the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal ofInterdisciplinary History

Small Worlds, Large Questions: Explorations in Early American Social History, 1600-1850 byDarrett P. Rutman; Anita H. RutmanReview by: Susan BransonThe Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Autumn, 1996), pp. 331-332Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/205195 .

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REVIEWS | 331

In asserting that a certain group of people had been prepared for Mormonism because of long-standing kin ties to hermetic ideals, Brooke suggests that the line from early modern perfectionism to Smith's church is straight and unbroken. Brooke argues that other elements came into play (though he downgrades social and economic influences too much), but he overemphasizes the notion that those who chose to become Mormons were a prepared people, as if conversion to Mormonism had been inevitable. Brooke's argument is much more convincing when he admits that the appeal of hermeticism was only one aspect attracting followers to Smith's message.

Brooke's provocative work takes the origins of Mormonism out of America and places it in a transatlantic context. He ably combines social and intellectual history. He will encourage debate not only among students of American religion, but also among observers of contempo- rary society. As Brooke suggests, the reach of Mormon cosmology extends to the present; modern-day survivalists (some Latter-Day Saints among them), with their disregard for human and civil law, have their roots in the same perfectionist ideals that influenced Joseph Smith and attracted so many of his followers.

Rachelle E. Friedman Milton Academy

Small Worlds, Large Questions: Explorations in Early American Social History, 1600-1850. By Darrett P. Rutman with Anita H. Rutman (Charlottes- ville, University Press of Virginia, I994) 3i6 pp. $55.00

Rutman begins his preface by stating that this collection of essays, some written by Rutman alone and others with his wife-is an "intensely personal volume" (ix). It gathers together in one place essays written over a period of thirty years, all of which demonstrate the variety of Rutman's historical investigations, as well as the significant contribution that he has made to early American social history.

The collection is divided into three sections, the first of which contains two methodological essays. The first essay criticizes American Marxist historians for their unquestioning use of "nineteenth-century polemics carried baldly and ahistorically into the work of the late twentieth-century social history" (7). Rutman takes to task American Marxists for their single-minded devotion to Marxist theoretical cate- gories, which they force their empirical data to fit according to an ideological agenda.

The second essay presents Rutman's own methodological ap- proaches to historical inquiry and traces the historiography of the new social history. Rutman defends social history against the criticism that it has sacrificed the pursuit of megatheories in favor of isolated and par- ticularized case studies. Rutman argues that social historians proceed

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332 | SUSAN BRANSON

"inductively rather than deductively, upward from small observations and small theories . . . eventually to middle- and higher-level theories" (33). Rutman champions this cautious approach over a "precipitous rush to grand generalization" (33).

The nine essays in section two show, by example, the assumptions and techniques discussed in section one. Most are reprints. The earliest appeared in i963, and the last, an unpublished essay from Rutman's current research on "The Village South," was delivered in i99i. This section highlights his pioneering contributions to early American history, demonstrating the value of viewing his past work in a single volume.

Rutman concludes in section three by addressing several large questions about the nature of the antebellum South and expressing his criticisms of how historians thus far have characterized the region from colonial times to the i85os. He argues against the "isolation of southern studies from national questions" (xii). He is particularly critical of the two "megatheories" that, he believes, currently dominate the topic: a debate about the transition to capitalism in the early nineteenth century; and the theory that this transition was confined to the northern Ameri- can states. Rutman's challenges to both these theories cites his own research as well as that of others.

Historians already familiar with Rutman's work will enjoy revisiting it from the perspective of this overview. Scholars new to the field of early American history will appreciate this historiographical journey and Rutman's thoughts on the methodological issues confronting social historians today.

Susan Branson University of Texas, Dallas

Negotiated Authorities: Essays in Colonial Political and Constitutional History. By Jack P. Greene (Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1994) 488 pp. $60.00 cloth $19.95 paper

Some of Greene's most influential work over the years has appeared as chapters in edited collections or as articles in journals. To be sure, his books have had enormous impact, especially Pursuits of Happiness (Chapel Hill, i988), a renowned study of "the social development of early modern British colonies and the formation of American culture," as its subtitle explains. But Greene has most often made his mark with the essay (especially the historiographical review). Negotiated Authorities collects a number of these writings from the last thirty-five years on the political and constitutional history of colonial British America. A com- panion volume to Imperatives, Behaviors, and Identities: Essays in Early American Cultural History (Charlottesville, 1992), this book, like its part- ner, contains a selection of published (14) and unpublished (2), original (12) and historiographical (4) pieces.

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