The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

“Study of the pamphlets confirmed my rather old-fashioned view that the American Revolution was above all else an ideological, constitutional, political struggle and not primarily a controversy between social groups undertaken to force changes in the organization of the society or the economy.”

Bailyn states the primary thesis of the book, which emerged from his examination of Revolutionary-era pamphlets, and he places his interpretation within the previous historiographical debate. By declaring his “old-fashioned” view that the American Revolution “was not primarily a controversy between social groups undertaken to force changes in the organization or the economy,” Bailyn rejects the neo-Marxist view of earlier Progressive Era historians, such as Charles Beard, who held that class interests had fueled the Revolution. Bailyn’s assertion that 18th-century Commonwealthmen ideas had enabled the colonists to fashion a coherent political ideology generating the Revolution also distinguishes his view from a number of 1950s “Consensus” historians who had severed colonial American politics from political thought. 

“For the primary goal of the American Revolution, which transformed American life and introduced a new era in human history, was not the overthrow or even the alteration of the existing social order but the preservation of political liberty threatened by the apparent corruption of the constitution, and the establishment in principle of the existing conditions of liberty.”

Bailyn distinguishes the American Revolution from the later French and Russian Revolutions, which attempted to overthrow “the existing social order.” The American Revolution was precipitated by a system of ideas that gave a specific meaning to the colonies’ accumulation of grievances against the British government. This distinctive ideology was focused on the preservation of political liberty, not the alteration of the social order; therefore, the Revolutionary pamphlets were rational and explanatory of constitutional principles.