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Kevin P. Phillips

The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics, Civil Warfare, And The Triumph Of Anglo-America Paperback – Jan. 7 2000

by Kevin P Phillips (Author)

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The question at the heart of The Cousins' Wars is this: How did Anglo-America evolve over a mere three hundred years from a small Tudor kingdom into a global community with such a hegemonic grip on the world today, while no other European power - Spain, France, Germany, or Russia - did? The answer to this, according to Phillips, lies in a close examination of three internecine English-speaking civil wars -- the English Civil War, the American Revolution, and the American Civil War. These wars between cousins functioned as crucial anvils on which various religious, ethnic, and political alliances were hammered out between the English-speaking cousin-nations, setting them on a unique two-track path toward world leadership - one aristocratic and aloof to dominate the imperial nineteenth century and the other more egalitarian and democratic to take over in the twentieth century. They also functioned as unfortunate and deadly cultural crucibles for African Americans, Native Americans, and the Irish. Phillips's analysis shows exactly how these conflicts are inextricably linked and how they seeded each other. He offers often surprising interpretations that cut across the political spectrum - for instance, that the Constitution of the United States, while brilliant in many respects, was also a fatally flawed political compromise that contributed mightily in setting the stage for the final - and the bloodiest - cousins' war: the American Civil War. With the new millennium upon us and triggering widespread assessment of our nation's place in world history, The Cousins' Wars provides just the kind of magisterial sweep and revisionist spark to ignite widespread interest and debate. This grand religious, military, and political epic is the multi-dimensional story of the triumph of Anglo-America.

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About the Author

Kevin Phillips is the bestselling author of eight previous books, including The Politics of Rich and Poor (1990) and The Emerging Republican Majority (1969). He is also a commentator for National Public Radio's Morning Edition and a contributing columnist for the Los Angeles Times. In 1984, 1988, 1992, and 1996, he was a national elections commentator for CBS Television News. He lives in West Goshen, Connecticut.

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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0465013708
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books; Revised ed. edition (Jan. 7 2000)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 736 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780465013708
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0465013708
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 876 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.6 x 4.67 x 23.39 cm

Best Sellers Rank: #835,138 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #763 in United States Colonial Period
- #769 in United States Colonial History (Books)
- #933 in Revolutionary History (Books)

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54 ratings

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jjo

Interesting but....

Reviewed in Canada on June 28, 2000

If you are fairly well versed in the American Revolution and Civil War, this is a good book because it views those conflicts from an entirely new angle. Do not read this book if you know little about those conflicts because there is no narrative of the events here; Phillips assumes you know the basics.
I have two criticims. First, there is too much information here. Phillips candidly acknowledges that there are many differences between the three wars he is looking at, and he throws so much information, and it is not very well organized, that the book is not an easy read; you have to stick with it to get his ideas. Those ideas, however, are quite interesting.
My other criticism is that the book does not attempt to explain why various religious groups tended to take certain sides. For example, one of his key points is that the Puritans in England and the Congregationalists in New England were similar and took similar positions in different conflicts. What Phillips never does, however, is examine the beliefs of those religions. Why do they tend to take certain positions? You see the ethnic religious links, but there is no theory of why this happened.
Summing up, this book is tough to get through, but if you are interested in the American Revolution and Civil War, this book presents and unique and fascinating look at those conflicts.

Reviewed in Canada on December 20, 2000

The Cousins' Wars is a bold attempt to link the Glorious Revolution in England, the American Revolution and the American Civil War. By graphs and charts, the author shows how the people who fought against each other in England, had decendants fight against each other in the American Revolution.
The author also goes into the reasoning behind the Revolutions and tries to connect them together into one common fabric. I applaud the effort of this book. I deploy the results. The problem, for me, was that the writing style was so boring. I guess the fact that this book is praised, on its back, by three different professors, should have been a warning. The following is a typic passage from this book:
"England's first and only republic, declared in 1649, was at best a partial success. Over then next eleven years its poltical alignments shifted and sagged until the ultimate decison to restore the monarchy."
For me, this writing was just too hard to read. It didn't capture my interst or imagination and, once I deciphered what the author was saying, I disagreed with his much of his thesis. However, if you like the writing style above, perhaps you will like this book. Me... I can not recommend it. I don't think history needs to be so stiff, to be enjoyed.

