The Causes of the Revolution
Thinking Comparatively
Introduction
The American Revolution was much more than a war for national independence, such as the Swiss struggle for independence from the Austrians during the 1400s or the eighty-year struggle of the Dutch against Spanish rule in the late-1500s and 1600s. It was also much more than a revolt against taxes and trade regulations.
The American Revolution was truly the first modern revolution. It enjoyed widespread popular support and marked the first time in history that a people fought for their independence in the name of certain universal principles of human rights and civil liberties.
The American Revolution touched off an “Age of Revolution.” Its example helped inspire revolutions across the entire western world. During the late 1700s and early 1800s, revolutions and popular uprisings erupted from the Ural Mountains in Russia to the Andes Mountains in South America: in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Switzerland, and in many other countries. In Haiti, for the first time in history, slaves succeeded in winning their independence by force of arms. These revolutions were justified in terms of such ideas as “the rights of man” and “national independence,” principles popularized by the American Revolution.
What were the principles that the American revolutionaries fought for? One was popular sovereignty. The American patriots argued in behalf of popular self rule: That the people, through their elected representatives, had a right to govern themselves. The American patriots also believed that all governments exist for the benefit of the governed.
Another key idea was a right to revolution. Whenever a government violated the peoples’ fundamental rights, they had the right to change or overthrow it.
Another basic principle was equality before the law. At a time when most people in the western world were ruled by kings, the American patriots repudiated the idea that the people should be royal subjects. Instead, they insisted that the people should be regarded as citizens with equal rights, including the right to participate in governmental affairs.
A fourth fundamental principle lay in a commitment to constitutional rights and rule of law. The American revolutionaries believed in natural rights—the idea that the people have certain fundamental rights that must be protected against tyrannical oppression, including the right to trial by jury, freedom of speech and conscience, and freedom from arbitrary arrest and punishment. They also believed in constitutionalism—that the peoples’ rights and government’s functions and powers needed to be spelled out in a written document.
The roots of the American Revolution can be traced to the year 1763 when British leaders began to tighten imperial reins. Once harmonious relations between Britain and the colonies became increasingly conflict-riven. Britain’s land policy prohibiting settlement in the West irritated colonists as did the arrival of British troops. The most serious problem was the need for money to support the empire.
Attempts through the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, and the Townshend Acts to raise money rather than control trade met with growing resistance in the colonies. Tensions increased further after Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, leading the First Continental Congress to take the first steps toward independence from Britain. Before the colonies gained independence, they had to fight a long and bitter war.
The Revolutionary War
The British had many advantages in the war, including a large, well-trained army and navy and many Loyalists who supported the British Empire. But many white colonists were alienated by a promise made by Virginia’s royal governor, Lord Dunmore to grant freedom to slaves who joined the royal army. Many were also inspired by Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, Common Sense, which denounced monarchy as a form of government and called upon the colonists to assert their natural right to independence.
Excellent leadership by George Washington, the aid of such European nations as France, and tactical errors by British commanders contributed to the American victory. British strategy called for crushing the rebellion in the North. Several times, the British nearly defeated the Continental Army. But victories at Trenton and Princeton, New Jersey, in late 1776 and early 1777 restored patriot hopes. Victory at Saratoga, New York, halted a British advance from Canada and led France to intervene on behalf of the rebels.
In 1778, fighting shifted to the South. Britain succeeded in capturing Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina and defeated an American army at Camden, South Carolina. But bands of patriots harassed loyalists and disrupted British supply lines. Britain failed to achieve control over the southern countryside before advancing northward to Yorktown, Virginia. In 1781, an American and French force defeated the British at Yorktown in the war’s last major battle.
Consequences
- About 7,200 Americans died in battle during the Revolution. Another 10,000 died from disease or exposure and about 8,500 died in British prisons.
- A quarter of the slaves in South Carolina and Georgia escaped from bondage during the Revolution. The Northern states outlawed slavery or adopted gradual emancipation plans.
- The states adopted written constitutions that guaranteed religious freedom, increased the legislature’s size and powers, made taxation more progressive, and reformed inheritance laws.
Why Did the Revolution Take Place?
In explaining why the Revolution took place, it is necessary to look both at the underlying causes and at the precipitating events.
The Revolution was, in part, the consequence of long-term social, political, and cultural transformations. Between 1680 and 1776, a distinctly American society emerged, a society that differed significantly from Britain. A variety of long-run trends gave the thirteen American colonies certain common characteristics and a distinctive identity, which made them very different from England.
What were some of these characteristics?
1. The Absence of a Titled Aristocracy
The colonies had no legally privileged social classes, and they did not have many of the other characteristics of a monarchical society. They had no standing army and had a government bureaucracy that was smaller and far less powerful than that found in Britain. While there were wealthy merchants and planters in the colonies, economic stratification was less pronounced than in Britain and membership in this affluent segment of the population was volatile and changing.
To be sure, colonial society in the eighteenth century was, in certain respects, becoming more aristocratic. Colonial elites increasingly emulated the values and lifestyle of the English aristocracy. They aped the English elites’ dress and manners, and copied their furniture and architecture. Nevertheless, compared to Britain, few Americans had fortunes large enough to lead lives of leisure.
