Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Revolution Revisited, 6 Oct 2003
This is a book that really needs to be read in the United States. Unfortunately, I suspect it won't be. (I notice that it is already out-of-print in America.) The information in it wouldn't be particularly shocking to most academics, but the book would be an eye-opener for the general public. Personally, I enjoy Mr. Bicheno's wit and sarcasm. However, his method may not be the best way to gain "the hearts and minds" of the unconverted. For example, here is Mr. Bicheno on John Paul Jones: "His later career included service in the navy of the freedom-loving Catherine the Great of Russia, finally fleeing St. Petersburg to evade an allegedly fabricated accusation of rape. What may have been his remains were....deposit(ed) in a magnificent crypt at the Annapolis Naval Academy. Not many other career criminals have been similarly honoured." Or here is the author on Thomas Jefferson: "...always inhabiting a world of soaring rhetoric that impinged upon reality only in places..." Again, I find this sort of thing amusing - but I was already one of the converted. Mr. Bicheno would have done better to present the facts in a cool manner, but he seems to enjoy bull-baiting. In any case, he is usually right on-the-mark. There was plenty of bumbling and humbug on both sides, trading with the enemy, etc. This was one of the least necessary revolutions in history, when you look at the freedom and rights the colonists possessed. And the hypocrisy of people pontificating about human rights, when said people were busy oppressing blacks and exterminating Native Americans, is obvious. Mr. Bicheno does occasionally get carried away with his rhetoric: at one point he states that Benjamin Franklin, in 1777-1778, intentionally prolonged the conflict so he could continue to benefit from his profiteering. Even I found that a shade too cynical. On the other side of the coin, the author states that one reason Benedict Arnold switched sides was because he was disgusted by the rebels forming an alliance with the Roman-Catholic French. It seems that Mr. Bicheno can himself be a trifle starry-eyed. Arnold was disgusted...with what he felt was a lack of recognition of his (admittedly substantial) services, and with people of inferior abilities leap-frogging over him via political string-pulling. Of course, as with most traitors, money also had a little something to do with his change of heart.....Still, Mr. Bicheno is mostly correct concerning motivations and actions. As he rightly points out, this was really the first American Civil War. There were just as many Loyalists as Rebels, and a large percentage of the people were sitting on the fence, waiting to see which side would come out on top. The book is full of wonderful colour plates and there are numerous, excellent maps (35, to be precise). One caveat concerning the book is that it is not intended to be the starting-point for someone reading about the Revolution. It presupposes that you have some knowledge of the battles and the political background. Indeed, considering the fact that the book is only 260 pages long and so many battles (minor as well as major) and troop movements are mentioned, the novice would wind up being very confused by the military aspects of the book. But, for the person who wants to build on their existing knowledge of the military and, especially, the political developments, this is a good, solid addition to the genre.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Very disappointing, 26 Mar 2007
I'm all for any text that tries to redress historical distortion, in this case the myth that the American revolution was inspired by anything other than greed and self-interest, and this book claims to attempt this: unfortunately, it fails. It starts well, with an introduction that sets out some interesting hypotheses, but from then on we are inundated with the most tedious military history of the war, and little else. The cast of characters is huge, and important players are introduced and dismissed in a page; we are given endless casualty lists, etc, so that from the military standpoint, if that is your thing, it is just too brief and confusing, but not brief enough if you are more interested in the socio-political aspects to the war. We are given teasing indications of Franklin's duplicity, Washington's suspect moral fibre,etc, but it's all too brief and untidily written. A diappointment.
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9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
At last, an English view of the American war of Independence, 26 Aug 2003
Many books have been written about the American War of Independence, but few have been written as a general history but from a British stand-point. There have been a few over recent years, but Mackesy's masterful "The War for America" remains the standard work on the British strategy during the war, the problems of logistics and, even more particularly, the political meddling.In Hugh Bicheno's book, these problems are included, but, of course, it remains difficult to understand why the War was lost when there are, in fact, so few full-scale defeats for British forces on the battlefields. Mr Bicheno goes a long way to explain his view that the war was part of a much greater conflict against France and its allies (in this case Spain and the Netherlands), whilst the war in America was, to a great extent, a civil war, with considerable numbers of Americans fighting for the Crown. He shows, as a result, that many of the conceptions about the war, on both sides of the Atlantic, are mistaken, and have been continuing for over 200 years. The battle desciptions are excellent,with very fine maps and, again, as in Mr Bicheno's previous books, great care appears to have been taken in placing vast amounts of information, which might otherwise have halted the narrative, in appendices. As a companion study to the recent TV series, it works very well, and, of course, the interesting point will be the reaction in America to a book which will, perhaps, make them question long-held beliefs. As far as the Old World is concerned, the book is a very welcome study on a conflict which retains aq fascination after 220 years.
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