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Leonard P. Bazelak

The emergence of two empires

Reviewed in Canada on January 2, 2001

I just completed Keven Phillips book The Cousins Wars and found it both fascinating and difficult reading. It was fascinating because it demonstrated the importance of religion, politics, sectarianism, and economics in shaping the history of both America and Great Britain. The author persuasively argues the interrelationships between the English Civil War of the 1640s, the American Revolution, and our Civil War. He explains who are the losers and who the winners in this march of history. I was especially moved and disturbed by the facts he presented vis-a-vis England and Ireland, the latter being one of the losers. Oliver Cromwell's invasion, the famine, the lack of English support for industrial growth in Ireland all allowed England to almost destroy the Irish people. Much of the motivation for this was religious--the fear of Popish plots and invasions by Catholic forces. Other losers were blacks and native Americans. The winners were those captains of industry who combined Yankee imperialism with religious ferver. It was difficult reading the book because of the many factions who shaped our history. It was like reading about the Balkans. There are so many nuances within a given group that at times it was hard to separate the good guys from the bad guys. All in all this is an excellent book which adds immensely to our understanding of the British Empire and now our own.

One person found this helpful

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R Boast/D Edmunds

A provocative thesis

Reviewed in Canada on May 9, 2000

Every now and then a book comes along which really does live up to the usual publisher's hype that it will change our view of history - this book is one. Although there are a few factual and spelling mistakes (it's "Macaulay", not "Macauley") and the author is clearly not as comfortable with the English civil war as he is with the two other "cousins' wars" (the American revolutionary war and the US Civil War) this is a five-star book for the novelty and interest of its main thesis. It goes a lot further than books such as Fisher's which note the persistence of English regional ethnic communities in the US. It is a study rather of how Anglo-American world hegemony came to be through three trans-Atlantic civil wars. There are some parallels with JCD's Clark's emphasis on the primacy of religious discourse in Early Modern Britain and America, but Clark is a difficult writer and _The Cousin's Wars_ is very readable, and anyway goes a lot further than Clark. The author's emphasis on the divisions within the American colonies at the time of the revolution and on the strength of Whig support for the Americans in England is refreshing. Hopefully "The Cousins' Wars" Atlantic perspective will inspire more English historians to escape from their increasingly narrow pedantic anti-Whig history which has drained the subject of so much of its meaning and interest - and which can by now be clearly seen to be a dead end. And it's nice that the author recognises that Anglo-America also includes Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which together with the UK-Ireland and the USA form a natural community of countries with shared traditions and origins. Time for the Crown to be dumped and all the "Anglo-American" countries to work on closer links?

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Top reviews from other countries

iconoclast

This book documents there has not only been some historical ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 17, 2018

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This book documents there has not only been some historical rivalry between the political entities of the the UK and the US, but an enduring conflict between their common (and broadly speaking) "Whig" and "Tory" political traditions, which was manifest in divisions within continents, while uniting divided communities across continents. Thus, New Englanders returned to Old England to fight for Parliament in the English Civil War; both the colonists abroad and their cousins at home were each divided about the cause of colonial rebellion against their King; and Britons too took political sides in the American Civil War. This important book has been written by a political commentator with an assiduous attention to demographic detail, thus constituting a unique source of information.

Moreover, it shows that the idea of a "special relationship" between these two nations cannot be regarded exclusively as the plea that one of them might make when hoping to enlist the help of the other, but that there has indeed been a relationship that historically has been special because of a particular complexity, which is a point that may go under the radar of more conventional, single-nation histories.

2 people found this helpful

timcon1964

A Fascinating and Controversial Overview of Three Civil Wars

Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2018

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As author Kevin Phillips tells readers, “Religion, politics, war, and their interrelationships are what this book is about.” In fact, he asserts, the “great formative events” in the rise of England and the U.S. were wars framed in the concepts of the Puritans and their religious and philosophical descendants. His narrative makes many fascinating connections between religion, ethnicity, and culture on one hand, and political and military alignments on the other. But he tends to minimize the importance of such factors as representative government, political checks and balances, territorial expansion, economic and industrial development, and improvements in technology and communication. While he acknowledges their existence, Phillips does not attempt to compare the relative impacts of these factors on Anglo-American history. Nor does he apply his interpretive framework to other wars (e.g., the Mexican-American War and the Spanish-American War) to which it might be relevant.

