Holger Hoock believes that America has forgotten the violence naturally inherent in the Revolution because it has been downplayed by later generations, or even completely rewritten out of our history. This has left us with an overly sentimental narrative of our origins, more nostalgic than realistic. He hopes that his new book, Scars of Independence: America’s Violent Birth, can correct this view of “martyrs rather than battle-bloodied warriors” as the founders of our country. Hoock feels that to understand the Revolution we must write the violence back into the story, and he aims to do so with Scars.
	By “violence, he not only means physical force and damage to property, but also threats, bullying tactics, and brutality to instill fear in people, which would then influence their conduct. He states that it was through campaigns of terror that the American Patriots enforced their policies toward the Loyalists who remained in the colonies during the war. Hoock mentions witnessing a series of monuments to American Loyalists while in England. The stories told by these monuments include Loyalists being brutally treated: hunted, humiliated, bullied, tortured, dispossessed, and lynched or driven out of the country – hence the remembrances in England, to where they fled. He wishes us to remember the psychological and physical violence inflicted on those who opposed the Revolution, by considering it America’s first civil war, and being “forced to confront the terror at its very core.” Not that the Patriots didn’t say almost the same things about the Loyalists – they did: accusing the British of plundering and destruction, battlefield massacres, rape, prisoner abuse, and deportation. Hoock says a “swirl of brutality swept up all sides.”
	As a German-born specialist in British history, “who did not grow up with the national myths of either Britain or America,” Hoock feels he is more qualified to see both sides of the story and bring a fresh outlook. He does seem to lean a little toward the British side, however, if one reads closely. No matter, one of his main theses is that those participating in the Revolution came to experience its inherent violence as a defining characteristic that gave meaning to their struggles. He says the war required violent escalation and terror to sustain itself and to combat domestic enemies. Hoock adds that the prize of enjoying liberty and independence justified this fierce treatment of fellow Americans (Loyalists) for the Patriots. Statements such as these would make the savvy reader question whether Americans would put up with such actions to secure independence in the twenty-first century. Maybe now we would choose to remain British subjects and work within the system in order to avoid the violence.
	Hoock suggests that the memory of blood shed at the hands of the “cruel British” helped the victors identify as Americans. Patriots were able to display their old scars as cause for national pride, but Loyalists had to recede from their scars in order to make a new life, and thus “a mantle of collective amnesia fell over the violence that Patriots had inflicted on their neighbors,” with little remembrance of the “threats, physical abuse, and imprisonment endured by thousands.” 
	Hoock says that we should be mindful of the intrinsically violent nature of America’s “revolution and first civil war.” It should read to us as “a cautionary tale for the American empire, with its persistent impulse to intervene in other countries’ revolutions,” and its “quest for nation building in little-understood regions.” Americans should be more alert to the potential pitfalls of pursuing moral objectives by violent means and should take an approach to global leadership that is “more restrained, finely calibrated, and generously spirited.” 
	Putting the violence back in the Revolutionary War will result in a “candid reckoning and honest remembering” that hopefully will allow for “proud, grateful celebration and for frank reflection on the ambiguities and the contradictory legacies” of the war, according to Hoock. Maybe. As a historian and an author, I am all for being honest in telling what happened in the past. But maybe we just need a few heroes in this modern day and maybe there is no real need to completely destroy the memories of our ancestors. For example, the women of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, knowing full well the ancestors they honor by their membership in the Society were not perfect, are doing what they can to support our current veteran heroes. Maybe that is enough honesty for modern Americans.
	I received a copy of this book from Crown Publishing in exchange for this review.

American history is a messy, complex thing. This review of the American Revolution concentrating on the violence shines a fresh light on this vitally important era in our nation's early days. Familiar stories retold in unsettling ways illustrate a thesis remembering and misremembering.

War is hell, brutal, uncivilized. Humans, despite sometimes semi-rational brains, are too near to their evolutionary roots to be anything on the average but violent creatures. No manner of romanticizing can change that. The American Revolution has been washed, sanitized, mythologized, simplified...glorified through deliberate omission and revision and far too many people have no clue that they have been fed a pack of partial truths at best.

