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Editorial Review Book Description
In this book, Jack Greene reinterprets the meaning of American social development.Synthesizing literature of the previous two decades on the process of social development and the formation of American culture, he challenges the central assumptions that have traditionally been used to analyze colonial British American history.Greene argues that the New England declension model traditionally employed by historians is inappropriate for describing social change in all the other early modern British colonies.The settler societies established in Ireland, the Atlantic island colonies of Bermuda and the Bahamas, the West Indies, the Middle Colonies, and the Lower South followed instead a pattern first exhibited in America in the Chesapeake.That pattern involved a process in which these new societies slowly developed into more elaborate cultural entities, each of which had its own distinctive features. Greene also stresses the social and cultural convergence between New England and the other regions of colonial British America after 1710 and argues that by the eve of the American Revolution Britain's North American colonies were both more alike and more like the parent society than ever before.He contends as well that the salient features of an emerging American culture during these years are to be found not primarily in New England puritanism but in widely manifest configurations of sociocultural behavior exhibited throughout British North America, including New England, and he emphasized the centrality of slavery to that culture. ... Read more Customer Reviews (3) 
Virginia, not New England, is the appropriate Developmental Model
In erudite and responsible fashion, Greene establishes his thesis by first laying out the nature of the Chesapeake and New England colonies. Virginia, he states, was the result of profit-driven members of The Virginia Company, and therefore a commercial colony from the beginning. It furthermore was an individualist colony and only accepted the idea of a community after realizing it otherwise would not succeed. By contrast, New England was a religious colony wholly devoted to the community, where not until later was any individualism expressed. Having laid that foundation, he then proceeds to criticize the declension model of New England and to propose a developmental model for the Chesapeake.
His criticism of the declension model rests principally in that it assumes a deterioration of New England culture and quality of life. As such, it cannot properly address the demographic and economic changes occurring in those colonies beginning around 1660. Having thus assessed the validity of the declension model, he then proposes his own developmental model for the Chesapeake region. That model states, in essence, that permanent civilization grew out of temporary colonies by virtue of the change from strictly individual, go-it-alone pursuits to the much more practical individual-within-a-greater-community approach. That latter phenomenon, he demonstrates, is a reflection of life and the socioeconomic situation in Great Britain itself, thereby proving that not only does the declension model fail to hold for the Chesapeake colonies, it was never representative of the Old World either.
He then goes on to describe the socioeconomic nature of the colonies in Ireland, the Middle Colonies around New York along with the Lower Southern colonies beneath the Chesapeake, and the island colonies in the Atlantic and Caribbean. In each case, he ultimately asserts their strong similarity to the Chesapeake colonies and the legitimacy of his developmental model theory. In his final chapter, he brings all the colonies together to explain the creation and development of an American society, and the colonial move from separate and distinct colonies to united and similar states.
The style of Greene's argument is very satisfactory; he makes no assumptions, or at least pretends not to, and fully and somewhat repetitively explains how each colony is similar to the Chesapeake and dissimilar to New England. It is constructed, therefore, so the scholarly reader can jump to the colonies of interest to him/her, skip over the others, and still fully understand the argument.
The argument itself is highly intriguing, and well grounded within the evidence he presents. One cannot help but see the merit to what he writes. That said, there are a few points of caution for the academic reader. First, Greene pays no attention whatsoever to Indians, and less attention than he should to slaves. On Indians, he acknowledges as much in his introduction; however, with the exception of Ireland, settler-Indian relations were pivotal to colonial development. What does he have to say of Bacon's Rebellion, for example, or any of a number of such conflicts? What about the fact that the settlers initially survived on Indian-grown corn, later established a considerable trading system, and even acquired land from them? One might also ask about the social development of the Indians themselves. How did colonization affect them? Greene ignores that entirely. Perhaps he considers Indians' happiness irrelevant to the overall American pursuit of happiness. Perhaps it was simply an oversight, or maybe historiography has not progressed so far as to include the Indians. Does that issue or any settler-Indian issues weaken Greene's model? Perhaps not enough to invalidate it (or to enhance it, for that matter), but enough to have merited discussion.
As to slavery, Robert Olwell writes in Masters, Slaves, and Subjects that slaves too had a social structure that changed over time. Yet, Greene says nothing about it. He discusses slavery only as far as it influenced white settlers' social development. Furthermore, the descendents of these slaves still make up a relevant percentage of the American population; thus, one cannot discuss the "formation of American culture" without addressing the slaves. Again, perhaps the social development of blacks would have had no impact on the relevancy of his model; all the same, he still should have considered it.
A second point of caution is his assertion that the wretched civilization in the Chesapeake ultimately brought about the republican virtues inherent in American government. Perhaps, but as New England scholars have long demonstrated, republicanism was intrinsic to Puritan social philosophy, and declension or no, was well-established a full century and a half before the Chesapeake adopted it.
A last point concerns the central argument Stephen Innes makes in his book, Creating the Commonwealth: The Economic Culture of Puritan New England; namely, that Puritan philosophy ushered in capitalism. Whereas the Chesapeake adopted repressive measures to stifle the overall economy in favor of elite wealth, New England largely allowed its economy to grow unhindered. Having titled his book "Pursuits of Happiness," Greene utterly fails to discuss the capitalistic nature of the foundation of that happiness: American culture, economy, and government.
