E P Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class and five years before Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution were published. While the absence of self-consciously flexible theorizing about class and about republicanism may be refreshing, it gives Jack Tar v John male a distinctly outdated aura. Nevertheless, its depiction of the seamen rings true--Lemisch's untheoretical approach works well because, he argues convincingly, the sailors were themselves untheoretical. Lemisch is certainly sympathetic to the seamen tyrannized by means of impressment and oppressed by unemployment that was caused, in part, by the agency of British imperial policies. But he is realistic about novel York sailors--their world was a tough, violent world and they were tough, violent men Their declare s Lemisch argues forcefully, were prepolitical: ideology plays virtually no character here. Lemisch quotes approvingly the claim of single critic of the mob that "Liberty is the Pretext"

For all its evident influence upon the writing of colonial history, Lemisch's work have the appearances to have had considerably les impact upon the new labor history of the 1970 and 1980 The sailors in Jack Tar v John male seem considerably closer to Peter Way's riotous canal diggers than the E P Thompson-inspired sober, self-reliant, republican artisans that came to dominate writing upon antebellum labor history. While Lemisch's dissertation can hardly be said, at this date, to be a significant contribution to historical scholarship, it remains a real well-crafted price of work that reminds historians that it is possible to be sympathetic to those in subordinate positions in society without idealizing them.