United States History, 17A









Historiography of the American Revoution 
  The American Revolution is, perhaps, the single most important event in this nation's history, and yet, from nearly the moment it was over, historians have disagreed about 'why' it happened. The most popular explanation for the cause of the American Revolution could be summed up in the phrase 'liberty v. tyranny'. According to this view, the revolution was a struggle by liberty-loving Americans to free themselves from a tyrannical British rule. One other popular explanation or interpretation of the American Revolution is that Americans were motivated less by principles like liberty and more by their desire for money. In this view, the revolution is seen as a contest between two groups of merchants -- British and American -- each vying for control of the colonial economy. The collected interpretations of the American Revolution (and there are more than two, but we will be ignoring the others in this class), are called its 'historiography'.
  But which interpretation is correct? The answer to that question is: probably both. It depends upon which group of American colonials you look at and your beliefs about what might have motivated them.
  In colonial America north of the Mason-Dixon line, (the southern boundary of Pennsylvania and the northern boundary of Maryland), there were, perhaps, four different kinds of communities in which people might live: the frontier, subsistence farming communities, commercial farming communities, and cities. Looking at the last place first, only about 10% of colonial Americans lived in the port cities of Boston, Philadelphia, New York and Charleston. About 10% of the population lived in commercial farming communities. These were situated near the cities and provided food for those urban populations. Approximately 70% -- by far the largest number of colonial Americans -- lived in the third area, subsistence farming communities. These little towns numbered, on average, between 800 and 1,000 inhabitants. Here families grew their own food and bartered with their neighbors for items they could not produce themselves. They did not import or export anything, and they were relatively isolated from similar towns. News from the large port cities or from Europe reached them infrequently and always long after the fact. People who lived in the fourth kind of community -- the frontier -- were not really living in a community at all, but were cut off from almost everything and everyone, and they preferred it that way.
   If we look at the group of colonials who lived in the port cities, it is easy to see, especially with regard to the merchants who traded in molasses, how they could have been upset by the Molasses and Sugar Acts. Under both of these measures, American merchants were taxed on the molasses they imported, and, if caught smuggling without paying the tax, they could be tried in Admiralty Courts without juries as far away as Halifax, Nova Scotia. You can imagine that they opposed the British regulations out of their love of liberty and opposition to what they could have seen as tyrannical taxing and regulatory measures. These measures were designed, after all, to interfere with and reduce their property -- their incomes. Looked at in this way, you might conclude that the first interpretation of the American Revolution -- liberty v. tyranny -- is more appropriate.
   Looked at another way, however, these same events could be seen to support the second interpretation -- the one that suggests that American merhants were more interested in money than in principles like liberty. For example, under the Molasses Act of 1733, imported molasses was taxed at the rate of 6p. per gallon. Under the Sugar Act of 1764, imported molasses was taxed at the rate of 3p. per gallon. This is a reduction of 50% in the amount of tax. Why, then, was the Sugar Act opposed by colonial merchants as 'taxation without representation' and the Molasses Act was not? The answer is that the Molasses Act was not enforced and the Sugar Act was. If American colonial merchants were truly motivated by principles like liberty and 'no taxation without representation', they should have formed groups lke the Sons of Liberty to protest the Molasses Act, even if the duties were not enforced. They did not. Were Americans, then, really motivated more by their desire for money than they were by principles?
   In looking at the motivation of Americans during the American Revolution, we have, so far, only looked at merchants in port cities. City populations accounted for only about 10% of the colonial population as a whole. And not everyone in the cities was a merchant. What motivated the rest of them? And what about the vast majority of the colonial population who lived in subsistence farming communities? How did they feel about the Molasses and Sugar Acts? They raised their own food and imported nothing, especially molasses. They were relatively isolated from neighboring subsistence towns let alone the events that were stirring up people in the port cities. There is evidence to suggest that these colonial Americans cared very little about what was going on in Boston, New York and Philadelphia. They were too busy surviving to care about questions of liberty and taxation. They were already free and they voted to tax themselves. The British Parliament may have been intruding into the economic lives of the merchants of Boston, but it paid very little notice to the hundreds of little subsistence towns in the colonies. And these towns returned the favor.
   John Adams once estimated that only about a third of American colonials ever supported the revolution. Another third remained loyal to the British. And the final third did not care one way or the other. This observation makes sense if you remember that colonial Americans did not all live in the same kinds of places and they were not all motivated by the same things.
Please answer the following questions:
14.What is historiography? What are the two most popular interpretations of the American Revolution?
15. Where did most people live in the colonial period?
16. What was the reaction of colonial American merchants who lived in port cities to the Sugar Act?
17. True or false:  Colonial Americans who lived in subsistence towns probably cared very little about the Sugar Act.
18. According to John Adams, what proportion of the colonial population actually supported the revolution?
 
 

 
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Revised August 25, 2004
by Tom Gallup, e-mail address: [email protected]
West Valley College
http://www.westvalley.edu/wvc/ss/gallup/gallup.html