Greene tackles an enormous subject and gives it a specific label - his developmental model - that by its very size is certain to have a few holes, most notably the cautions described above. Despite these three points of caution, however, Pursuits of Happiness is an extremely worthwhile book. It lends itself well to discussion of New England declension and colonial development, and certainly, Jack Greene is a historian of established and deserved repute. One may not agree with any or all of the points of his thesis, but even the most devoted student of Bernard Bailyn would do well to consider them.
Acclaimed, but not for me.
In Pursuits of Happiness, Jack Greene's objective is to examine the social development and economic change in Great Britain's colonies from 1660 to 1760, and to observe the development of American culture emerging at the end of the American Revolution.He uses an overarching, macro-historical framework in which he looks at the British colonies in the Caribbean, mainland North America and Ireland and classifies each in to one of two models: a developmental pattern represented most clearly by the Chesapeake region, and a declension pattern, exemplified exclusively by the New England colonies "around which much British colonial history has been organized." (xi)Greene's developmental model is one in which settlements move from loosely organized, primitive ventures to economically highly elaborated, institutionally stable and socially mature provinces; in other words, they become "more settled, cohesive, and coherent." (81)He focuses almost exclusively upon refuting the conviction that New England was representative of British pre-Revolutionary colonization attempts, and maintains instead that the Chesapeake region was not only far more similar to early modern Britain than was New England, but that every other colony (including Ireland) mirrored the Chesapeake settlements.Although he offers a concluding chapter in which he describes the various mainland settlements as "becoming increasingly alike" (170) as the American Revolution approached, for the most part, Greene's New England is emphatically anomalous in the overall picture of Britain's colonies.To paint this historiographical portrait, however, Greene chooses a selective definition and application of "declension," ignores contradictory evidence, and reaches his foreordained conclusions based on what are obviously rigidly held assumptions. Perhaps it is Greene's relentless determination to debunk the traditional interpretation of early America in which New England is held to be "normative" (5) of Britain's colonial settlement that leads one to question his approach to this question and to cast some doubt as to the credibility of his argument.As one reviewer notes, Greene "resents the central position that New England has held" over the years in colonial historiography and "never relents in his quest for an alternative explanation." While it is of course perfectly legitimate and appropriate to search for such an alternative, Greene's decision to ignore some evidence and patterns that do not fit his model is to a large extent disingenuous.His selective handling of facts, woven into a conclusion so at odds with prior interpretations and so neatly packaged summon forth Professor Robert Berkhofer's admonition: "You should examine the author's main points, how they went about explicating them and the sets of assumptions that made for their works being exactly the way they are." This is not to object to Greene's refusal to conclude that colonial New England is the model for social development and that the Chesapeake is a deviant example of British colonization.Rather, we can look deeper in to Pursuits of Happiness and learn much from what we read and what we do not read, and consider Greene's assumptions and main points as Berkhofer recommends that we do.Greene's desire to see order, stability, and social maturation in the colonies he describes allows him to minimize and dehumanize slavery, and much else that is unpleasant, disorganized or objectionable in Britain's colonial provinces.Institutions and structures to him are aesthetically desirable, meaningful and define a modern society.He looks from the top down.Greene's use of this approach is why we do not "see" people in the book-slaves in particular are missing, but so too are New England farmers, women, American Indians, and others.This lack of human subjects is somewhat ironic, in that Greene's goal was to "formulate a model of social development." (xi, italics mine)Pursuits of Happiness is fundamentally a reactionary survey, aimed squarely at refuting those studies that have emphasized the typicality of the New England experience.Greene assumed preemptively that the Chesapeake was more reflective of early modern Britain, and more typical of her colonies.By emphasizing declension in New England and defining it in his own terms, Greene of course found what he was looking for: a Chesapeake model more modern and developed than New England, one that all other British colonies resembled.Only by ignoring contradictory experiences and discontinuities, as Cronon holds that all narratives do, does Greene succeed in finding his settled, cohesive, and coherent colonies.
Pursuit of a New Paradigm
Greene is on a mission to show that the South (especially the Chesapeake) represents the "normative" model of American development-not the New England model.To do so, he decries the standard "declension" model, based on the history of Puritan New England, and produces a"developmental" model that he proves was normative for allBritish New World colonies--here New England represents the exception, notthe rule.He seeks to analyze three points.First, to analyze theassumptions that have emphasized the preeminence or normative character ofthe Orthodox Puritan colonies of New England in the early modern socialdevelopment and formation of American culture.Second, to evaluate andcompare among the experiences of other societies in the early modernBritish Empire and to formulate a model of colonial social development thatmade be more broadly applicable than the heretofore used declension modelof British colonial history.Finally, to delineate the process by whichthe general American culture began to emerge out of several regionalcultures during the century after 1660 and identifying the most importantelements in that emerging culture.Colonial historians have used thedeclension model to explain the early experiences of the Orthodox Europeancolonies of Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut.Greene proposes adevelopmental model which looks at historical change in new societies as amovement from the simple to the complex.The Chesapeake, being the oldestsettle the region, experienced this model first and the others followed -except the New England region, which was atypical from all other Britishcolonies.Green does not discuss Native Americans, and only superficiallycovers slaves.However, he admits to pursuing his argument with threeassumptions: 1) the focus of the book is upon social development andreligious, political, and economic developments are considered only as faras their social dimensions are concerned; 2) focus is upon European andAfrican immigrants and their descendants - excludes Native Americans; and3) attempts to avoid the "idol of origins" which assumes how an areaappeared later in time was equivalent to how it began (concerns the subjectspecially of slavery in the South). An excellent book for any student ofAmerican history, it is well written and thoroughly researched.Itdiscusses the major historians and arguments concerning colonial Americanhistory.
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