Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia: E. Digby Baltzell 1996
by E. Digby Baltzell (Author, Introduction)
Product Details
Paperback: 585 pages
Publisher: Transaction Publishers; 2nd Revised ed. edition (January 1, 1996)
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Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
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Top Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 starsFascinating study of social leadership in America
By Christopher P. Atwood on January 13, 2000
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Digby Baltzell uses the history of Philadelphia and Boston as very real examples of two types of leadership. In Boston, the "Boston Brahmin" elites formed a strong upper class that was not tolerant, certainly, but took responsibility for community life and exercised a tremendous influence on American culture, politics, arts, and science. In Philadelphia, the "Proper Philadelphians" were charming, tolerant--and deeply irresponsible, abandoning any role in governing the city and making it by common agreement the worst run city in the United States. When Philadelphia needed a mover and shaker, it imported some one from outside, like Ben Franklin.
Baltzell takes these difference back to the colonial period and the dramatic differences in the viewpoints of the Puritans who founded Boston and the Quakers who founded Philadelphia. He also sees these changes working forward as the old upper-class socialize immigrant elites into their respective patterns, producing the Kennedy clan out of Boston, and Grace Kelly out of Philadelphia. Many of the points here can also be seen in David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed.
Baltzell's bedrock conviction is that every society needs an upper class and is going to get one whether it likes it or not (the history of revolutions proves this rather conclusively). Those who see the very fact of social stratification as an personal affront will of course get affronted. The interesting point he makes though is that many things anti-elitists think are opposites actually go together.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsAuthoritarian vs. Libertarian Utopias
By Allegrippus on March 25, 2013
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
A thorough, detailed, and fascinating sociological analysis of the Puritan and Quaker mindsets and the influence they exerted over the respective cultures they founded in Boston and Philadelphia even long after their obvious dominance had subsided.
Both denominations were lower-class English utopian sects generated by the Protestant Reformation seeking a return to basic primitive purity in the Garden of Eden of the New-World Promised Land. The Calvinist Puritans set great store in education, and became accustomed to being governed by the leaders of their congregations.
Quakers, on the other hand, carried Pietist individualism to the extreme with deliberate absence of governing authority and even structure.
While the Puritan clergymen became educated statesmen in the communities of Massachusetts Bay, the individualistic Quakers let their consciences be guided by mystical personal revelations, and refrained from interfering in anyone else's affairs, assuming a consensus would emerge among the spiritually like-minded (i.e., public opinion). This attitude was also obviously congenial to the Pietist German Protestant utopian sects recruited to populate an outer belt of counties surrounding Philadelphia.
The coercive Puritans of Massachusetts Bay guarded their religious dogma jealously and imposed it upon all members of their communities. Creating educational institutions which reinforced their intellectual orthodoxies, their leadership formed a hereditary ruling caste which even became known as Brahmins after the priestly Indian estate. When they converted from Puritan to Unitarian, their entire communities converted in lockstep, adhering to the Old-World concept of religious uniformity within each State, a characteristic of Reformation Geneva, and in particular the English consolidation of civil and spiritual control. They gave credence to the sanctity of the civil authority, as well as its conformity with the religious authority. When Roman Catholicism became predominant, the Catholic Church wielded more influence in Boston than anywhere else in the nation. The evangelistic Puritan temperament and forceful educational institutions (branded by Thomas Jefferson as breeding grounds for extremist absolutists and monarchists) came to dominate not only other colonies which they spawned, but also neighboring cultures and even eventually the nation as a whole.
Quaker educational institutions, on the other hand, tended to stress practical scientific and vocational rather than philosophical training, which Taoist Quakers considered responsible for propagating erroneous superstitious rituals accumulated over time by all the ancient religions. Philadelphia high society (although soon becoming predominantly conventional Anglican/Episcopalian, as did the feudal proprietary Penn family, at odds in many respects with Quakerism) grew accustomed to ceding its government to fanatical outside strongmen and political machines which filled the vacuum and left them free to pursue their individual interests. Relatively few of the establishment ever sought or achieved the widespread personal acclaim so avidly pursued by their Massachusetts counterparts. To the Calvinist Puritans, politics was a reputable calling, whereas Philadelphia high society considered it an unsavory and contemptible occupation (a self-fulfilling prophesy).
Strains of these two contrasting creeds both continue to assert themselves in control of U.S. culture to the present day.
The author's methodology comparing quantity of entries in the Dictionary of American Biography grows a bit tiresome to the lay reader, although it presumably has some validity.
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5.0 out of 5 starsI could not set this book down.
By A Customer on October 8, 2002
Format: Paperback
This was a great book. Besides all else mentioned already,it reads like a story. No theoretical arabesques, just nitty gritty factual details so you can see connectednesses for yourself. Baltzell's very factual illustrations of idealisms' realities and human tensions towards cultishness versus civic participation serve as a useful lense and compass to me ever since reading this book. I recommend it whenever I can, particularly to someone who, like me, may at one time, be shocked by a human experience or contrast and want to ask why. I'd recommend it to any one ever involved in a cult. Its readability is comforting and enthralling, and it is deeply seated in a sense of the continuity of history and human nature. I found it a healing book. I'm sorry Mr. Baltzell is no longer alive so I can thank him. Read every crumb of this book. Its thick, but allot the time.
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1.0 out of 5 starsNot impressed
By Gary Miller on December 29, 2011
Format: Paperback
One reviewer said they couldnt put the book down. I didnt have any problems putting it down. Tried several times to get into it. As a Quaker, I felt there was a hint of bias against Quakers. I read about half of the book and decided to move on to something else.
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