This post has been sitting in draft for years. July 4, 2025 seems like a good time to let it go.
 |
| Detail of Liberty, artist unknown, c.1820 |
I have heard from several Canadians of approximately baby-boomer age that they were taught that the American Revolution was not actually a revolution. They learned, they told me, that it was essentially "a land transfer" from one group of thugs to another.
Not so.
A group of colonies overthrew an imperial government, and fashioned a form of representative self-government. How is that not a revolution?
The colonists could have set up a new monarchy (as some wanted to do), or an inherited peerage, or any number of forms of government. They chose a representative democracy, and built into the system a series of checks and balances that would allow future generations to reform and improve upon the foundation they constructed.
Obviously their work was incomplete! And obviously the lofty words of the Declaration of Independence were not reflected in the reality of most people's lives. But not a revolution?
Consider this. Post-revolutionary France maintained brutal chattel slavery throughout the Caribbean. French women achieved suffrage in 1944 -- decades after the US and UK. So the famed French revolution was... not really a revolution?
When other countries achieved independence from empire -- when Haiti, Jamaica, Brazil, India, Vietnam, and so on -- overthrew their imperial rulers, unless there was universal suffrage and true equality, there was not a revolution?
That claim would be ludicrous. And it's no less ludicrous when applied to the former British colonies now known as the United States of America.
From a well-sourced article in Wikipedia:
In political science, a revolution (Latin: revolutio, 'a turn around') is a rapid, fundamental transformation of a society's class, state, ethnic or religious structures.
Dictionary.com:
an overthrow or repudiation and the thorough replacement of an established government or political system by the people governed.
Merriam-Webster online:
a fundamental change in political organization
especially : the overthrow or renunciation of one government or ruler and the substitution of another by the governed
This "land transfer" reading of the American Revolution was on my mind after I revived my installment-plan reading of Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, and Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898-1919, reading a chapter every week. (I've read the first book and plan to tackle the second.)
The historians behind this project were very progressive, maintaining a thoroughly critical view. The status and rights of Indigenous people, Black people, women, workers, recent immigrants, and so on, are always part of the picture. Their telling of history is not sanitized.
The segments on the organizing and the rebellions that led to the Revolution leave little doubt. No accurate interpretation of US history could possibly lead to the conclusion that the American Revolution was not actually a revolution.
This leads me to wonder why Canadian educators promoted this view.
Was it a justification for British North America's choice to remain a colony -- for being a late-bloomer when it came to patriating its own governance?
Was it intended as an antidote for Canadian feelings of inferiority that were prevalent in those days?
Was it intended as a come-down for the bragging bully to the south?
Did they redefine all revolutions using this narrow lens?
I once heard an elder of the War Resisters Support Campaign mansplain to one of the former soldiers: "We became a country without resorting to violence." Uh yeah, and patriated the Constitution in 1982, and are still part of a monarchy. In this, my American roots will always show: I don't think that's anything to be proud of.
