American revolution: causes, events, and outcomes

American Revolution: A conservative, successful Revolution of the haves against those who had more

We usually think of revolutions, particularly colonial revolutions, in radical terms. Perhaps as a result of Marxist influence upon cotemporary historical analysis, the word revolution summons up in historian's minds and imaginations the blazing red flags and blazing anger of the lower classes, rising in revolt. Yet this image is not only overly idealistic and unrealistic, but neglects to take into consideration the fact that our own, American revolution was founded by men who were propertied landowners, once-respected generals (in the case of George Washington) of the regime they were fighting, and that many decided to go to war for economic reasons regarding taxation and a decreasing influence in the parliament of the mother nation of England rather than economic survival. Thomas Paine's radicalism of Common Sense was the ideological exception rather than the rule.

The American Revolution was a colonial revolution, true, but of the haves rather than the have-nots. British attempts to tax goods for the colonialists and threaten the privileges of untaxed goods and lax supervision of the mother country was met with anger. Perhaps the most obviously conservative attitude of the colonialists was when, in an attempt to, King George III of England issued "The Proclamation of 1763," prohibiting any English settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains and requiring those colonialists already settled in those regions to return east in an attempt to reduce the potential colonial conflagrations with Native Americans. The 1764 measure to reorganize the American customs system was simply entitled to better enforce British trade laws, which had often been ignored in the past.

Other British economic prohibitions would strike the modern eye as unjust, however. The Currency Act of 1764 prohibited the colonists from issuing any legal tender paper money and would have destabilized the entire colonial economy over time. The 1765 Stamp Act taxed all printed materials. But even acts such as the 1764 Sugar Act were put forth in a vain attempt repair the costs done to British coffers, fighting the French and Indian wars for the colonist's benefit, and not simply with the aim of impoverishing the British nation at the colonialist's expense.