The Dominant Ideas Behind the American Revolution

Bailyn bases his research on "a collection of pamphlets of the American transition" (Bailyn ix), culling some 400 documents down unioned to the 72 he contemplates the most significant. He writes that these pamphlets

describe no merely positions taken but the reasons why positions were taken; they reveal motive and understanding: the assumptions, beliefs, and ideas--the articulated world view--that lay screwing the manifest events of the time. . . . I found myself studying . . . nothing little than the ideological origins of the American Revolution (Bailyn x).

Of course, one could just as easily argue that these pamphlets were merely advertisements for the coming rotary motion, and, in that regard, were propaganda. In other words, these documents present the arguments for the revolution in their most precedent form. An advertisement for an automobile appeals to the psychological and emotional needs of potency buyers; it does not examine the nuts and bolts of the car or consider design flaws or possible problems with the vehicle. The same can be said of original documents upon which Bailyn bases his study.

To some extent, Bailyn acknowledges the idealized picture presented by these documents. He places at the center of his argument the conclusion that the fathers of the revolution were sincere in their writings and impassioned by the smack that they were indeed faced with a consp

In the end I was convinced that the fear of a comprehensive combination against liberty throughout the English-speaking world--a conspiracy believed to have been nourished in corruption, and of which, it was felt, oppression in American was only the most immediately visible part--lay at the heart of the Revolutionary movement (Bailyn xiii).

In addition, Bailyn concludes that the political theory spun by the American revolutionaries was a fresh one, not simply a acquire of earlier ideas, but a philosophy which changed and challenged previous ideology to fit the specifics of the colonists' situation.

Robert Weir, in "'The Harmony We Were Famous For': An Interpretation of Pre-Revolutionary due south Carolina Politics," focuses on a more narrow aspect of the question, specifically, the miss of conflict among the people and classes of that state, which created, says Weir, a harmonious social and political structure. Weir praises the "country ideology" which produced such harmony, arguing, in alliance with Jameson, that "a series of interrelated assumptions about the virtues thought to be associated with wealthiness helped to maintain the belief that members of the elite should rule" (Weir 477). Weir argued further that this elitist ideology "envisioned the existence of a society in which the coming upon of economic and class interests played no role" (Weir 479). Essentially, worldwide wealth among the people created a harmonious society in which "the distance between the social classes was never wide" (Weir 480). However, Weir to a fault points out that this elitist-run system of harmony "lacked during the late colonial issue features which would have contributed to the development of techniques for handling basic political conflicts" (Weir 500). Weir focuses with Jameson on the social and elitist aspects of the Revolution, although Weir actually focuses very little on the Revolution itself.

Egnal, Marc, and Joseph A. Ernst. "An Economic Interpretation of the American Revolution." Willi
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