Mr. Hoock claims in the second sentence of his Preface that his is the "first book ... to adopt violence as a central analytical and narrative focus." I don't know if that is true, but I do think that it may be the first to aggregate the knowledge. Some of this I knew from other readings. Some, while clearly not specific, can be inferred from any study of war and violence. To think that the British were any different than any other power suppressing an insurrection would buy into a sadly persistent myth of the civilized benevolence of the great British (or other, whether European or not) Empire. To think that the Revolutionaries, angry and feeling disenfranchised (evidence the stunning lack of reason that precipitated 2016), would revolt politely and orderly would buy into that romantic portrayal found in The American Pageant, Land of Promise, Triumph of the American Nation and their kind.

So what Hoock does is remove the curtain...expose the truths, as documented...offer logical supposition (and qualify them as such) where documents are scant or untrustworthy. This is not your grandfather's history...but it *was* your great times maybe eight grandfather's. Well researched. Well written.

Hoock has definitely done his research on a topic that many people continue to have a romanticized version of our nations beginnings. Describing it more as a civil war with the Loyalists vs the Patriots. These were people torn apart by their loyalty to the Crown and those who wanted total separation from the Crown. Brothers fought brothers and Slaves and Native Americans all chose sides. 

While General George Washington was waging a cruel war on the Native Americans, the rest of the country was having birth pains. 

Not all the colonies were on board with this uprising and meeting to write our Continental Association. Georgia did not send delegates to the Continental Congress.

This is the unvarnished version of the birth of a nation. And it was ugly and mean and violent. As America constantly intervenes in other countries civil wars, we would do well to remember our own violent past and present and maybe take care.

Scars of Independence is certainly well researched, containing a wealth of information on the American Revolution. Clearly, the author spent countless hours researching the subject.

That being said, I had a difficult time getting through this book. In fact, it took me a couple of months. I kept putting it aside in favor of something else, with little desire to get back to it. The writing has a dry textbook feel, often with too much focus on numbers and lists. Sometimes I felt I should be taking notes for the exam afterward. 

The larger problem, for me, was in the presentation of the material. The author's stated focus is to write the violence back into the Revolution. His claim is that we glamorize this war, which, to an extent, is true, though I don't agree that we're all naive in believing this war was somehow a highly principled, gentlemanly event. Here, the author's intense focus on specific violent acts and skirmishes has the unfortunate byproduct of leaving out the humanity. For instance, his dry recitation of rape statistics had no more emotional depth than if I'd been reading about the theft of weapons. 

This book works well as a textbook and/or for readers interested in a chronicle of events throughout the American Revolution. For readers like me, looking for an immersive experience, this is a more challenging read.

Scars of Independence: America's Violent Birth by Holger Hoock is a look at the more violent side of the American Revolution. Hoock holds the Amundson Chair in British History at the University of Pittsburgh and serves as Editor of the Journal of British Studies. Trained at the Universities of Freiburg, Cambridge, and Oxford, he has been a Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress, a Visiting Scholar at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Konstanz.

I was in middle school for the run-up to the bicentennial celebration. The Revolutionary War was taught with a great deal of idealism and although there was a war the violence was minimal. There was the Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, and Saratoga but the battles seemed very civilized. Much emphasis was placed on the ideals of the revolution. Liberty, representative government, and the right to determine one’s own future were key issues. What was not mentioned was what the British were quick to point out -- Slavery. The American colonists were also unhappy with British troops occupying their property, much like the native Americans were feeling for and fighting for in the West. 

At the time warfare was still very violent and personal. Muskets had little range and the bayonet was still used often in close quarters. Bayonets used by the British were triangular rather than bladed. The shape was used to cause the most damage going in and coming out. Grapeshot (picture a canon sized shotgun) was used to attack massed troops. The killing was done close in. The navy was the only force that could shell from a great distance. 

What made the American revolution so violent is perhaps best seen from the British view. It was not so much a revolution but a civil war -- British against British. The Colonists were seen as traitors more than an enemy nation. In fact, the British had to look as the colonists as traitors, something far worse than enemies of another nation. To consider them otherwise would mean recognizing American independence. Captured colonist combatants were considered criminals rather than soldiers. This created another problem for the British. If colonists were captured and detained, they still had rights as British citizens to habeas corpus, bail, and a trial. Trying to suspend habeas corpus for the colonists also would mean suspending it for those in Britain too. The American Revolution became a legal as well as a military problem for the British.