It is interesting to consider Cousins’ place in Phillips’ literary output. The titles of some previous Phillips volumes— The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and the American Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath (1991), Boiling Point: Democrats, Republicans, and the Decline of Middle-Class Prosperity (1993), and Arrogant Capital: Washington, Wall Street, and the Frustration of American Politics (1994), suggest his dissatisfaction with the nation’s course. Cousins reflects a very different viewpoint. As he confesses, “My own revulsion with the politics of the United States in 1995-1996 drew me farther into the intricacies of an altogether different era.” He found it “appealing—uplifting, in fact—to be reading and writing about George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Elizabeth Tudor, and William Pitt instead of the current cast of characters.” Thus, Cousins, in contrast to some of his other books, takes an optimistic view of American history.

Like all of Phillips’ books, The Cousins’ Wars reflects wide reading in respected secondary works, presents many insights, and deserves a careful reading. But it bristles with questions of definition, emphasis, causation, and interpretation. For example, Phillips argues that wars affected political alignments. But it seems that political alignments produced wars. This is a sort of chicken-or-egg question.

Phillips refers to “the relentlessness of Puritanism in its older and newer forms” in all three wars. Early Puritans had a rather bleak view of humanity. They believed in the total depravity of man, and limited atonement (i.e., Christ died only for the elect); their emphasis was on church membership (available only to those who offered convincing testimony of an intense personal conversion experience). Would Puritanism in this form have had the influence Phillips ascribes to it? Phillips does not provide a detailed description of Puritanism or how it changed over these years. Phillips treats the Great Awakening as an extension of Puritanism. But, while it reflected Puritan influences, the Great Awakening was more eager to convert unchurched individuals than to preserve communities of “saints,” it was implicitly critical of established churches (e.g., the New England churches), and it tended to produce divisions between classes and between the East and the Frontier.

Phillips gives only limited space to the English Civil War. His discussion of this conflict is well balanced, and gives appropriate attention to political, economic, and cultural issues, as well as religion. His interpretation does not differ greatly from that of other historians.

Phillips recognizes that the Revolutionary War was a civil war, and cites various factors that may have contributed to it. His description of events leading up to the war reads very much like a standard history textbook. He concludes, “No single one-dimensional thesis explains the war, however; not even two or three together.” But he argues that taxes and regulations were merely “matches of ignition,” and that “religious strife between the Church of England and the Dissenters furnished the mountain of combustible material for the great conflagration.” Phillips makes no systematic effort to weigh the relative influences of all these factors. Since he alludes to “Greater New England” and the “Greater South,” it might appear that the Revolutionary War should have pitted Puritan New England against the non-Puritan Middle Atlantic and South. But Phillips concedes that a map of America would resemble “ethnoreligious maps of the modern-day Balkans.” There was in fact “a patchwork of regional, religious, ethnic, and economic differences.”

Phillips cites sources of Loyalism other than religion (e.g., commercial ties to England and back country resentment of the coastal gentry). Although he acknowledges the existence of some socially acceptable Loyalists, Phillips characterizes many Loyalists as “transported criminals,” “jail scrapings of the British Isles,” “the failures and ne’er-do-wells drifting west from the older settlements,” “the flotsam of English and Irish prisons,” “crackers,” “poor white trash,” “drifters,” “vendetta pursuers,” “those who, rejecting their previous society, took up a hand-to-mouth existence as hunters, vagabonds, or plunderers,” “malcontents,” “banditti,” “renegades,” etc. Such systematically pejorative characterizations, together with the fact that Phillips never applies any of these or similar descriptions to the Rebels (although there were doubtless some equally rough characters among their number) may lead the reader to question his objectivity.

Phillips argues that religious diversity gradually led to “American tolerance and ecumenicalism.” Presumably, this process was not complete when the Civil War erupted, for he claims that it was fueled by religious differences. In fact, the influence of religion on events leading up to the American Civil War was problematic. Opposition to slavery was not mainly religious; and abolition was not the objective of most northerners. The major denominations had split into separate northern and southern organizations. The evidence strongly suggests that sectionalism was driving religion, rather than the reverse. The motivation for such important wartime legislation as the Homestead Act, the Pacific Railroad Acts, and the Morrill Land-Grant Acts was not primarily religious. Phillips says that Reconstruction was perhaps a temporary tactic abandoned by Republicans after they had consolidated their political, economic, and industrial policies. This implies that their expressed concern for the freed slaves arose more from political motives than religious concerns.

