Gary B. Nash, First City: Philadelphia and the Forging of Historical Memory.  Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. 368 pp. ISBN:  0-8122-3630-0.  $34.95 cloth.

In First City, Gary Nash argues that historical memory reflects the concerns and conflicts of the present as much as the reality of the past. In particular, the nineteenth-century leaders of the city’s major historical institutions, dismayed by rapid social, economic, and cultural change, invented and idolized a harmonious, heroic, and relatively homogenous past embodied by William Penn and the heroes of the Revolution. In preserving the memory of these founders, the leaders of these organizations – most notably the American Philosophical Society, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the Library Company of Philadelphia – hoped to provide a model of virtue and order for their own troubled times. Their efforts, however, constantly ran up against alternative narratives of the past championed by the very people whose disorderly behavior they wished to correct.

Nash’s chapters follow a roughly chronological structure, beginning with the city’s founding and following its many transformations: into a major commercial seaport in the colonial period, a political center during the Revolution, and an industrial metropolis in the nineteenth century. Each chapter both chronicles significant developments during the relevant time period and discusses how Philadelphians – especially the leaders of the major historical institutions – chose to commemorate some pieces of that history while ignoring others.

In the process of writing a book on historical memory, Nash composes a highly readable overview of Philadelphia history. Though he “makes no claim to comprehensiveness” (9), he successfully integrates many important themes from recent historiography. These range from the analysis of visual media such as portraits, political cartoons, and lithographs to extensive discussions of the experiences of women, Irish Catholics and African-Americans. All these narrative threads illustrate the breadth of human experience and cultural production that the city’s historical institutions chose to ignore, seriously limiting the sources available to later historians. The reader may well wish for greater detail on specific points, as few individuals or events receive more than a few paragraphs of text. Such brevity is the price of the book’s thematic breadth, however. Those who wish for more information on a given topic need only follow Nash’s footnotes, which point to a wide array of both primary and secondary sources.

At times, the author devotes too much of his text to comments on particular artifacts or document collections. In consequence, parts of the book – especially in the early chapters – feel like a guide to the holdings of Philadelphia’s museums and archives. This emphasis on archival minutia occasionally weighs down the narrative. When found in more moderate doses, however, the accounts of the production, collection and preservation of manuscripts, artwork, and other materials add considerably to his analysis of the politics of memory-making. Such examples successfully illustrate that the collectors never entirely controlled the historical record they helped create. Moreover, they could not prevent later historians from forming interpretations of documents that differed sharply from their own.

In some respects, Nash’s analysis of the tension between the history promoted by the major collecting institutions and the historical memory of most Philadelphians echoes John Bodnar’s study of commemorative events in the twentieth century.[1] Both historians emphasize how contemporary concerns shape conflict over historical memory. In addition, both describe such conflict as a clash between “official,” nationalistic, elite-based versions of history and more critical narratives voiced by those challenging the status quo. First City adds significantly to this line of interpretation by applying it to nineteenth-century historical institutions, but Nash might well have emulated Bodnar’s more incisive analysis of the ideologies and tactics of those battling over historical memory. Too often, Nash’s accounts of such debates merely skim the surface of such issues. While this style works well in his broad overview of city history, struggles over the meaning of the past warrant a more thorough discussion.

Nevertheless, First City makes a significant contribution to the growing literature on historical memory in the United States. Its accessible prose and thematic breadth will appeal to nonacademic readers interested in the history of Philadelphia as well as scholars looking for a solid synthesis of recent scholarship on the city. Its abundant and well-captioned illustrations complement the text well and add significantly to the pleasure of reading. Above all, the book gives much needed attention to the social and political context in which archival holdings have come into existence. First City thus reminds historians of the extent to which the preoccupations of long-dead archivists place constraints on the sources available to us and, by extension, influence the history we write.

Rob Harper

University of Wisconsin Madison