AMERICAN AMERICAN REVOLUTION: REVOLUTION: REVOLUTIONARY? REVOLUTIONARY? AND IMPACTAND IMPACT

“When we look at the American Revolution this way, it was a work o genius…they (Founders) created the effective system of national control devised in modern times.”

- Howard Zinn

“There should no longer be any doubt about it: the white American colonists were not an oppressed people; they had no crushing imperial chains to throw off.4 In fact, the colonists knew they were freer, more equal, more prosperous, and less burdened with cumbersome feudal and monarchical restraints than any other part of mankind in the eighteenth century.”

- Gordon Wood

It doesn’t fit the standard definition of a revolution

Was the American Revolution a Revolution?

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY LEADERS DON’T FIT THE CONVENTIONAL IMAGE OF REVOLUTIONARIES

ANGRY

PASSIONATE

RECKLESS

BLOODTHIRSTY

No storming of castles

Oliver Cromwell

Napoleon

No Dictators

We think of…

When we think of revolutions,

The French Revolution

Maximilien Robespierre

Russian Revolution

Chinese Revolution

Chairman Mao

As far as revolutions, on the surface it’s a

Does it Qualify as a Revolution?

No internal violence

Class conflict Social oppression

Should these missing factors discount the American Revolution?

Did it provide revolutionary change?

NO, not in the classic sense Questions remain:

Change for women?Change for African

Americans?

Change for Native Americans?

NOPE!

VARYING INTERPRETATIONS OF

HISTORIANS

Was the revolution’s greatest legacy that it establish democracy?

Who was going to rule at home?

Not about home rule, but

Howard Zinn “Around 1776, certain important

people in the English colonies made a discovery that would prove enormously useful for the next two hundred years. They found that by creating a nation, a symbol, a legal unity called the United States, they could take over land, profits, and political power from favorites of the British Empire. In the process, they could hold back a number of potential rebellions and create a consensus of popular support for the rule of a new, privileged leadership. When we look at the American Revolution this way, it was a work of genius, and the Founding Fathers deserve the awed tribute they have received over the centuries. They created the most effective system of national control devised in modern times, and showed future generations of leaders the advantages of combining paternalism with command.”

Source: A People's History of the United States

Carol Berkin

The... myth is that the revolutionaries promptly created a democracy. Such a political system would have appalled all but the most radical of the revolutionary leadership. To men like John Adams, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, democracy equated to ‘mob rule’; they had joined a revolution to create a republic, that is, a government based on the sovereignty of the people, whose laws were made by an elected representative legislature... They believed that an active political voice was a privilege not a right; it belonged only to adult white males who had “a stake in society,”... property... For the founding fathers, democracy was one of the three great threats to the survival of a republic, one of three paths to tyranny: the tyranny of the one [a king or dictator], the tyranny of the few [an oligarchy], and the tyranny of the many [democracy]. It would be almost 50 years before the credo of egalitarianism developed a firm foothold”American culture, producing universal white male suffrage, the abolition movement and a host of humanitarian reforms.”

Source: Teaching the Revolution

Gordon Wood“To focus... on what the Revolution did not accomplish—highlighting and lamenting its failure to abolish slavery and change fundamentally the lot of women—is to miss the great significance of what it did accomplish; indeed, the Revolution made possible the anti-slavery and women's rights movements of the nineteenth century and in fact all our current egalitarian thinking. The Revolution... destroyed aristocracy as it had been understood in the Western world for at least two millennia. The Revolution brought respectability and even dominance to ordinary people long held in contempt and gave dignity to their menial labor... The Revolution... brought about an entirely new kind of popular politics and a new kind of democratic officeholder.”

Source: The Radicalism of the American Revolution

“In fact, it was one of the greatest revolutions that the world has ever known, a momentous upheaval that not only fundamentally altered the character of American society but decisively affected the subsequent course of history”

Gordon Wood

Impact of the Revolution

World Perspective: Served as a model for future revolutions throughout the world, French

Revolution, Latin America, etc. On the one hand, it created limited immediate social change for disadvantaged

groups within America Left out were Women, African Americans, Native Americans, all excluding

white/property owning males But, would later be used in the Women’s Rights and Abolition Movement

On the other hand, can be considered the most radical event in American history by creating a nation that was the Most liberal society: social mobility, free, rights protected Most commercially minded: free-market system with entrepreneurship,

economic success Most democratic: Representative democracy experiment set in motion,

unlike any thing else at its time. Most Modern society: American society has always been a lead innovator in

technology since its creation