The Path to Revolution
The seeds of the American Revolution were planted in the French and Indian War. British policy-makers in London decided to draw a line down the Appalachian Mountains and reserve the land between the line and the Mississippi River for the American Indians. This action angered many British colonists, who were eager to colonize the lands west of the Alleghenies, but now faced the challenge of doing so without the protection of the British Army. Britain correctly concluded that freehold farmers west of the Alleghenies brought little revenue to the imperial coffers, and were a drain on imperial military resources. Land-hungry Americans correctly concluded that they could dispense with an empire that would not support their westward expansion.
Significant disjunctions characterize the intellectual landscape with reference to early American history, between colonial and revolutionary history. With the American Revolution, the traditional successor sequence to Colonial America, the difference was like night and day. The old Progressive interpretation of the Revolution, which stressed social conflict and elite manipulation of the masses, lay in tatters. Scholars were taking the ideas of the Revolution seriously, tracing their origins and revealing their impact on the evolution of political institutions. To be sure, any discussion of the Revolution has to include a discussion of pre-revolutionary American society and of the Revolution's social impact.
Louis Hartz and others thought the real revolution came when Europeans first set foot on American soil, and the events of the 1760s and 1770s simply ratified that earlier historical reality. British settlers, it seems, wanted nothing more than to approximate the model of British life, and as time went on they did so to an increasing extent, and so actually became more British by the eve of the Revolution than in the first settlements. That made independence a break with the past, and that requires explanation.
The so-called "neo-conservative" school of American historians of the 1960s advanced the theory of "consensus" and "continuity", but this deprived events of their revolutionary character and significance. This school naively denied the existence of class antagonisms aud class struggle in eighteenth-century American society. On the other hand, American historians of the "New Left" relinquished the concept of the American Revolution as an elitist revolution and recognized the decisive role of the popular masses in shaping various phases of events.
Some American historians emphasize the role of ideological forces in the American Revolution and interpret it as an "intellectual movement." Obviously, not every colonial spent his evenings reading Francis Hutcheson's System of Moral Philosophy, although some did. Others learned about revolutionary ideas in their local press. The works of the "Real Whigs" helped the colonists in one way or another to better understand the events and helped to create a logical thrust toward revolution and independence.
In comparison with the French Revolution the American one bore a moderate character. In American historiography a point of view now prevails the supporters of which affirm that the Revolution in America in essence was not a revolution. One of the most widespread thes•s inthe contemporary literature in the United States is that of "consensus" and "continuity." The partisans of this concept depict affairs as if America never knew the class and social contradictions of the Old World. In harmony with this they generally minimize the conflicts of the American Revolution, declaring that it never had any "social goals." However, it is difficult to agree with this conclusion.
Throughout the 18th century, the maturing British North American colonies inevitably forged a distinct identity. They grew vastly in economic strength and cultural attainment; virtually all had long years of self-government behind them. In the 1760s their combined population exceeded 1,500,000 — a sixfold increase since 1700. Nonetheless, England and America did not begin an overt parting of the ways until 1763, more than a century and a half after the founding of the first permanent settlement at Jamestown, Virginia.
In the aftermath of the French and Indian War, London saw a need for a new imperial design that would involve more centralized control, spread the costs of empire more equitably, and speak to the interests of both French Canadians and North American Indians. The colonies, on the other hand, long accustomed to a large measure of independence, expected more, not less, freedom. And, with the French menace eliminated, they felt far less need for a strong British presence. A scarcely comprehending Crown and Parliament on the other side of the Atlantic found itself contending with colonists trained in self-government and impatient with interference.
The organization of Canada and of the Ohio Valley necessitated policies that would not alienate the French and Indian inhabitants. Here London was in fundamental conflict with the interests of the colonies. Fast increasing in population, and needing more land for settlement, they claimed the right to extend their boundaries as far west as the Mississippi River.
