Unsettling the West: Violence and State Building in the Ohio Valley by Rob Harper (review)
Northwestern, and several are former students of Breen; many of the contributions, therefore, are grounded in Breen’s approach to the American Revolution or on the study of common persons in imperial settings. The recent work of both Brendan McConville (The King’s Three Faces, which is mentioned in a few citations but never directly discussed) and especially Eric Nelson (The Royalist Revolution) are overlooked, but both have argued for the importance of the crown in colonial culture and in interpreting the American Revolution, making important contributions in its social and ideological history. At times, the contributions seem to depart from the focuses in the introduction, making the collection somewhat disjointed; Breen, in his conclusion, directly engages with only a few of the essays. The volume suffers from something of an identity crisis: Is it about the American Revolution; the common person engaging with (any?) empire; or a tribute to Breen and his approach? If the answer is all three, it is too ambitious for an edited collection to accomplish. Nonetheless, this volume will benefit those who admire Breen’s work or wish to find recent scholarship that has adopted the imperial-revolutionary approach.