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There are layers of detail that provide a rich tapestry.The book, once it begins moving, provides a telling tale of the politics among nations--England, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United States. This is an interesting take on the American Revolution. A minuet of great power politics.The discussion of Washington's coming to terms with a battle at Yorktown rather than New York is well told. It unfolds in a discursive, indirect manner, so that getting from A (a cannon salute by the French colony at St. Eustatius in the West Indies to an American ship, representing the first recognition of the revolutionary government) to Z (Washington's triumph at Yorktown) is nonlinear.Sometimes this is frustrating, as one asks: "Where is this narrative leading us." But Tuchman writes well (one time, she associated an army marching ahead, living off the land as a "devouring incubus" [Page 244]). Just so, one gets some insight to key French actors, such as General Rochambeau or Admiral de Grasse. Also, the mediocrity of English leadership--at sea and on land--is well described.All in all, an interesting take, although the indirect development of the work can be almost maddening at times.
This work's subtitle (`A View of the American Revolution') is accurate: it's one vista rather than a comprehensive history. Like much of Tuchman's work, it's an accessible and interesting account with fresh insight on the rebels and their European enemy and allies in the late war years.The episodic text sometimes seems to wander (the longest of the twelve chapters deals with British Admiral Sir George Brydges Rodney), but ultimately rewards the reader with a coherent message: the American Revolution wasn't simply a domestic divorce - it benefited from (and largely succeeded because of) continental rivalries.Poignant accounts of rebel leaders (Washington, Franklin, Morris, etc) are matched to their perilous links with their allies in the Netherlands and France. One learns French regular troops at Yorktown outnumbered American colonial regulars (without including troops on de Grasse's 31 ship fleet); French funds paid for rebel wages, supplies, and arms; and that Bourbon France incurred a 1.5 billion livre ($375 million) debt for the pleasure of helping defeat rival Britain (it led to the bankruptcy and fall of the ancien régime in 1789).Tuchman could have embellished her case with Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (watchmaker, inventor, playwright of `The Marriage of Figaro' and `The Barber of Seville') who served as clandestine French conduit for rebel funds and arms before Saratoga in 1777 (and narrowly escaped execution in the French Revolution). The ultimate destiny of de Grasse, Rochambeau, and Lafayette would also have been interesting (for Lafayette's later history read Simon Shama's `Citizens').Nonetheless, `The First Salute' is worth reading (I first read it in hardcover in 1988 and still admire it).
Barbara Wertheim Tuchman (1912-89) was an American self-trained historian and author, whose works touched the American reading public, resulting in the sale of millions of her books. Eustatius, she shows how the British combined a lethargic management of the war in North America with a high-handed approach towards other European powers that succeeded in bringing Britain into conflict with far too many opponents.Overall, I found the book to be very interesting, and very informative. In this wonderful book, the author examines why the British lost the American Revolution. Starting with the salute offered to an American ship by the Dutch fortress on the Caribbean island of St. I liked how the author put the Revolution within the context of the greater world happenings, showing how they affected the war, and vice versa. So, if you are interested in reading a rather different history book on the American Revolution, and want to really understand why Britain lost the war, then I highly recommend that you get this book.
She discusses, for pages and pages, the vagaries of rigging and directing a square-rigger--to what point I can't imagine. Tight. (If I want to know about the fine points of sailing I'll read a book on sailing). In the first chapter alone, she repeats vital stats on the Andrew Doria in three separate spots. by Britain, about the "unimpeachable" character of George Washington. This book needed an editor badly. Nonetheless, she takes hundreds of pages not to make it, whatever it was.
I loved such works as The Guns of August and The March of Folly. I hate to say it, but in one of her final works, she comes across very much like a dotty old lady rambling on and on. (Haven't gotten to the Zimmermann Telegram yet but am looking forward to it). There are better histories of the Revolution, better bios of GW, better discussions of the balance of power among nations, better books by Barbara Tuchman.
I'm a little baffled by the review from "Chris" that says this book is tight. The writing is bland and lacks much insight; instead Tuchman substitutes speculation backed up by nothing but her hunches apparently. Some sections are just laundry lists of facts and information--about the Dutch rise to power, about follies that led to the loss of the U.S. She's dealt with all of it better elsewhere. She's all over the place, and aside from the fact that after the U.S. I wish I could recommend this one, but I can't. She meanders, she returns to her subject to state something she should have mentioned earlier and then digresses again. On a personal note, I also find her deification of Washington to be a big naive and one-sided.
But here I feel as though she was just pressured to write another book, so she merely took all sorts of info she'd unearthed over the years for more focused projects and poured it into this work. was recognized as an independent nation the balance of power shifted throughout the world, and other monarchical leaders suddenly felt less secure (duh)., I couldn't find a theme, a purpose. Not trying to trash him; he was great, but she has always been rather blind to his notable flaws, and that prevents her from writing a well-rounded depiction of events. This one won't be going back onto my shelf.
Sprawling, ill-focused, often annoying in the way it passes off punditry as scholarship, Tuchman's last book gets by thanks largely to her storytelling skills.As other reviewers here note, it's hard picking out the thesis of Tuchman's book. Tuchman offers color and detail, and an engaging vibrancy, in explaining everything from the creativity of Dutch art to the successful defense of the Netherlands against the attacking Spaniards. It's also the opening incident in Barbara Tuchman's "The First Salute", a historical analysis of the American Revolution and its larger place in the rise of Western Civilization. Eustatius, Johannes de Graaff, allowed soldiers to fire a celebratory cannonade for the incoming American vessel Andrew Doria.It was the opening blast in gathering allies for the war against Great Britain. The United States declared independence in July, 1776, but it wasn't until the following November that anyone recognized the new country. Alas, it was time Tuchman did not have to give.Tuchman's book is perhaps best as a decent complement to David McCullough's "1776" and David Hackett Fischer's Revolution histories, books that cover the early years of the war and that from an almost wholly American context. The creation of America had roots extending much farther than the borders of the original 13 Colonies, stretching under the Atlantic to the Dutch war against the Spanish tyrant Philip. "You need only obey orders implicitly without question."It's only when you get to the second half of the book, a solid if not special recap of the last years of the American Revolution, and of the final campaign that led to the French and American victory at Yorktown, that the point of Tuchman's earlier discursions becomes (somewhat) clear.
Her chronology is all over the place, and she repeats herself several times, occasionally in the same chapter. Also, her previous two books, "Practicing History" and "The March Of Folly", were essay collections on the theme of the wrongs men do, and she seems in the same sermonizing mode here, likening the Revolution to the Vietnam War and dovetailing a discussion of ancient Chinese court practices into her account of blinkered British attitudes regarding the rest of the world.Even good Brits had a bad habit of selling individualism short, Tuchman notes. That was when the Dutch governor of St. But Tuchman doesn't bring these points together, or give the kind of context to help you better appreciate them on an initial reading. The American Revolution doesn't even come into view here until the last half of the book, by which time we have spent more time dealing with the liberation of Holland and the career of British Admiral George Rodney, who effected the course of the Revolutionary War more by his absence than his presence.Tuchman died within a year of this book's 1988 publication, and as she mentions "failing eyesight" in her acknowledgments, perhaps the celebrated history writer was struggling with health issues that clouded her once-piercing focus. "The painful task of thinking belongs to me," Rodney declared to his subordinates. "The First Salute" would have benefited from more polishing. But as a stand-alone, it's not anything close to Tuchman's great books of the 1950s and 1960s.
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