Review by Choice Review
This first full-scale biography of John Murray, Fourth Earl of Dunmore (1730-1809) offers a reassessment favorable to the Scottish peer, who served as governor of New York (1770-71), Virginia (1771-76) and the Bahamas (1787-96). Despite his land greed and eccentricities, Dunmore is seen here as an astute statesman. The author gives short shrift to Dunmore as a military leader. The battles in lower Tidewater Virginia and Dunmore's subsequent "floating" invasion of the colony are lightly drawn. David does not use Ivor Noel Hume's 1775 (1966), nor the biographies of Virginia military leaders who fought with and against Dunmore, nor the public papers of several of these men, particularly the valuable George Weedon papers. The author fails to note the significance of some highly important events, for example, the Fort Gower Resolutions of 1774. This book complements Percy Caley's fine, massive study Dunmore, Colonial Governor of New York and Virginia, 1770-1782 (1939), an unpublished dissertation. In all, the book is of high quality as to writing, and, for the most part, research. A new appreciation of one of America's early, estimable leaders (albeit a Loyalist) emerges. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers and all academic levels. H. M. Ward emeritus, University of Richmond
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
As this book's 19th-century-style subtitle suggests, John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore (1730-1809), the last royal governor of the Colony of Virginia, had a very busy life. A well-connected Scottish peer, ambitious, and always broke, he was appointed royal governor of New York and then of Virginia. As Virginia's governor, he led formal incursions against native tribes and sought to rule without calling the House of Burgesses into session. Although he held the Virginia post throughout the war, he abandoned the colony for Britain early on in the fighting. The British later sent him to govern the Bahama Islands. David's work, based on his PhD dissertation, which tellingly did not offer the same subtitle (it was subtitled Political Culture in the British Empire, 1745-1796), shows an amazing amount of research (70 pages of notes and bibliography). The author confidently knows the period and its people, although Dunmore himself comes across as a dull, money-grubbing bumbler. VERDICT This volume will interest serious readers pursuing deeper and different studies of the American Colonial period and the revolution, but general readers may be bored. However, it complements other new titles: Glenn F. Williams's Dunmore's War: The Last Conflict of America's Colonial Era and Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy's The Men Who Lost America.-Michael O. -Eshleman, Hobbs, NM (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Library Journal Review
