Original Reviews

          Most of us will have to work hard to remember much about the period 1789 to 1815 from our high school and college US history survey courses. Gordon Wood has made these twenty-six years important and also interesting. Empire of Liberty is not revisionist history; Wood is celebrating the accomplishments of the founding fathers, who are now a generation older. He has summarized the vast and rich monographic literature, sorting out the significant contributions to the history of the early republic.

          He begins with the constitutional convention of 1787 and the adoption of a ‘bill of rights.’ Wood reminds us that those who pressed for a constitutional guarantee of our ‘inalienable rights’ were intending to reflect rights to be safeguarded, rights we already were enjoying, rather than a list of rights to be created by a constitution. That Bill of Rights has protected us from both congressional follies and the federal and state encroachment on our civil liberties on many, many occasions.

          Neither the Bill of Rights nor the Constitution describes what has since become the ‘third’ branch of government. The makers of the Constitution, according to Wood, never envision a federal court system and a Supreme Court that would mediate conflicting claims of public authority and the private rights of individuals. No other country has such a powerful judicial system. The credit (or blame) for ‘judicial activism’ Wood gives to John Marshall, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1801 to 1835.  

          The phrase “advice and consent of the Senate” means that a president must obtain congressional approval of his appointments. But the Constitution did not make it clear whether the Senate had the right to dismiss – impeach – office holders so appointed. Giving the federal legislature the authority to remove presidential appoints would have seriously weakened that office. The Federalists, hoping to create a more powerful presidency, thought the power of congressional dismissal to a bad idea, fought it, and won. The Republicans, on the other hand, worried about strengthening federal executive.

          One of Wood’s chapters is about what he calls the “Jeffersonian revolution” following Thomas Jefferson’s election in 1800. The loose association of ‘Republicans’ that gathered around his presidency had a different vision of the country’s political and economic future than did the Federalist who had supported John Adams’ presidency. Though neither party was willing to turn governance over to “the mob,” the Federalists were shocked by Jefferson’s appeal to “the middling sort.”

Alexander Hamilton provided the intellectual leadership of the Federalist Party during George Washington’s two terms as president. Wood gives Hamilton credit for almost single-handedly creating our economic order, and the set of institutions that would shape the federal government’s role in our economic life. Hamilton believed strongly that the nation must be joined together by these federal institutions. In other words he transformed our thinking from “these United States” (plural) to “this United States.” 

`        The book ends with an account of the War of 1812, which Wood argues is the least comprehended war in American history. It was provoked by an array of issues between Britain and its former colony. Both Britain and Napoleonic France were using trade boycotts and prohibitions as part of their long conflict. We Americans were particularly outranged by the British policy of turning back American merchant ships headed for European ports and boarding them to impress those sailors who were former Brits.

In retaliation President Jefferson imposed a non-importation policy, which essentially ended all trade with Britain, our major trading partner. Jefferson assumed that they needed us more than we needed them. Military conflict ensued. It was a war that never should have happened. We were ill-prepared. Britain was preoccupied with winning its European war. Both sides won and lost battles. Canada’s capital, then York (Toronto), and Washington were both burned in the process.

          I found Gordon Wood’s Empire of Liberty; A History of the Early Republic to be worthy company to the two other volumes in the ‘Oxford History of the United States’ that I have read.

          Professor Elena Osokina gave an interesting paper at a UF conference last spring. Her book, Our Daily Bread, describes the ways in which the Soviet Union alternatively promoted and suppressed a market economy. And even when suppressed and illegal, markets continued to play an essential role in the economy.

          Economic policy under Joseph Stalin was dominated by the urgency of rapid industrialization; urbanization was a necessary part of that industrial policy. Stalin was convinced that in the near future Russia would have to fight a major war for its survival. The assumed enemies were the capitalist countries, which had intervened at the time of the revolution. But after 1933 he must have been concerned about the rise of National Socialism in Germany and Adolf Hitler’s talking about lebensraum.

          The machinery necessary for industrial development had to imported and paid for by exporting grain. Hence the need for a grain surplus. Yet 80% of farm production was either consumed by or marketed in small quantities by the peasants. Almost all of the 20% that entered the state-run distributional system from which grain exports were drawn was produced by the better off peasants or kulaks, who farmed with hired labor and machinery. Kulaks had done well prior to the revolution and then during the period of the New Economic Policy.

 In order to keep food prices low for industrial workers, the state’s procurement prices were sent low. That included peasants to withhold food from the market to await better prices. Famine in the 1930s further reduced the amount of grain and other food produced by the kulaks coming onto the market. The Politburo’s resorting to violence only added to the difficulties.

          Moscow’s response to these food shortages was to ration bread, and eventually other household commodities. Individuals were entitled to different rations depending on where they fit into the Soviet universe of groups and subgroups. Industrial workers received the most food, particularly if they lived in areas where industry was concentrated: Moscow, Leningrad, Baku, the Don

Basin and eastern Siberia. The Red army and the navy were well-supplied at all times. Party, Soviet, and trade union officials received the same ration as “vanguard workers.” White-collar workers faired less well. Rural areas received barely enough to feed their populations. Osokina calls this a hierarchy of poverty.  