On the American side, British loyalists and officials were poorly treated by those “liberty groups” which seemed like roaming bands of thugs than patriots. Looting and beatings were very common. Rape was not uncommon (a charge leveled at both armies). Some patriot groups looted both loyalists and rebel homes and property. Military discipline was seriously lacking in many actions. The British in lower commands were just as bad at times. Most ranking military leaders, however, chose to abide by the European standards of warfare although this didn’t always happen, a serious effort was made by both sides. 

Prisoners perhaps bore the worst treatment. Britain held American colonists on prison ships in appalling conditions. Others held in occupied territory received little in the way of food and clothing. Although, in some circumstances opposing leaders allowed humanitarian aid to prisoners. This was unofficially done between commanders and Britain was unwilling to take any action that might be seen as recognition of an independent America. Logistics was a major problem with prisoners. Neither side could support the care and feeding of huge numbers of prisoners; it was difficult and expensive to keep the fighting armies fed and cared for, let alone prisoners. 

The American Revolution was a violent and bloody affair. It was not only the armies engaged in a violent struggle. It was colonist against colonist. It was colonists against native Americans. The war was more than a simply fighting a few battles. It was seven years of bloodshed which involved more than the Colonists and the British. Hessians were used by Britain since the king could not keep a large standing army. France joined America after the Battle of Saratoga and Spain seeing a distracted Britain declared war also. Hoock uses both American and British source material in his research and dedicates almost a third of the book to cited sources. A well done and enlightening history.

As the author claims, "this is the first book to adopt violence as a central analytical and narrative focus".  Unfortunately, that is not the history of the American revolution that I want to read. Had I known that this was the focus I would not have requested this book.  It strikes me that the author is someone who is desperate to find a fresh take on a subject that has been written about a lot. Maybe he just needs to publish in order to buff up his academic credentials. That's fine, but I'm really not interested in reading about the beatings and shootings and weapons of choice employed by the British or the Americans.  I abandoned this book pretty quickly. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

Kindle location 250:) “Although the American Revolution has been continuously invoked since the eighteenth century in the name of all manner of causes … its inherent violence has often been minimized. The result has been the perpetuation of an overly sentimental narrative of America's originary war.”

(Kindle location 260:) “To understand the Revolution and the war … we must write the violence, in all its forms, back into the story. This is my aim in this book.”

It would be a shame if this book is pigeonholed as an academic engaging in fashionable America-bashing, because it is really an invitation to look at the Revolutionary War like an adult, with all the headaches and rewards that involves. The founding fathers (especially George Washington, but also Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and others) in general come off rather well in this book. The acts of cruelty by all sides (frequently, but not always, by paramilitaries) are backstopped with evidence and given as much context as possible while still retaining enough coherent narrative drive to engage those who read history for pleasure. It was also interesting to see, in this day and age, how much political capital the leaders of the new-born USA were able to get out of presenting themselves as (and often being) on the morally correct side of the equation.

(Kindle location 5382:) “Concerned about preserving the Revolution's ideals and maintaining America's international reputation as an honorable, treaty-abiding nation, an increasingly vocal group of individuals, George Washington prominently among them, began pushing for reconciliation. After winning the moral war, they believed, America also had to win the peace by conducting itself in accordance with international law and enlightened ethical standards ...”

I received an free advance reader's copy of the ebook for review. Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Random House for their generosity.

Spurred on by my Hamilton fervor, I've been seeking out books about the Revolutionary period. I was intrigued by this book about the violence of the time based on the frequency of duels during the musical and thinking about the state of laws and honor and policing during that time.  This book was an enlightening look at both the violence of the Revolution as well as the violence and self-policing that occurs during war and also during times without strong legal and governmental oversight.  The Patriots at times look like nothing so much as a vigilante mob.  The use of corporeal punishment and shaming to keep fellow citizens in line was also widespread.  Tarring and feathering; and drawing and quartering, which are just vague phrases for a modern American were very much a living threat to revolutionaries.  Heavy in violence and research, recommended primarily for readers of historical non-fiction for a look at an often unexplored aspect of American history.