The British government, fearing a series of Indian wars, believed that the lands should be opened on a more gradual basis. Restricting movement was also a way of ensuring royal control over existing settlements before allowing the formation of new ones. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 reserved all the western territory between the Allegheny Mountains, Florida, the Mississippi River, and Quebec for use by Native Americans. Thus the Crown attempted to sweep away every western land claim of the 13 colonies and to stop westward expansion.
Although never effectively enforced, this measure, in the eyes of the colonists, constituted a high-handed disregard of their fundamental right to occupy and settle western lands.
More serious in its repercussions was the new British revenue policy. London needed more money to support its growing empire and faced growing taxpayer discontent at home. It seemed reasonable enough that the colonies should pay for their own defense. That would involve new taxes, levied by Parliament — at the expense of colonial self-government.
The first step was the replacement of the Molasses Act of 1733, which placed a prohibitive duty, or tax, on the import of rum and molasses from non-English areas, with the Sugar Act of 1764. This act outlawed the importation of foreign rum; it also put a modest duty on molasses from all sources and levied taxes on wines, silks, coffee, and a number of other luxury items. The hope was that lowering the duty on molasses would reduce the temptation to smuggle the commodity from the Dutch and French West Indies for the rum distilleries of New England. The British government enforced the Sugar Act energetically. Customs officials were ordered to show more effectiveness. British warships in American waters were instructed to seize smugglers, and “writs of assistance,” or warrants, authorized the king’s officers to search suspected premises.
Both the duty imposed by the Sugar Act and the measures to enforce it caused consternation among New England merchants. They contended that payment of even the small duty imposed would be ruinous to their businesses. Merchants, legislatures, and town meetings protested the law. Colonial lawyers protested “taxation without representation,” a slogan that was to persuade many Americans they were being oppressed by the mother country.
Later in 1764, Parliament enacted a Currency Act “to prevent paper bills of credit hereafter issued in any of His Majesty’s colonies from being made legal tender.” Since the colonies were a deficit trade area and were constantly short of hard currency, this measure added a serious burden to the colonial economy. Equally objectionable from the colonial viewpoint was the Quartering Act, passed in 1765, which required colonies to provide royal troops with provisions and barracks.
Lenin wrote in his "Letter to American Workers" that "The history of modern, civilized America opened with one of those great, really liberating, really revolutionary wars of which there have been so few compared to the vast number of wars of conquest which ... were caused by squabbles among kings, landowners or capitalists over the division of usurped lands or ill-gotten gains. That was the war the American people waged against the British robbers who oppressed America and held her in colonial slavery..."
Although Lenin praised the American War of Independence as "a model of a revolutionary war," the subject was a source of embarrassment to the Soviet Establishment in that it seemed to imply a threat "to the Soviet claim of being a superior society representing a perfect type of revolution."
While in France, as Chateaubriand phrased it, "the patricians began the revolution and the plebs finished it," in America the "elite," who had initiated the Revolution, succeeded in keeping power right to the end. The Revolution secured for the whole American people the end of the authority of the mother country, but in spite of major contributions to the victory of the Revolution by the people generally, it resulted in the strengthening of the political power of the ruling class of "large-scale" bourgeoisie and of slave-owning planters.
The Revolution did not succeed in solving a number of the problems it faced: that in the South slavery continued to exist, in all the states the right of suffrage was made dependent on high property qualifications, and, finally, public lands were parceled and sold in such a way that they came into the hands of wealthy land speculators. Daniel Shays and his followers tried to carry the popular revolution a step further, but failed.
The impact of the Revolution was very strong in the economic sphere. Commerce and industry benefited considerably. Yet, of greatest consequence were the changes which occurred in rural America. The elimination of incipient feudal relationships, liquidation of the estates belonging to the loyalists, and, most important, the opening of public lands in the Western territories made it possible for the new nation to enter, in the North and west of the Allegheny Mountains, upon the path of development in agriculture.
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