Many people recall Boston's role in the American Revolution and assume that the city has had a strong influence on the United States since the country's founding. However, in "The City-State of Boston," author Mark Peterson argues that Boston had a rise and a fall, all before the Civil War, and tells that fascinating story in this volume.
Peterson recognizes that since its beginnings, Boston had a remarkable degree of autonomy and became accustomed to having it through the colonial period. The book tracks the establishment of the city and its ties to slavery, commerce, and free trade. Boston grew economically and established control over the hinterland of New England and forged relationships with trading partners all around the Atlantic. The author discusses many of the leading political, religious, intellectual, economic, and diplomatic figures in Boston's history.
Boston successfully fought to maintain its autonomy in fights with England in 1689 and in the Revolutionary era, but things changed when Massachusetts ratified the Constitution and joined the new United States. Early in the history of the Republic, New England was outvoted by other sections of the country, and there was actually support for leaving the Union early in the nineteenth century when New England felt like nothing more than an attachment or appendage of the slaveholding South.
From the time of the War of 1812 to the Civil War, internal divisions and disunity over many issues, including slavery, put stress on Boston. Boston recognized how far its status and prestige had plummeted when the federal government used force to return a slave that was staying in the city in the 1850s after the Fugitive Slave Law had been passed.
"The City-State of Boston" presents a perspective on the city's history that is little acknowledged today, and it is a good guide to the first two-plus centuries of that history. Those interested in Boston, New England, and colonial and antebellum America would find it a great read.
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A masterful reexamination of one of the most influential cities in modern history
'The City-State of Boston' surprised me in the best of ways. While essentially an urban history comparable to 'Gotham' or 'A Shopkeeper's Millennium,' "Boston," writes Yale University professor Mark Peterson, was "a slave society, but one where most of the enslaved labor toiled elsewhere, sustaining the illusion of Boston in New England as an inclusive republic devoted to the common good." If this description reads more like something out of 'The Hunger Games,' then I say: "good." Peterson dramatic retelling of Boston's rise and fall more closely resembles Edward Gibbons' 'History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' than any book I've read this century.'The City-State of Boston' is a work of extensive research that unfolds like a Greek tragedy about an Atlantic power analogous to the Italian republics of Genoa and Venice. I found this approach to the city's history refreshingly original since it freed both its author and its audience from a more encyclopedic treatment that, in my opinion, would have added hundreds of unnecessary pages to this text. Dr. Peterson's focus is the city-state of Boston, which we examine through the lives and writings of some of its most prominent residents, among them Samuel Sewall, Phillis Wheatley, and John Adams. The result is a masterful reexamination of one of the most influential cities in modern history, a welcome addition to any library, and a work of scholarship that injects some welcome artistry to academia. I'll never look at Boston or the United States the same way again.Highly recommended. 4.5 stars.
