The North American Revolution

The North American Revolution, 1775–1787
   1. basic facts of the American Revolution are well known

   2. a bigger question is what it changed

   3. American Revolution was a conservative political movement
        a. aimed to preserve colonial liberties, rather than gain new ones
        b. for most of seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the British North American colonies had much     
        local autonomy
        c. colonists regarded autonomy as their birthright
        d. few thought of breaking away from Britain before 1750

  4. colonial society
        a. was far more egalitarian than in Europe
        b. in manners, they were republican well before the revolution

  5. Britain made a new drive to control the colonies and get more revenue from them in the 1760s

        a. Britain needed money for its global war with France
        b. imposed a number of new taxes and tariffs on the colonies
        c. colonists were not represented in the British parliament
        d. appeared to deny the colonists’ identity as true Englishmen
        e. challenged colonial economic interests
        f. attacked established traditions of local autonomy
    
   6. British North America was revolutionary for the society that had already emerged, not for the          
    revolution itself
        a. no significant social transformation came with independence from Britain
        b. accelerated democratic tendencies that were already established
        c. political power remained in the hands of existing elites
            i. property requirements for voting were lowered
            ii. property rights remained intact

   7. Many Americans thought they were creating a new world order
        a. some acclaimed the United States as “the hope and model of the human race”
        b. declaration of the “right to revolution” inspired other colonies around the world
        c. the U.S. Constitution was one of the first lasting efforts to put Enlightenment political ideas into
        practice