Gordon Wood’s Radicalism of the American Revolution Essay

4. What was the Revolutionary movement, at its core, really all about? Was it about the amount of taxation, the right of Parliament to tax, the political corruption of Britain and the virtue of America, the right of a king to govern America, or the colonies’ growing sense of national identity apart from Britain? Was the Revolution truly a radical overturning of government and society—the usual definition of a revolution—or something far more limited or even conservative in its defense of traditional rights?

Many revolutions have taken place throughout history, ranging from the unremarkable to the truly memorable, such as the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution and the American Revolution. Through an examination of the social, cultural, economic and political causes of the American Revolution, an exploration of key arguments both for and against the American Revolution, and an analysis of the social, cultural, economic and political changes brought about by the American Revolution it can be demonstrated unequivocally that the American Revolution was indeed truly revolutionary.

No one will argue that the American Revolution was one of the most significant events in shaping American ideology. The impact on the economy, sociological and ideological make-up of America are still seen in today's society. Many great minds have passed commentary on the causes and impacts of the American Revolution such as; Bernard Bailyn, Louis Hartz, Joyce Appleby, and Gordon Wood. This research examines why these experts believed what they did about the causes of the American Revolution and how we can correlate those causes to the economic and political crisis America is now facing in the 21st century as compared to the 18th century.

war, it is a sign of radical action. Britains' army was four times as big

The American Revolution plays a predominant role in the development of United States history; it is essential to the progression of the thirteen colonies’ emergence as an independent estate. Generally speaking, the American Revolution was fundamentally the war waged against Great Britain by the Colonials residing within the thirteen colonies. Their purpose: To break away from the motherland and authoritatively become a self-governed society. Although the Revolutionary War on its own played a prevalent role in the evolvement of United States history, comprehending the plethora of altercations which contributed to the uprising are crucial. “For although the War of the American Revolution began when Captain John Parker lined up his handful of men on Lexington Common, the revolution itself was not a battle of bullets but a battle of opinion that began in the early 1760s.” These contributing factors include: The Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, the Tea Act, and the Coercive Acts. As these factors are stumbled upon chronologically, hostility between the Americans and British grows in a snowball effect which leads to the battle of Lexington and Concord.

The American Revolution was much more than an insurrection against British tariffs and patronage decree. Rather, it was a bureaucratic catastrophe in which colonists from the thirteen American colonies denied the British sovereignty, eradicated the jurisdiction of Great Britain and established the United States of America. The upheaval was a primitive modern revolution in which generality traversed for liberty in the statute of law, constitutional privilege and supremacy. Ensuing years of contention and maltreatment, the colonists adjudicated to take action for what they postulated was ethical. The colonists were able to win the American Revolution against the British, despite the fact that they faced numerous disadvantages, by their

Gordon S. Wood, in The Radicalism of the American Revolution, explicitly details the societal, economic, and governmental institutions of Colonial American society, and considers the era to be pre-modern because of its strong focus on monarchy, hierarchy, and patriarchy. The colonial world in America was “traditional in its basic social relationships and in its cultural society.” (Wood 11). Wood even suggests that, “in some respects colonial society was more traditional than that of the mother country” (12). With the concept of the traditionalism of the colonial world, Wood declares the era to be “pre-modern.” Pre-modernism can be defined as the era before industrialization, which radically altered the social contract within families and between

Gordon S. Wood was born in Concord, Massachusetts on November 27, 1933. In 1955 he graduated from Tufts University and then went on to serve in the U.S. Air Force in Japan. On April 30, 1956 Mr. Wood would marry the former Louise Goss they would have three children Christopher, Elizabeth, and Amy. After serving in the U.S. Air Force in Japan, during which time he earned an A.M. at Harvard University, he entered the Ph.D. program in history at Harvard, where he studied under Bernard Bailyn. He would receive his Ph. D. in 1964. He taught at Harvard, the College of William and Mary, the University of Michigan, Brown, and Cambridge University.

At its fundamental core the American Revolution was fought over liberty and freedom. It was a movement marked by action which upset the political order of the eighteenth century. However, if all the American Revolution achieved was breaking the yoke of empirical control its lasting importance would have been lost amongst the scores of colonial revolutions that came before it, such as the Dutch’s break from the Spanish or the Corsicans overthrow of the Genoese. Influenced by the period of enlightenment, the American Revolution was also a revolution of thought which sent rapid waves of change through the social and cultural spheres of the time. In the decades that predated the American Revolution, many nations looked to England as a model. It was believed that England possessed the ideal political system due to its balanced constitution and more importantly its strong sense of liberty. However, after the revolution concluded, nations began to look to newly formed America and the radically evolved ideals its political and social systems were built upon. This is what made the American Revolution revolutionary because it forever altered the meaning of liberty and equality.

Our textbook “Who Built America?” by Christopher Clark, David Jaffee, Joshua Brown and Nancy Hewiit talks about the Revolutionary thoroughly and has its own perspective on that issue.

Independence was the main focus of the colonies after monarch rule of the British. During this key period of American history, "The American Revolution" would be a more appropriate term instead of "The War for Independence." In the dictionary, the term "revolution" is defined as an overthrow of one government and its replacement with another. The American Revolution gives a broader sense of what is going on; starting from the initial ideology of independence, the acts and protests carried out based on this ideology, and the war that resulted from it. "The War for Independence" is only a small section of the whole spectrum of The American Revolution. In this paper, I will show differences between the two ideas by providing concrete

Wim Klooster’s book Revolutions in the Atlantic World expresses the deep roots of the revolutionary war period throughout various locations and circumstances. He strives to express the causes, effects, and the political civil war which caused the great uproar in the once colonial lands. This shift in history is noted in Klooster’s book and expanded upon in his chapter entitled “The Revolution’s Compared.” He notes the various commonalities between the American, French, Haitian, and Spanish American revolutions. Klooster’s organization, sources, and thorough articulation of the revolutionary time period sheds a new light on the causes and effects of revolution on countries, between 1775 and the mid 1800s.

In the Preface, Ellis recreates the “sense of urgency” felt at the time of the Revolutionary War. Ellis discusses how the founding members of the revolutionary generation secured their legacies through battle and later though legislation. Ellis reminds the reader that our forefathers risked being hung for treason. No other colony at that time in history had ever successfully won its independence to form a lasting republic, thus the United States had no basis to build upon.

The definition of the word revolution has itself evolved significantly over the course of the American and French revolutions. Prior to the French Revolution, the word meant the process of coming a full cycle, or a return to a point previously occupied (Kirk 295). It is only after the chaotic French revolution which overturned the old political and social order in the country that “revolution” came to be known as a radical change in social and government institutions. Since we are analyzing the American Revolution from the perspective of the events of the French, it is apt to use the interpretation of the word that came into being post the French revolution.

* Ferguson argues that the ‘revolution’, contrary to the conventional revisionist modern American narrative of ‘freedom’ and