          There were frequent shortages. State stores ran out, resulting in much traipsing around the countryside and to cities looking for things to buy. And long lines; some Russians made their living standing in lines for others.

          Industrial workers ate many of their meals in well-supplied cafeterias. The Politburo realized that the constant search for food and other goods was causing absenteeism in the factories and threatening production quotas.

          In the mid ‘30s torgsin stores were introduced. Initially they were for foreign workers, another favored group. But when inflation robbed the rubble of its exchange value, the Politburo needed to acquire foreign currency, but also gold and silver, jewelry, art works, and anything else that had value on international exchanges, since the rubble didn’t.

          We look on the years of Stalin’s rule as an unmitigated economic tyranny. That is fairly close to Elena Osokina’s description of the state of affairs. And yet the market survived. It had, for instance, a near monopoly of the distribution of used goods. There was much illegal trading, in other words, plenty of ‘saboteurs.’ Ultimately state distribution proved to be an expensive process, needing a huge bureaucracy that had to be paid by the state.

          In viewing the numerous failures of state distribution in the Soviet Union, it must be remembered that even in a market economy there is nevertheless a hierarchy of consumers, based on incomes.  And even in a capitalist economy, when a good or service is in short supply, a form of rationing develops.

          The war between Russia and France, Doninic Lieven contends, has mostly been told from the point of view of the French or the British. He argues, however, that it was the Russian people and their czar that broke the back of Napoleon Bonaparte’s armies.

He begins with the negotiations at Tilset (in former East Prussia) in 1807 and ends with the Russian army’s entry into Paris in March 1814. For most of this time, Russian armies stood alone on the continent. Only Britain remained an ally and provided subsidies to Russia, though remaining peripheral to the continental campaigns.

Russia Against Napoleon deflates the contention that Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated by the Russian winter. The year 1812 saw some bitter winter weather in December, but by then the French army had been shattered by the Russians and abandoned by Napoleon.

Lieven is interested in the provisioning of armies and reminds us that Russian military power was built upon a pre-industrial society ill-prepared to support a prolonged war effort. It had only a rudimentary arms industry. Moreover much of the Russian countryside in which the fighting occurred was not able to provision men and horses for long periods of time.

The million or so Russians who served in the army were mostly serfs, bound to the estates of their owners who selected which would be sent off to the army. The czar was almost totally dependent on these same nobles for the officers to staff his rapidly expanding army.

          Lieven has clarified the Czar’s role in the 1812-1814 campaign that stretched from Moscow to Paris. He has often been faulted for not having better managed his squabbling generals. In fact, according to Lieven, Alexander was moderately successful. He was particularly fortunate to have had Mikhail Barclay de Tolly as his minister of war and field commander. Like Barcly de Tolly, many of his generals were Baltic Germans. More controversial is the Russian, Prince Mikhil Kuterzov, whom Leo Tolstoy raises to a hero in his War & Peace.  

          Military historians are generally ‘Monday morning quarterbacks.’ And Dominic Leeven is no exception. Mistakes are called out and better choices explained. The most controversial at the time was Barclay de Tolly and Alexander’s decision to retreat before Napoleon’s invading army, saving his army and using the Russian cavalry to harass the lengthening French supply lines.

The Russians declined to give serious battle to Napoleon, even when he occupied Smolensk in August 1812. Smolensk had long been considered Orthodox Russia’s citadel against invasion from Latin Christendom. When it fell, criticism of Alexander and his generals for not defending the motherland became ominous. Both Alexander’s father and grandfather had been assassinated.

          Lieven contends that Alexander and his advisors were consistently looking ahead to a Europe after Napoleon’s armies had been rolled back to the French frontier. They worried about the rise of Prussian domination in central Europe and the threat that it would pose to the Russian Empire. And that the Austrian Empire would join the Prussians. Russians believed that, once defeated, France might be an important part of a balance of power on the continent.

          One school advocated allowing France to retain its “natural frontiers,” the west bank of the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees. Less generous but still not punitive, others would allow France to retain all of the land it had administered as of 1792 when Russia joined the fight against the French republic. But then what would prevent a resurgence of French power and again threaten the peace of Europe? How should Germany be reorganized after Napoleon’s defeat? Russia Against Napoleon provides a fine account of how diplomacy influenced the battlefield outcomes and the reverse. Oddly, however, the Congress of Vienna is given short shrift.    

`        In a conclusion Lieven speculates about French “watch” on the Rhine. Might it have served as a counter to a unified and powerful Germany? Perhaps European history would have been happier had French hegemony over central Europe lasted loner and the accomplishment of the French enlightenment and liberal political structures been allowed to take hold.