The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern Word, 1788-1800 (2007) by Jay Winik

Normally I don’t pay much attention to the endorsements on the back cover of a book. “The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern Word, 1788-1800” (2007) by Jay Winik was an exception. Some of the most distinguished historians and biographers in the country lined up to heap lavish praise on this book: Walter Isaacson, Ron Chernow, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jon Meacham. Every one of them is a national bestselling Pulitzer Prize winning author – and every one of them evidently thinks “The Great Upheaval” is absolutely fantastic. After plowing through this 600-page tome I can’t quite figure out why.

The basic argument of “The Great Upheaval” is simple and not particularly controversial. In short, the 1790s were, in Winik’s estimation, “the decade that made the modern world.” He argues that the seemingly disparate events of the American Revolution, French Revolution, and the Russian Reaction were all in fact intimately interconnected. Winik says all the great leaders of the day – from Thomas Jefferson and Maximilien Robespierre to Catherine the Great and Thaddeus Kosciuszko – all watched each other and reacted to one another. They “were all part of one grand interwoven tapestry,” he says. The ultimate outcome was an earth-shaking political upheaval that stretched from the North American frontier to the Eurasian Steppe. “Within essentially a single generation,” the author writes breathlessly, “arguably greater progress had been made politically than in all the millennia since the beginning of time.” At the close of the eighteenth century, Winik concludes, the world had boldly begun its journey into the modern age.

It all makes sense. But is it original and insightful? I’m fairly well read on this period, especially the American and French Revolutions. Unfortunately, I don’t think I learned anything of substance from reading “The Great Upheaval.” Don’t get me wrong: this book was well written and accessible. But there wasn’t much in the way of original analysis or historical interpretation. For me the closest example of that was Wink’s assessment of Catherine’s defeat of the Kosciuszko-led Polish independence movement in 1794 and the unmistakable message it sent to leaders in America about the willingness of European powers to literally wipe weaker political entities off the map. Washington’s cabinet had to ponder the implications of Kosciuszko’s defeat alongside the horrifying details of the Reign of Terror while simultaneously struggling to put down the Whisky Rebellion. In the past, I hadn’t thought about those events being closely connected.

Winik may argue that America, France, Britain, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire in the 1790s were all one “interwoven tapestry,” but he tells the story like a patchwork quilt. His chapters are long and dedicated to a single country. For instance, he’ll tell the story of the French Revolution from the calling of the Estates General to the execution of King Louis XVI in one cohesive narrative. During that chapter it feels very much like you’re reading a book about the French Revolution, not the broader 1790s. And then the next chapter will be about Catherine the Great’s defeat of the Pugachev Rebellion in 1775 and then the annexation of Crimea from the Ottoman’s in 1783 and it will feel that you’re reading a book about Catherine the Great. In other words, there’s nothing about Winik’s narrative that feels intertwined. In fact, it all feels quite rudimentary, almost like reading a concatenation of separate Wikipedia entries.

The primary actors in the story may have been separated by language, religion, culture, and geography, but Winik maintains that their political elites were united by the theories of the eighteenth century French philosophes, particularly the Big Three: Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. Winik argues that Voltaire was moved by clarity and wanted intellectual liberty and enlightened despotism. Montesquieu was moved by the rational and wanted limited monarchy and the separation of powers. Rousseau was moved by mystical insights and dreamed of an ideal republican commonwealth. In combination, these three shook the political foundations of the Western world to its core: “These philosophes unleashed a questioning more profound than when Martin Luther nailed his theses to the church door.”

Then there was the issue of economics – or more accurately debt. The 1790s were awash in red ink. The fledgling United States emerged from their fight for independence some $80 million in debt. The French, meanwhile, owed a staggering $240 million. Total British debt in 1790 approached $500 million, if you can believe it. God only knows what Catherine’s fiscal situation way. The French tax system was antiquated and arbitrary. The ancient regime would not survive the reforms necessary to meet the fiscal challenge. In Russia, Catherine somehow managed to collect massive revenues across a sprawling empire of illiterate peasants. How she did so remains unclear. King George III’s most powerful weapon may very well have been the Bank of England, not the Royal Navy. If there was one area where America, Britain, France, and Russia were all intertwined in the 1790s it was in trade, yet Winik hardly remarks on those connections at all.

When it comes to the French Revolution, Winik can only shake his head. Louis XVI consistently displayed “evidence of incorrigible stupidity and weakness,” he says. George Washington or Catherine the Great would never have just sat by and allowed the mob to dismantle their government. Eventually the Reign of Terror “transformed the glory of revolutionary France into a saturnalia of blood.” American envoy Gouverneur Morris (easily the most underappreciated Founding Father) gasped, “Gracious God, what a people.” Indeed, in Winik’s telling the French Revolution was as unnecessary as it was horrifying.

The situation in the Black Sea was even most ghastly, believe it or not. At the Battle of Ismail on 22 December 1790, “one of the most horrific massacres of the century and, really, of any modern century,” according to Winik, 55,000 Russian and Turkish soldiers lost their lives. It it’s aftermath, Catherine was poised to assert hegemony over all of Eastern Europe, a prospect the British found unacceptable. Formerly one of the most progressive leaders in Europe, at least in spirit, by the mid-1790s Catherine had no patience for the new phenomenon of republicanism. “How can shoemakers meddle in the affairs of state?” She exclaimed. Winik writes, “the French Revolution had turned Catherine from an enlightened despot into a dark, cantankerous one.” (Admittedly, in America the High Federalist were beginning to think much the same way.) The one time friend of Voltaire and Diderot would turn into an arch reactionary, crushing the most promising and idealistic reformers, such as Alexander Radishchev and Nikolai Novikov. It was quite depressing.

In closing, “The Great Upheaval” is a fine book for those with a limited understanding of the great political events of the late eighteenth century. Winik provides highly readable overviews of the Washington administration, French Revolution, and Russo-Turkish Wars of the 1790s. If you already have a pretty good grasp of these subjects, I’m not sure “The Great Upheaval” were offer you much.