The Radicalism of the American Revolution

Why the Revolution was more radical than its powdered-wig reputation suggests. Wood traces how a hierarchical colonial society, where rank and deference ordered everything, became within a single generation a place where ordinary people claimed equality as their due. The change in what Americans believed they were owed was, he argues, the true revolution, deeper than the war. A bracing correction to the idea that 1776 was merely a change of management.

The historian who argued that the American Revolution was more radical than its gentlemanly reputation suggests. The Radicalism of the American Revolution traces how a hierarchical colonial society became, within a generation, a place where ordinary people claimed equality as their birthright. He shows that the Revolution changed not only who governed but what people believed they were owed.