Revolution concepts and historical significance

Revolution

How revolting

It maybe suggested that the American Revolution was inevitable. America was far from its colonial master, and unlike colonies in Africa (for example) most of the colonists were both here by choice and considered this new land to be a true home, which weakened their loyalty to the former homeland. America was a huge land rich in natural resources, and as the colonies grew it seems certain that eventually their citizens might resent having these resources co-opted by a little island across that Atlantic. Moreover, the settlers in America were an independent sort, a tendency encouraged by the vast frontier and predicted by their own or their ancestor's willingness to cross oceans to escape the control of an authoritarian state. So it seems most likely that the revolution would happen some day. Yet there must be a specific reason why it happened in 1775 rather than, say, in 1710 or in 1864. There seem to be two main reasons why the revolution occured when it did: the stressors caused by the ending of salutary neglect and the publication of Thomas Paine's "Common Sense."

Due to an unwritten colonial policy known as salutary neglect, American colonists had become used to relative freedom in their system of trade. Mercantilism is one of the primary factors in colonization, as the colonial country seeks to conquer other lands which provide raw materials for its production and simultaneously become markets for its goods. This was typified in the Atlantic System. Military conquest and the driving out or enslavement of indigenous people is only a small step towards economic, rather than military, domination. (Hence the native people of Africa became captured for slavers as often by their fellow Africans as by the white man, because they were in the process of being economically dominated) Once economic domination is a fact, militaristic power is moot. Native America was, at this point, largely dominated economically by the British. However, the Brits had been transformed in the process to Americans. In the process, the colonies economic loyalties to Britain were being replaced by loyalty to the colonies. In the mid-1700s, Britain tried to re-establish domination (economic and military) over America, but instead of meeting with self-sufficient and economically naive Native-Americans, Britain was now dealing with shrewd, economically powerful Colonist-Americans. These Colonists rejected being colonized, as it were, and the stress over Britain trying to re-establish that kind of economic power led quickly to war. The arena for this war was set when Britain tried to end the system of salutary neglect, and then it would only be a matter of years before the revolution was necessary.