Much of his story centers on, as Taylor puts it, “a Union committed to expanding slavery and crushing Indians.” Just as American Revolutions revealed the dark side of the American Revolution, American Republics centers on colonialism, racism, sexism, prejudice, and violence. In his preface, Taylor mentions how a colleague jokingly recommended the subtitle for his book: “Colonize Harder.” Though humorous, the description gets at the heart of Taylor’s study. They were, for instance, angry that Canadians and Britons thought of the United States as a nation of irresponsible drunks, ill-tempered ruffians, and hypocritical slavers. While other works have shown how involved Americans were in regional events and national politics, Taylor demonstrates their keen awareness of foreign events and global changes, too. International events loom particularly large in the mind of his antebellum American subjects, such as the establishment of Haiti as a free black republic in 1804, the various Latin American revolutions that erupted throughout the early nineteenth century, and the United Kingdom’s Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. Taylor’s sources, which also include material from European diplomats and foreign travelers, offer unique insights on episodes routinely covered in similar books. Taylor’s history incorporates Canadian, Mexican, and Native American perspectives to recount the birth of the early Republic and the rise of American democracy. Taylor’s latest volume in his history of the United States (following 2001’s American Colonies and 2016’s American Revolutions) covers most of the same ground as these masterworks, but, unlike the others, he takes a continental approach that spans the surrounding regions. On offer besides American Republics are such acclaimed works as Charles Sellers’s provocative The Market Revolution (1991), Sean Wilentz’s Bancroft Prize–winning The Rise of American Democracy (2005), and Daniel Walker Howe’s Pulitzer Prize–winning What Hath God Wrought (2007).
Surveys of the early Republic are plentiful, and so Taylor enters a crowded field. In his new book, American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783–1850, Alan Taylor studies the character of early American democracy, offering a frank look at its fierce prejudices and violent passions. Writing about his journey across the young United States, Alexis de Tocqueville remarked that “in America I saw more than America I sought the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions.” From Tocqueville onwards, Americans have struggled to tell the story of American democracy, its triumphs as well as its shortcomings.
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