Description
Book SynopsisWhen Americans declared independence in 1776, they cited King George III "for quartering large bodies of armed troops among us." In Quarters, John Gilbert McCurdy explores the social and political history behind the charge, offering an authoritative account of the housing of British soldiers in America. Providing new interpretations and...
Trade ReviewQuarters places the issue of housing troops at the center not only of the Revolution, but of American political and social culture as colonists struggled to define boundaries between public and private spheres.
* Choice *
The book is a masterful telling of personal, local stories about the challenges and impacts of quartering, while maintaining a fast-paced book... it is indispensable reading for those interested in any aspect of the American Revolution.
* Journal of the American Revolution *
McCurdy follows the debates over billeting to analyze colonial-imperial proceedings, civilian-military relations, and personal rights. He argues that as the debates changed their ideas about public versus private places and the rights of people within them, Americans also rethought the ties between metropole and periphery... Quarters is a valuable study of an increasing clash of cultures within and between imperial and colonial, marital and civil, and policies and institutions that served as a foundation for revolutionary political and military formations.
* William and Mary Quarterly *
Quarters reveals and fills a significant gap in the literature on the revolution, and corrects some widespread misunderstandings... Quarters succeeds in illuminating a long-neglected dimension of British-American relations during the run-up to independence.
* The Journal of Military History *
Several factors combine to make Quarters a most welcome and original contribution to our understanding of the American Revolution...Quarters will spark salutary further discussion on the subject of American independence. It will certainly appeal to an audience of scholars of the Revolution, as well as anyone interested in eighteenth-century military institutions, including advanced undergraduate and doctoral students. Most importantly, it may alter for the better how civil–military relations in the colonial period are taught in American History classrooms.
* MICHIGAN War Studies Review *
McCurdy injects the pre-Revolutionary decades with a new spatial civilian-military dynamic in a way that changes how we understand well-studied topics such as Pontiac's War, the Proclamation Line of 1763, the Coercive Acts of 1774—and the development of a distinct American identity.
* Early American Literature *
Quarters is equally a social and political history; it should be widely read by historians across fields. It recovers the lived experiences of individuals, families, and communities. Refreshingly, women figure prominently in this narrative—the military was not a solely male space, nor was the world of politics a single-gendered space... The otherwise-familiar origins of the American Revolution look different thanks to McCurdy's work.
* The Journal of American History *
In challenging historians to think beyond the acrimony that often dominates discussions about the relationship between British soldiers and colonists, McCurdy will cause historians to consider quarters seriously not just in the practical function they served the military but their broader significance within the British imperial perspective. As McCurdy compellingly argues, military geography was central to the events tha sparked revolutionary sentiment and unification among the old British North American colonists leading up to the outbreak of war in 1775.
* JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC *
As John Gilbert McCurdy notes, there has never been a book-length treatment of the subject. Happily this omission has now been redressed in McCurdy's excellent monograph. The neglect of this topic is part of a larger failure to put military history into conversation with social and political history in a sustained and insightful way... Clearly argued and gracefully written, Quarters is an important contribution to this neglected area of inquiry that illuminates much about the challenges of imperial governance and the sensitivities of the revolutionary generation.
* AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW *
Good books are not just books with which you are in complete agreement. Above all, they are books that make you think afresh about your own views. On that critical test, McCurdy's Quarters is a very fine book indeed.
* Journal of Early American History *
