Was The American Revolution Revolutionary?
Was the Civil War civil? Was World War One a world war? Was the War on Drugs high?
This question has preoccupied American historians for the last couple of decades. My first collegiate essay attempted to answer that question. It did not answer it well, sorry Professor Volk, but it answered it. From authors like Gordon Wood in the early 90s, to more recent works from David Armitage, Gary Nash, Alfred Young, and Ray Raphael the argument over whether or not the American Revolution constitutes an actual revolution has remained fertile ground. The answer, as historical answers tend to do, depends on the definitions. At the risk of making a fool of myself, about 5 strains of thought currently exist in the field:
1. The American Revolution represented a truly radical ideological break from the past, by redefining conceptions of state, freedom, and democracy.
2. The American Revolution, while perhaps revolutionary for land-owning, able-bodied white men, did not offer the same radical change for everyone else living in the new United States.
3. The American Revolution formed around anti-revolutionary forces in an attempt to push back against true revolutionaries pushing for change in the Atlantic world.
4. Looking at the American Revolution from a global perspective shows that it provided a blueprint for other nations to have their own revolutions.
5. Historians must ask different questions in order to obtain a deeper understanding of the time period.
While each of these fields have their various pitfalls and success answering this question, and/or laying out a deeper historiographical essay, would make this an incredibly boring newsletter for 99% of the people who read this. I’ve added some books to the end of this if you want to learn a little more. Long story short? I fall into the camp of a modified number three with shades of two and four coloring my opinion. But I can already hear the yawns.
The question of why this particular inquiry into American history has remained so popular tickles the curiosity more than engaging in the specific details of various esoteric battles in the footnotes of 500-page books. Historical questions often come and go, perhaps popping up every once in a couple years, rearing their head and the disappearing again until some eager new associate professor has to get tenure. But this one has remained. The proverbial something is up.
Part of its success comes down to the provocative nature of the question. It has the ring of taboo. An inherently controversial question. A true patriot would never think that the American Revolution represented anything less than the pinnacle of revolutions. How could it? It created the greatest country on Earth! To think anything less of the U.S. would betray the hard work of the Founding Fathers. Controversy, particularly of the nationalist sort, sells books.
Efforts to increase royalties do not make a grand tradition of historical inquiry alone, however. Another aspect of its popularity revolves its vagueness. Despite the short length of the question it allows for a lot of interpretative room. “Revolution” and “revolutionary” can mean any number of things, allowing for anyone with a new definition to take a shot at the question. The American Revolution itself can suggest any number of timeframes, and historians love nothing more than a good reperiodization. Finally, the lack of a specific actor in the question, thanks to the wonderful vagueness of the passive voice, means that any number of people or groups can act as a historian’s focal lens. Adding or using a different combination of historical actors in a study can create an entirely new view of an event. It remains a question ready and willing for interpretation and reinterpretation.
So far though, both of those reasons could work for any number of historical events and questions. The biggest contributor, in my mind, to the staying power of the “revolutionary question” comes from somewhere that scares most historians. The present. Until recently, historians remained loathe to admit that the present inherently shaped the questions they asked of the past. Present concerns about the United States have much to do with why historians keep asking this question about the U.S. While people interrogated the revolutionary nature of the American Revolution prior to the early 1990s, most of the biggest books in the field did not get published until post 1990.
That historical moment remains key. The early 90s, with the fall of the Soviet Union, and the enshrinement, however temporarily, of the United States as THE world power raised a lot of questions. No matter what some doofuses thought about “The End of History,” the U.S. faced an uncertain future. And this question, harkening back to the beginning of the country, offers a way to perhaps understand why the U.S. had become the sole superpower. The neutral framing also allowed both political left, right, and center, to plausibly lame claim to whatever ideological answer fit their needs.
Yet, 2020 is not 1990, nor 2000 or 2010 for that matter, and the question still remains popular. Part of this revolves around the fact that the U.S. remains in a position of crisis. From 9/11 to Trump, the U.S., has gone through a series of seismic shocks that have destroyed many people’s conceptions of what the U.S. is and stands for. And for historians, despite not wanting to always admit it, history is a place to find answers about the present. Since our country began in revolution, determining the content and character of that revolution has a strong intellectual pull. It could help explain or at least ameliorate whatever the hell the U.S. is experiencing right now.
Historians, as much as they like to talk about understanding the past on the past’s own terms, have to come at it with at least somewhat of a presentist perspective. The sooner we recognize it, the better.
Some Books (Sorry forgot to include in email version!)
Alfred F. Young, Gary B. Nash, and Ray Raphael - Revolutionary Founders: Rebels, Radicals, and Reformers in the Making of the Nation
Barry Levy - Town Born: The Political Economy of New England From its Founding to the Revolution
Bernard Bailyn - The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
David Armitage - The Declaration of Independence: A Global History
Daniel Richter - Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America
Gordon S. Wood - The Radicalism of the American Revolution