Archival Communities: Constructing the Past in the Early United States . By Derek Kane O'Leary

The basic premise of Archival Communities is that histories are constructed. But Derek Kane O'Leary complicates this narrative by taking us on a journey through the construction of an “exceptional history” of the United States that allows the reader to see how histories are constructed through a variety of lenses. O'Leary uses several different vignettes to argue that historical actors believed it was through the connection to and belief in documentary evidence—its accumulation, its analysis, and its dissemination—that the exceptional history they crafted would be understood and accepted. After examining the establishment of historical societies in the early republic period of the U.S., O'Leary explores global, national, state-wide and local perspectives and interweaves these in a conclusion that demonstrates the multi-dimensionality of history construction, generally, and in the United States, specifically.Meticulously researched, the arguments are rich with evidence drawn from a variety of sources, including correspondence, diaries, society lectures, historical writing, contemporary poetry, fiction and art, as well as physical artifacts and monuments. O'Leary uses these source materials to draw conclusions, but in doing so also allows the reader to engage with the evidence. The overall thesis of the common desire and need for a historical past that explains and justifies the trajectory of the nation is carefully tied together by these individual, often complex, stories.One strength to this work is that each chapter ably tells its own story, while the conclusion weaves those stories together to explore a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. The first chapter explores the general motivation behind the establishment of historical societies by the political and social elites and their drive for collecting and securing documentary evidence that will provide the attestation to the exceptional history they strive to secure. The second chapter examines a campaign launched by a Danish scholar to center the Norse discovery of the Western Hemisphere in the 11th century as the origin story of North America. While contemporary scholars were initially intrigued by this theory of the origins of European engagement in the Western Hemisphere, it eventually dissipated from the national narrative. O'Leary situates this perspective as a reaffirmation of the dominance of the Christopher Columbus narrative but also interrogates its role in the global aspect of exceptionalism.The third chapter explores the activities and intentions of Jared Sparks to create a national archive. O'Leary explores the Sparks journey and provides not just the intellectual exercise but the physical details of how Sparks was able to do this work, the relationships he developed and leveraged, and ultimately the reason he chose George Washington as the crux of his narrative. The chapter starts with an exploration of Sparks’ earliest intentions to create a hemispheric history of exceptionalism, particularly as the revolutions in colonial Spanish America seem also to throw off the mantle of monarchal colonial rule. When the new countries failed to realize the purported exceptionalism of the United States, Sparks turned inward to focus on national exceptionalism, placing Washington at the center. Chapter four turns to the efforts of archival collection at the state level and offers a more complex understanding of U.S. exceptionalism.O'Leary argues that the nascent historians who built these burgeoning collections were also invested in promoting the exceptionalism of their individual states. He examines a trio of states, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Maine, to frame the success of the New-York Historical Society in establishing its collection. The final topical chapter narrows to a local level, engaging with historians Frances Manwaring Caulkins and James Savage, president of the Massachusetts Historical Society. O'Leary uses this chapter to address gender roles in the crafting of historical narratives, by scrutinizing Caulkins’ ability to navigate a dominant masculine world. O'Leary explores not only the nature of local history and its connections to domesticity but also the effort and expertise that Caulkins displayed. The unconventional relationship between them culminated in Caulkins being the first woman elected as a member of the Historical Society, a distinction that held throughout the 19th century.While not a primary thesis in this work, O'Leary consistently situates the history that is constructed as a white, privileged, settler colonial perspective that results in the obfuscation or erasure of Indigenous people, immigrant populations, and enslaved Africans. O'Leary does not declare this to be intentional but rather the result of existing prejudices and perspectives. Overall, this work makes a valuable contribution to the collective memory corpus. Using the idea of historical construction as a jumping off point, O'Leary's Archival Communities explores the ways in which a narrative of the past can be used to explain and justify the present.