Blog #40 – Was the American Revolution conservative or radical by its nature?
One of the primary themes that I’ve wanted you to consider over this unit on the American Revolution was the concept of whether or not it was a conservative revolution (people trying to keep powers that they already have been exercising for years) or whether it was truly a radical revolution (people striking out on their own by overthrowing an existing political or social order and creating a new one). American historical scholars have been debating its very nature of the American Revolution soon after it ended.
As we read over and study chapter 7 in our textbook, many of you are asking questions about the use of my analogy of the American colonies as the spoiled child / teen overeeacting to limits being placed on the adolescent by previously indulgent parent (Britain / Parliament) who now realizes that their child has grown up and needs to take some responsibility. My attitudes about the Revolution have changed over the past three years since I’ve started teaching APUSH and have become more nuanced. What I mean by that is that I used to believe what most of you have probably been taught – we were right and the British were tyrants, and it was just a matter of time that we asserted our unalienable rights by breaking away from the British empire to become the greatest nation in the history of the world.
The more I study the Revolution, the more I see numbers like the taxation issue (Brits were taxed 26 shillings to the colonists’ 1 shilling), and I wonder what the big deal was. Parliament wasn’t asking the colonies to pay the debt of 140 million pounds sterling that the empire had accrued during the French and Indian War – just 1/3 of the 100,000 pounds that it cost for the soldiers to be there to protect the Indians on the other side of the Proclamation Line of 1763.
Bancroft
The pre-Civil War era (1840-1870) was filled with historians who saw the Revolution as a quest for liberty, and the most important scholar was George Bancroft who wrote a ten-volume History of the United States. Bancroft felt that the Revolution was a “struggle between liberty and tyranny… represent[ing] one phase of a master plan by God for the march of all mankind toward a golden age of greater human freedom” (Bancroft 13). Bancroft represented a national historian who told America’s epic story in an ultra-patriotic way. After the Civil War, however, historians wanted to reassess the Revolution in light of the country’s amazing industrial growth.
Imperial and Progressive Schools
The Imperial School believed that political and constitutional issues brought on the Revolution. Britain’s colonial policies were not as unjust as Bancroft had said. There were benefits and burdens with the Navigation Acts, and the colonists benefited under Salutary Neglect too. Also, Imperial School historians felt that the British were justified in taxing the Americans b/c it was British blood and treasure spent during the Great War for Empire 1754-63. American colonies were moving in the direction of more home rule which, in essence, was revolutionary, by nature.
The Progressive School emphasized that it was the economic split caused by the competition between the colonies and the mother country. Not only that, but the Progressives placed a great emphasis on class conflict, so this Revolution was actually two – external against Britain and internal between social classes (which class would rule America after the British left). Historian Arthur Schlesinger noted that usually conservative merchants played a key role in kick starting the Revolution b/c they feared what would happen to their positions if the lower classes won the internal Revolution.
Consensus Movement
Historians in the 1950s, the consensus school of history, feel that there wasn’t class conflict during this time period, but that a “shared commitment to certain fundamental political principles of self-government” was what bound the colonists together (Bailey 140). It was these ideas – liberty, voting, representative government, trial by jury, habeas corpus – that bound Americans together. The leading historian of this movement was one of my favorites, Daniel Boorstin. It was these grand, shared ideas that bound the varied colonial interests together and minimized the social and economic conflicts that could have torn the colonies apart.
After the 1950s, historian Bernard Bailyn focused on ideological and psychological factors that drove the Revolution. He had read hundreds and hundreds of pamphlets from the Revolutionary era and discovered that not only were the colonists extremely literate, they were very knowledgeable in political theory. These American writers also grew suspicious (some say too sensitive) of conspiracies, and this hypersensitivity led the colonists to begin armed revolt in 1775 at Lexington and Concord.
New Left (1960s, 70s)
Another one of my favorite historians, Gary Nash, has examined the social and economic forces that moved the Revolution along. He pointed out the increasing gap between the social classes and lack of social mobility before the Revolution, especially among the people who lived in the countryside. Attacks by the poor (the Paxton Boys in PA and the Regulators in N.C.) on the wealthy before the Revolution are prime examples of the frustration and resentment that laborers felt at being left out of the rapid economic change. Unlike the Progressive historians, the New Left historians like Nash don’t pin all of the conflict upon economic conflict but include social changes as well.
Not only have you gotten a lesson in historiography (the history of the history – of the Revolution in this case), you can see that history is not a static thing and changes over time. The history usually reflects the political and social conditions of the writers / historians living at that time.
Using what you’ve read here and in chapters 7 and 8, provide with me some insight into what you think our American Revolution was – a conservative revolution or truly radical one in nature. Also, please provide some rationale for your answer.
Due Monday, October 1 by class time. Minimum of 250 words.
Sources:
Bailey, Thomas Andrew, David M. Kennedy, and Lizabeth Cohen. The American Pageant. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. Print.
Wood, Gordon S. “Rhetoric and Reality in the American Revolution.” The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States. London: Penguin, 2011. 25-55. Print
in The Jungle, what job would you choose? Please explain why. What job would you 
many Americans. From Wilson being almost worshipped to the glorifying of the Spanish American War, propaganda has played a major part on how we percieve events. Do you think it is wrong to have these messages flooding the airwaves during war time and “brainwashing” America especially if these messages are false (Saddam Hussein planned the 9/11/01 attacks, for example)? Or is it ethical in the fact that our government can put whatever posters they want? Explain. – Emily
and, later, Al Qaeda and our search for Osama Bin Ladin. What other events are there our history that share have echoes but don’t necessarily repeat themselves exactly? – Ryan
