Book Review: Beyond Philadelphia: The American Revolution in the Pennsylvania Hinterland

John B. Frantz and William Pencak, eds., Beyond Philadelphia: The American Revolution in the Pennsylvania Hinterland. (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1998) viii, 273, maps, index. Hardback $55.00 (ISBN 0-27 1-01 766-X) Paperback $ 19.95 (ISBN 0-271-01767-8).

The simplicity of some sound ideas makes them go unnoticed. Such is the case with this volume, a succinct study of how the War for Independence affected the various counties of Pennsylvania, one of the largest colonies in the British Empire. It is a wonder no one thought of such a study before 1990, but until then the field lay fallow.

The result is a sleek, scholarly work of nine chapters by various professors of history, mainly at Penn State University. Five of the chapters address the rural counties "beyond Philadelphia"--Berks, Bucks, Chester, Cumberland, and York--and three the great river valleys of the Juniata, Lehigh, and Wyoming. There is a chapter on "Soldiers and Violence on the Pennsylvania Frontier," about how soldiers dealt with the Indians, and the editors themselves survey recent scholarship in an informative but inelegant introduction. The entire book is dedicated to the memory of Robert Grant Crist, late editor of this journal and professor at Penn State, Harrisburg. It is to Crist's chapter-not surprisingly, on Cumberland County-that we now turn.

Crist provides a standard account of the issues and events leading to the American Revolution. He describes the role played in the Revolution by men from Cumberland County-whether military men such as William Thompson or politicians such as James Wilson-and he addresses the more anonymous figures, such as the German immigrants who began to settle in Cumberland County during the third quarter of the eighteenth century. It is a brief but thorough account, keeping in mind religious and economic factors and taking into consideration not only the revolutionaries but also the Proprietors and the Loyalists. 

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