Justin Oldham talks with author and historian Harlow Giles Unger about his book, American Tempest (Da Capo Press, 2011), The Boston Tea Party of 1773 is re-examined in detail.
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American Tempest, by Harlow Giles Unger (Da Capo Press, 2011), re-defined my understanding of The Boston Tea Party, and what its legacy is to modern Americans. I will never think of ‘taxation without representation’ quite the same way ever again.
Unger’s book opens with a quote from Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson. “There is nothing so easy as to persuade people they are being badly governed.” The source of this quote, and the simple truth it represents, are central to the point that American Tempest was written to convey.
Unger presents a very sobering proposition. His underlying contention appears to be that “We The People” haven’t been [entirely] the masters of our own destiny. This thesis runs counter to the widely held belief that The Boston Tea Party was a spontaneous event of sacred national significance.
The average American doesn’t fund out about the flaws of our Founding Fathers until they get to college. Even then, exposure to the truth about those mythical giants is limited. Most of them weren’t inherently bad, though some were clearly more corrupt than others.
Samuel Adams and James Otis are the two most ‘revealed’ historical figures in this book. As I spoke with him for the interview, Unger emphasized that Adams and Otis played vital roles in sparking the revolution, though they themselves failed to benefit from it.
As much as I rail against the stupidity of modern politicians, I did learn new respect for Governor Hutchinson. What he knew, and what he could have done something about, must’ve been two different things.
That academic reality check which some of us get [in college] didn’t prepare me for the full scope and scale of what’s in American Tempest. I’m well versed when it comes to the machinations of government. I expect similar behavior from business, though I was not fully aware of just how instigative the private sector had been to the events that eventually lead to the American Revolution.
We are taught that an unjust British Empire forced the American colonies to take formal and direct action to preserve themselves during a heavy handed military crack-down. That is fundamentally correct. They pushed us too far, and we fought back.
American Tempest does more than tell us what happened before, during, and after The Boston Tea Party. The author makes his case for why it happened in a way that’s going to be hard for some readers to digest. This truth is not sexy, glamorous, or flattering, but it is comprehendible if the reader can overcome their prejudices.
The Boston Tea Party was an orchestrated event. The men who made it happen capitalized on the failures of Imperial government to push public opinion in the direction they wanted it to go. That’s the simple truth.
It’s also happens to be the way that politics actually works. I influence you. You influence me. We tell our version of events to others, hoping to influence them. The narrative that makes that story palatable only comes about after the fact, when future generations try to justify what happened in the past.
It’s been said that time heals all wounds and clarifies all mysteries. American Tempest has been made possible due to the passage of time and the objective distance from controversial events that comes from that passage of time.
Unger’s depiction of The Boston Tea Party and the story behind them is based on credible documentation that has itself benefited from the passage of time. This book took me by surprise because no prior event in my life gave me a reason to challenge the old narrative. I have been challenged, and I have been enlightened.
Breaking with conventional wisdom is never an easy thing for any author to do. We’re sensitive to the fact that we can’t take it back, once its been published. That, and some degree of peer pressure, can make us pull our punches.
Unger doesn’t sugar coat anything in American Tempest. I never got the impression that his goal was to tear down our sacred myths. This book added to my understanding. Any offense I took was my own selfish perception of the past being overturned.
I make no bones about my populist point of view. I know that “We The People” are being manipulated by government with a big ‘G’ and business with a big “B.” I knew this was an old conflict, but I didn’t fully appreciate how utterly unresolved it still is.
With these not so humble admissions in mind, I’d like to think that this book comes to us at the right time. American are divided now in much the same way as they had been back then,. That lack of certainty makes us vulnerable.
Government threatens us in ways that it cannot comprehend. Business threatens us in ways that it’s prepared to live with. How do “we” save ourselves from THAT? I think that a healthy step in the right direction is to get it through our thick skulls that we’ve been here before. I’m not asking for another revolution. I’m just hoping for a little of the enlightenment I got from reading this book.
Boston based Da Capo Press is a member of the Perseus Book Group.
Publishers Weekly’s 2007 Publisher of the Year.
Find them online at
http://wwwdacapopress.com/
