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Is The American Revolution Really A Revolution?

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The debate amongst historians as to the radical versus conservative nature of the American Revolution has been animated and varied since the end of the revolution itself. At one end of the spectrum, some question whether the American revolution was a revolution at all. Political scientist and sociologist, Theda Skocpol believes that a true revolution involves the uprising of a peasant class and the complete destruction of the ‘institutional foundations’ of the old order of government as happened in the French (1789) and Russian Revolutions (1917). Obviously, this was not the circumstance in the American Revolution which had less social and class conflict and economic oppression than the revolutions in France and Russia. In fact, support for the American Revolution came from individuals from …show more content…

Both Skocpol and Gentz have narrow interpretations of what qualifies as a revolution. Their standards exclude the American Revolution from being considered as a revolution at all, never mind a radical one. Further along the spectrum, historian, John C. Miller, believes that enough change took place to call the American Revolution a real revolution. While he believes that many of the revolution's ideals were originally British, he contends that the Americans were the ones who brought those concepts to life and held the British responsible for not upholding them in the way that they treated the colonists. Louis Gottschalk widens the criteria for revolution even further. He argues that a revolution need not "be more than ...a popular movement whereby a significant change in the structure of a nation or society is effected.” The American revolution easily qualifies under this description. However, it is historians like Murray Rothbard and Gordon S. Wood that move the discussion away from whether America's revolt against the British was in fact a revolution and instead move it towards the assertion that not only was it a revolution, but it was a radical one. As

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