A Struggle for Power: The American Revolution.

• Author: Gunderson, Gerald

By Theodore Draper

New York: Times Books, 1996. Pp. xiv, 544. $35.00 cloth, $17.00 paper.

Theodore Draper has a well-deserved reputation for producing excellent histories. He received the Herbert Feis Award for Nonacademically Affiliated Historians in 1990 from the American Historical Association, an indication not only of the quality of his work but also of the depth of his dedication. (You'd better keep your day job to support that type of interest.) His portrayal of the cause of the American Revolution will maintain his fine reputation.

There is no shortage of accounts of the coming of the American Revolution, so one wonders what value might be added by yet one more. Draper develops a new slant on one of the major interpretations of the cause of the Revolution, often called the neowhig thesis. That line of argument sees the war as provoked by the British attempt to gain control over the Americans, who had carved out de facto independence while left to their own devices during the colonial era. Draper views the contest as one between the Americans struggling to maintain control over their affairs and the British seeking to reassert control for their own imperial purposes.

All historical accounts are premised on some conceptual framework, whether their authors acknowledge it or not. Sadly, many historians who deny that they are "captive to narrow constructs" but rather "choose the method that is best in each case" are prisoners of implicit models that not only vary but all too often contradict each other. In contrast, Draper is very forthright about his thesis and consistent in his approach. He lays out his framework of power early on, relates each topic to it, and closes on the same note. This tactic works to his advantage by making his argument easier to trace and ultimately more convincing.

Power in this case has to do with who controls the American government--more specifically, particular functions of that government. For almost a century and a half, the British allowed the Americans to provide such local governmental services as law enforcement and public works. How they provided them hardly affected the rest of the empire and would have been awkward to manage from London in any case. However, American contacts with foreign parties, in either trade or military affairs, were considered imperial prerogatives. But the British government devoted almost none of its own resources to these functions, as Draper writes, "ruling the colonies...