Sometimes, Phillips seems to see history in terms of Anglo-America versus the world. He writes, “Spain, France, and then Germany failed in their successive political and military contests with Anglo-America.” But, in the American Revolution, Spain and France were allied with America against England. (French expenditures in support of the colonists contributed to the fall of the French monarchy.) During the Napoleonic Era, the United States went to war, not against France, but against Britain. The U.S. opposed France’s attempt to install Maximilian as Emperor of Mexico, but Britain recognized Maximilian. Phillips refers to “the great English-speaking victories over Prussian-built Germany.” But the results of the World Wars were not simply “English-speaking victories.” German defeat in World War II was more a Russian victory than an English-speaking victory. In reference to these wars, Phillips asserts that Germany was “the principal loser” in the process that brought immigrants from Germany to America. But it seems that, in the first half of the 20th century, Germany suffered more from the loss of statesmanship than from a loss of population. And Germany recovered much more strongly than Britain from World War II.

Historically, the connection between religion and politics and war had been almost universal. But in modern times, this connection has weakened. What is interesting about the wars Phillips discusses is that with each war the connection between religion and war gradually became weaker. Cousins is a massive volume. It includes an 18-page preface and a 609-page narrative. In the back matter are three appendices, 37 pages of footnotes, a 14-page bibliography, and a 25-page index. Scattered through the volume are 28 maps and 11 tabular presentations. As noted above, in researching and writing Cousins (1999) Phillips was guided by what was for him a more optimistic outlook than that behind some of his previous books. It is important to note that, after writing Cousins, Phillips returned to his customary pessimistic outlook in such subsequent books as Wealth and Democracy: How Great Fortunes and Government Created America's Aristocracy (2002), American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush (2004), American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (2006), and Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism (2008 ). Significantly, the interpretations in several of these books tend to conflict with those in Cousins.

13 people found this helpful

Josef the English Major

Really religious wars?!

Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2013

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I'm about half way through and became enthusiastic enough to order A World on Fire to complete the English American connection. Since we now live in the Appalachian mountains, I am curious about the Scots and the Irish. I was most surprised by the anti-Catholic slant to the war to win the Ohio valley. Why the Protestants should be afraid of bishops is as mystifying as it is humorous.

Addendum in April: I still haven't finished the book but I have learned so much about the Scots Irish immigrants in the Appalachians. He explains why they were there and the history of their time in Ireland. As I read into the section on the Civil War, I am cross referencing with an excellent book - The Southern Cross- which tries to find out why abolitionists moving south became defenders of the slave owners. In the Southern Cross she thinks the reason was economic and social, needing the local Episcopal plantation owner's permission to meet and his seasonal feasts were the only decent meals some of the plantation workers ever had.

Phillips explains the theological defense of slavery was part of the second awakening -"the elite southern denominations" but he doesn't say what those were. I would think Episcopalian for sure, and maybe Presbyterians or Southern Baptists - I think this is where many denominations split on the issue. I know the Episcopalians split as well. When I finish the book, I'll write more.

4 people found this helpful

sue

A people who shared the same blood and shed the same blood three times in three centuries.

Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2015

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This is a profound summary of three wars fought over three centuries by the same people groups. The book has not enough of the history of the first war. This writing gives incredible insight into the pockets of settlers who shared the same blood and shed the same blood for three centuries until the one group finally won.

It helps me to understand why modern Americans who are spiritual and even physical descendants of these driven, strong willed, industrious people are so willing to militarily involve themselves into the affairs of others in the quest to set them free.

One person found this helpful

Fanter

Dense read but great premise.

Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2016

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Intersting premise to a fascinating topic. This book details the sectarian motivations which caused the English Civil War, American War of Independence and American Civil War. Phillips weaves several fascinating themes through each period, arguing that they in part drove the Anglo-American world dominance that we are still experiencing today.

This is a refreshing and un-apolgetic take on Anglo-American ascendancy which contribts to the cannon of American History.

It is however, quite dense and rather academic. Not for the fans who want easy to read history. Enthralling nonetheless this book contributed to my understanding of the cultural underpinnings of our great nation.

One person found this helpful

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