The American Revolution was shaped by high principles and low ones, by imperial politics, dynastic rivalries, ambition, greed, personal loyalties, patriotism, demographic growth, social and economic changes, cultural developments, British intransigence and American anxieties. It was shaped by conflicting interests between Britain and America, between regions within America, between families and between individuals. It was shaped by religion, ethnicity and race, as well as by tensions between rich and poor. It was shaped, perhaps above all else, by the aspirations of ordinary people to make fulfilling lives for themselves and their families, to be secure in their possessions, safe in their homes, free to worship as they wished, and to improve their lives by availing themselves of opportunities that seemed to lie within their grasp.
No one of these factors, nor any specific combination of them, can properly be said to have caused the American Revolution. An event as vast as the American Revolution is simply too complex to assign it neatly to particular causes. Although we can never know the causes of the American Revolution with precision, we can see very clearly the most important consequences of the Revolution. They are simply too large and important to miss, and so clearly related to the Revolution that they cannot be traced to any other sequence of events. Every educated American should understand and appreciate them.
First, the American Revolution secured the independence of the United States from the dominion of Great Britain and separated it from the British Empire. While it is altogether possible that the thirteen colonies would have become independent during the nineteenth or twentieth century, as other British colonies did, the resulting nation would certainly have been very different than the one that emerged, independent, from the Revolutionary War. The United States was the first nation in modern times to achieve its independence in a national war of liberation and the first to explain its reasons and its aims in a declaration of independence, a model adopted by national liberation movements in dozens of countries over the last 250 years.
Second, the American Revolution established a republic, with a government dedicated to the interests of ordinary people rather than the interests of kings and aristocrats. The United States was the first large republic since ancient times and the first one to emerge from the revolutions that rocked the Atlantic world, from South America to Eastern Europe, through the middle of the nineteenth century. The American Revolution influenced, to varying degrees, all of the subsequent Atlantic revolutions, most of which led to the establishment of republican governments, though some of those republics did not endure. The American republic has endured, due in part to the resilience of the Federal Constitution, which was the product of more than a decade of debate about the fundamental principles of republican government. Today most of the world’s nations are at least nominal republics, due in no small way to the success of the American republic.
Third, the American Revolution created American national identity, a sense of community based on shared history and culture, mutual experience and belief in a common destiny. The Revolution drew together the thirteen colonies, each with its own history and individual identity, first in resistance to new imperial regulations and taxes, then in rebellion, and finally in a shared struggle for independence. Americans inevitably reduced the complex, chaotic and violent experiences of the Revolution into a narrative of national origins, a story with heroes and villains, of epic struggles and personal sacrifices. This narrative is not properly described as a national myth, because the characters and events in it, unlike the mythic figures and imaginary events celebrated by older cultures, were mostly real. Some of the deeds attributed to those characters were exaggerated and others were fabricated, usually to illustrate some very real quality for which the subject was admired and held up for emulation. The revolutionaries themselves, mindful of their role as founders of the nation, helped create this common narrative as well as symbols to represent national ideals and aspirations.
American national identity has been expanded and enriched by the shared experiences of two centuries of national life, but those experiences were shaped by the legacy of the Revolution and are mostly incomprehensible without reference to the Revolution. The unprecedented movement of people, money and information in the modern world has created a global marketplace of goods, services and ideas that has diluted the hold of national identity on many people, but no global identity has yet emerged to replace it, nor does this seem likely to happen any time in the foreseeable future.
Fourth, the American Revolution committed the new nation to ideals of liberty, equality, natural and civil rights and responsible citizenship and made them the basis of a new political order. None of these ideals was new or originated with Americans. They were all rooted in the philosophy of ancient Greece and Rome, and had been discussed, debated and enlarged by creative political thinkers beginning with the Renaissance. The political writers and philosophers of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment disagreed about many things, but all of them imagined that a just political order would be based on these ideals. What those writers and philosophers imagined, the American Revolution created—a nation in which ideals of liberty, equality, natural and civil rights and responsible citizenship are the basis of law and the foundation of a free society.
The revolutionary generation did not complete the work of creating a truly free society, which requires overcoming layers of social injustice, exploitation and other forms of institutionalized oppression that have accumulated over many centuries, as well as eliminating the ignorance, bigotry and greed that support them. One of the fundamental challenges of a political order based on principles of universal right is that it empowers ignorant, bigoted, callous, selfish and greedy people in the same way it empowers the wise and virtuous. For this reason, political progress in free societies can be painfully, frustratingly slow, with periods of energetic change interspersed with periods of inaction or even retreat. The wisest of our revolutionaries understood this, and anticipated that creating a truly free society would take many generations. The flaw lies not in our revolutionary beginnings or our revolutionary ideals, but in human nature. Perseverance alone is the answer.
Our independence, our republic, our national identity and our commitment to the high ideals that form the basis of our political order are not simply the consequences of the Revolution, to be embalmed in our history books. They are living legacies of the Revolution, more important now, as we face the challenges of a world demanding change, than ever before. Without understanding them, we find our history incomprehensible, our present confused and our future dark. Understanding them, we recognize our common origins, appreciate our present challenges and can advocate successfully for the revolutionary ideals that are the only foundation for the future happiness of the world.
EXPLORE THE SHAPING OF THE REVOLUTION
The origins of the American Revolution can be traced to the earliest years of English colonization in the Americas, and its intellectual influences reach back to antiquity, but the Revolution took shape in the twenty-one years between the beginning of the French and Indian War in 1754 and the beginning of the Revolutionary War in 1775.
INDEPENDENCE
The events of those years forced the people of British America to consider their relationship with the British Crown and Parliament. They had long valued their relative independence within the British Empire, but as the British government imposed new restrictions and new taxes on them, they resisted and ultimately a large number of them decided to secure their independence through separation from Britain.
REPUBLICAN IDEAS
Those same events encouraged many British Americans to embrace republican ideas, which helped them make sense of the social, economic and cultural changes going on around them, and ultimately shaped the governments they established.
AMERICAN IDENTITY
At the outset of the Revolutionary era, the individual colonies were only loosely connected with one another. The French and Indian War and the imperial crisis that followed it drew them closer together and led to the formation of groups and institutions that spanned colonial boundaries and created the conditions for the establishment of continental institutions and the beginning of a sense of shared origins, purpose, and destiny that was the foundation of American national identity.
REVOLUTIONARY IDEALS
During these years the confrontation between the colonies and the British government led British Americans to consider the basic principles of the political order, and to define and redefine liberty, equality, natural and civil rights and the nature of political allegiance, as they questioned their subjection to the British Crown and embraced a new idea of citizenship.
START EXPLORING
This section of Explore the American Revolution includes a wide range of primary resources—documents, fine and graphic arts, artifacts and other assets illustrating the transformation of British American ideas about independence, republicanism and republican government and shared identity, and the development of their ideas about liberty, equality, natural and civil rights and the nature of citizenship, as well as the people involved in those momentous changes and the events that compelled them to reconsider the relationship of the colonies to Great Britain. This section of Explore also includes interpretive essays on important people, events and ideas that shaped the American Revolution. If this is your first visit to The Shaping of the American Revolution, you might begin with George III.