"The American independence movement was not a revolution"
Though the conventional image of the American Revolution may be, as its name suggests, that of a revolution - in other words, a total break with the past - several historians have made a convincing case that the independence movement was essentially conservative. They have argued that the purpose of the rebellion was to protect rights the colonists had long had, not to revolutionize the form of government of the colonies. However, other historians have argued that the American independence movement did indeed have such momentous consequences for the colonies that it is justified to use the term "revolution" when describing the rebellion.
The historian Robert E. Brown has advocated the notion of the Revolution as a conservative social movement in his study of colonial Massachusetts. He contests the prevalent idea that colonial America was undemocratic. Property qualifications for voting did indeed exist, but they were low, and the majority of the population were middle-class, and thus able to meet these requirements. Britain saw colonial democracy and self-rule as obstacles to its colonial policy, the purpose of which was to benefit Britain. The assertion of British authority - and thus the weakening of local authority and democracy - was needed to make the Empire more efficient. The American Revolution, then, was about retaining democracy in the colonies, not gaining it. Nor was it a social revolution where the lower classes asserted their rights against a dominant upper class - the conservatism of the Massachusetts constitution and the Federal constitution are proof of this (Brown, 1955).
The problem with this interpretation is the focus on just one of the thirteen colonies. Brown suggests that the other colonies might have been similar to Massachusetts(Brown, 1955), but work done by other historians suggests there were considerable variations between the colonies (Main, 1965). Using the conservatism of the Federal Constitution as evidence of the lack of class conflict in colonial America may also be misleading, since it was drafted by a select number of middle- and upper-class men.
A variation of the interpretation of the American Revolution as conservative and unrevolutionary may be found in the work of Bernard Bailyn. He suggests that a major motivation for the rebellion was a belief that there was a conspiracy in Britain to encroach upon the liberties of the colonists. He argues that the colonists saw a deliberate policy of suppressing liberty in British policies after the Stamp Act, and that this was the primary cause of the Revolution. According to this interpretation, the American Revolution was about stopping this conspiracy, and ultimately about upholding the principles of the British constitution (Bailyn, 1967) - hardly a revolutionary goal.
Bailyn's research is based on the study of pamphlets published in 18th century America (Bailyn, 1967). This may be a major weakness, since these pamphlets were propaganda documents. As such, it is hard to tell to what extent they reflect actual fears of a British conspiracy to erode American liberties and to what extent such a notion was used as a rhetorical device.
J. Franklin Jameson argues in his book The American Revolution considered as a social movement that the American Revolution was indeed revolutionary, as it considerably strengthened democracy in America. Two state constitutions gave the vote to all owners of a certain amount of property, and two gave it to all who paid taxes. Thus, the social status of groups thereto without the right to vote, was enhanced. The Revolution also had a significant - it might be argued, even revolutionary - effect on slavery. Several states either banned the importation of slaves or abolished slavery altogether (Jameson, 1956). The major problem with this line of argument is, of course, the definition of "revolution". It is by no means evident whether the social changes outlined above are sufficient to justify calling the American independence movement revolutionary.
In his Origins of the American Revolution, historian John C. Miller offers a view of the Revolution, which, I think, is more balanced than the other ones considered here. In his introduction he points out that even though - as Brown has argued - a majority of men in colonial Massachusetts had the vote, this didn't necessarily mean democracy. He also notes that it was not the rebels who wanted to keep things as they were, but the Loyalists. The crucial point is that even though the Americans saw themselves as defending their rights under the British constitution, this was true only according to the American interpretation of the British constitution. To the British, this interpretation was revolutionary (Miller, 1966). The American independence movement was also revolutionary in its rejection of elements of contemporary European politics - Miller says the Revolution was "...against monarchy, imperialistic wars, feudalism, colonialism, mercantilism, established churches, the oppression of the many by the few. In this sense, the United States declared itself independent in 1776 not only of Great Britain but of Europe." (Miller, 1966: xvii)
I have necessarily been able to touch upon only a few of the interpretations of the American Revolution in this discussion paper, and none of the arguments put forward here seem definitive. To ascertain whether the American independence movement was essentially revolutionary or conservative, the central concepts of "revolution" and "democracy" must be clearly defined. Of course, it is exceedingly difficult to do so. Several further questions remain. Did all the colonies have such a high proportion of men with the vote as Massachusetts? Did the colonists actually fear a British conspiracy to infringe on their rights? How revolutionary was the American interpretation of the British constitution? Did the extension of the franchise and the changes in the laws concerning slavery constitute revolutionary change?
Bibliography
Bailyn, Bernard (1967) The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press)
Brown, Robert E. (1955) Middle Class Democracy and the Revolution in Massachusetts, 1691-1780 (Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press)
Jameson, Franklin J. (1956) The American Revolution considered as a social movement (Boston, Beacon Press)
Main, Jackson Turner (1965) The Social Structure of Revolutionary America (Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press)
Miller, John C. (1966) Origins of the American Revolution (Stanford, California, Stanford University Press)
This is a discussion paper I wrote for a history course at the University of York. The discussion of the subject in the paper is necessarily rather superficial, since the word limit was 1 000, and this was supposed to be written more as a presentation to a seminar group than a normal essay.