2. The Widespread Ownership of Property
Except for slaves, most physical labor was performed by people who owned their own farms or shops or could expect eventually to be economically independent. Relatively few of the colonists were tenant farmers, and most yeomen maintained a remarkable degree of independence. Even in the Chesapeake region or the Hudson River Valley, where much of the land was leased, farmers still could acquire long-term leases on relatively easy terms.
3. Religious Diversity
The colonies not only displayed a religious diversity unmatched in the western world, they were also more willing to tolerate religious difference. Four colonies—Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island—had no established church. Five other states disestablished the Church of England even before the Revolution broke out.
4. The Relative Absence of Poverty
In eighteenth-century England, half the population was at least occasionally dependent on charity for subsistence. Apart from slaves, the American population was far better off. Nothing better illustrates the relative affluence of the white population than the fact that the colonists were on average three inches taller than their English counterparts.
5. A Lack of Urban Development
In 1760, the largest city in the colonies, Philadelphia, had just 20,000 inhabitants. In that year, the total number of Americans living in cities or towns with more than 3,000 residents was no greater than 70,000. The colonies had few of the attributes of an urban society: there was no large-scale manufacturing, no stock markets, few large cities, and virtually no banks in British North America.
6. A Relative Lack of Deference to Authority
The American colonists were far less deferential and less willing to accept subordination than their British or European counterparts. The colonists enjoyed the broadest suffrage of any people in the western world. Although the right to vote in colonial America was restricted to property owners, property owning was so widespread that roughly eighty percent of white adult males could vote.
Although relatively few men actually voted in elections, the principle of self-government was well-developed. To gain political office, social leaders felt increasingly forced to make direct appeals to the people.
Compared to Britain, popular participation in decision-making was much more pronounced. Militia officers were often selected by their companies, and ministers were often hired by their congregations.
7. The Presence of Slavery
In 1776, one-fifth of the inhabitants of the American colonies lived in bondage. Most of the growth of slavery had taken place since 1680. In 1680, Africans accounted for just five percent of the population in Maryland and Virginia. But in 1760, enslaved Africans comprised nearly forty percent of Virginia’s population. By 1776, the number of slaves in the colonies had reached 500,000.
Slavery in eighteenth-century America was not confined to the South. Slaves could be found in each of the thirteen colonies, and were especially numerous in New Jersey and in New York’s Hudson River Valley.
The widespread presence of slavery made adult white males acutely aware of the difference between independence and dependence. Colonial Americans knew what it was like to be subjected to the will, authority, and domination of another person.
By the 1770s, a growing number of Americans had begun to see their society as fundamentally different from European society. Their society was a “republican” society, a society free of many of the trappings of aristocracy and of the corruptions associated with cities, large-scale manufacturing, and financial institutions. From this perspective, Americans were simpler, more independent, and more virtuous than Europeans.
Why Has Hollywood Found It So Difficult to Make a Popular Film about the Revolution?
There are certain subjects that rarely succeed at the Hollywood box office. Until the mid-1970s, sports movies almost always flopped. In recent years, westerns and swashbuckling adventure films have often been box office duds. But one genre has almost always failed. Until the success of the Mel Gibson movie, The Patriot, in 2000, Hollywood had never made a successful movie about the American Revolution.The reasons for the failure of movies about the Revolution seem obvious. Modern-day audiences find it difficult to identify with characters from the late-eighteenth century. They find the characters’ powdered wigs, knee breeches, and formal speech patterns off-putting. Further, we live in a cynical age and hate being reminded of more noble times. There is a tendency to regard Revolutionary War movies as excessively patriotic and overly romanticized.
Altogether, Hollywood has made fewer than a dozen movies that deal more than superficially with the Revolution. These include:
- 1776 (1972): a musical about the nation’s declaration of independence from Britain
- Guns Along the Mohawk (1939): looks at a young couple in upstate New York who face Indian raids instigated by the British
- The Howards of Virginia (1940): the story of a Virginia couple of differing social backgrounds and attitudes toward American independence
- The Patriot (2000): centers on a hero from the French and Indian War who reluctantly becomes involved in the Revolution
- Revolution (1985): the tale of a trapper drafted to fight for the Continental army and a rebellious daughter from a Tory family
- Sweet Liberty (1969): a comedy about a movie company’s attempt to adapt a college professor’s historical novel
Even if Hollywood has not yet found a formula for interesting the general public in the Revolution, the events of that era remain fascinating. Here are some of the questions that continue to provoke debate.
- Were American patriots justified in asserting a “right to revolution”?
- What factors led a people who were the freest and most prosperous in the western world to launch a revolution?
- Could the Revolution have been averted—and, if so, what difference would this have made?
- How were the American colonists, who had a long history of quarreling among themselves, able to prevail against the world’s strongest military power?
More than a revolt against colonial rule and British taxes and trade regulations, the Revolution also served as the model for future revolutions fought in the name of national independence and such universal principles as the right to popular self-government and natural rights.