What Was Revolutionary About the American Revolution?
Everyone understands the essentials of the American Revolution: thirteen North American colonies revolted against British rule and won their self-reliance. There’s much more to the story: the American Revolution, of all transformations, was a game-changer for the whole world. How so? And most importantly, why? Popular historian Allen Guelzo discusses.
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Script:
” The birthday of a brand-new world is at hand.”
That was what Thomas Paine, the intense pamphleteer, wrote in 1776, as thirteen of Great Britain’s North American nests increased in revolt against British rule and stated themselves a newly-independent nation.
The American Revolution was something the world had actually never seen– politically … financially … and diplomatically. Let’s look at all 3.
The politics.
Transformations themselves were not new, of course. Britain put itself through not one, however 2 transformations in the 17th century. Other countries in Europe endured similar upheavals.
These disobediences shared one of 2 goals: change the present monarch with another one or extort new defenses and privileges from the existing regime.
In plain contrast, the Americans did not propose merely toppling a monarchy. They proposed ending the extremely idea of monarchy as a worthwhile form of government.
In America, the person– not the government or the king– would hold the keys to power. With this overturning of the old way of doing things, the rebels made the political systems of Europe look as old-fashioned and irrational as totally as Newton’s laws had made medieval physics look antiquated and illogical.
As it was with politics, so it was with economics.
Tearing up the old order indicated more than just declining to take political orders from princes, kings and dukes. In a society of complimentary and equal residents, Americans would follow their own economic initiative.
This small-government model meant the state was to interfere as low as possible in the resident’s life. Americans founded the only nation ever to be based upon the principle of restraining the government. And that unleashed such dynamic economic growth, it took America from a fledgling state to a world power in simply fifty years.
A kid born in 1776 might live to see canal systems connect waterways from New York to New Orleans, see the electrical telegraph leap across unheard-of distances in communications, and the steamboat and railroad move travelers and freight at fractions of the expense enforced by horse and wagon
.
The large novelty of the transformation’s very first two legs– the political and the financial– was so great that numerous Americans, such as Yale president Timothy Dwight, revealed a desire not simply to remake the North American continent, but the rest of world also. America, Dwight wrote in a popular poem of the time, was destined to “Hush the tumult of war, and provide peace to the world.”
However the Founders rejected this view. Far from any desire to share America’s redemptive culture, the Founders propensity was to concern the remainder of the world as a possible risk– excited to strangle the American experiment, either by the re-imposition of empire or by association with more unsteady attempts at revolution, as in France.
The American position concerning foreign interventions was articulated by then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams in 1821: “Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been … unfurled, there will [America’s] heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be … But she goes not abroad in search of beasts to ruin.”
Obviously, the United States has actually not constantly lived by this attitude. America has allowed itself to be pulled into foreign experiences, of which the Founders would have disapproved. Nor has the United States always lived up to its best ideals. It has, at various times, seen unconfined commerce become monopoly and corruption. And we’ve needed to handle the terrible embarassment of slavery and its long consequences.
For the complete script, go to https://www.prageru.com/video/what-was-revolutionary-about-the-american-revolution
source
Everyone understands the essentials of the American Revolution: thirteen North American nests revolted against British guideline and won their self-reliance. There’s much more to the story: the American Revolution, of all transformations, was a game-changer for the entire world. Revolutions themselves were not new, of course. Britain put itself through not one, however 2 revolutions in the 17th century. And that let loose such vibrant financial development, it took America from a fledgling state to a world power in just fifty years.
