7a Age of Atlantic Revolutions Introduction

0:02 welcome back this week we begin the age of atlantic revolution and looking at the American Revolution at least one studied by Americans in traditional frameworks of national nationalist history the American Revolution is usually celebrated as a great historical moment a watershed of liberty equality freedom and democracy according to popular myth and traditional history the American Revolution was a revolution for and by the people we the people a grassroots revolution in favor of political independence and democracy but was the American Revolution truly

0:48 revolutionary in the textbook sense of revolution and was it a popular revolution for and by the people and this is what we're going to be looking at today what is a revolution well in history read we define a revolution as follows a revolution has to have two things first it must be violent it must involve violence it must be violent in nature and - it must be ideological in nature it must involve a clearly defined political ideology for permanent change not just a reaction to short-term conditions so a revolution which is violence which involves violence involved is very different than a rebellion a rebellion

1:35 usually has no overarching goals plans for permanent change rebellions are more reactions to immediate events or conditions and they're usually not conceived within a broader ideological framework by this definition the American Revolution was a revolution it was violent and it involved a political ideology but perhaps we can best think of it as Howard Zinn dead as Howard Zinn said as a quote kind of revolution perhaps it was a revolution which ultimately been leave my white men and a revolution in which the leaders distrusted the lower class we'll come back to this later so

2:21 in this class we'll study the American Revolution as a kind of revolution occurring within the broader framework of the age of Atlantic revolutions for a long time Americans have tended to study what's usually called the American Revolution in isolation as this great historical event in terms of human rights in terms of human rights and democracy it was to some extent but we also have to place the American Revolution in its proper historical context one thing we'll emphasize is this idea of the age of Atlantic revolutions the American Revolution was only one of many revolutions occurring throughout the Atlantic world and must

3:09 be viewed in the context of the French Revolution the Haitian Revolution and other revolutions occurring in the spanish-american world all of these revolutions were inspired not cause by but inspired by the ideology ideology of the Enlightenment so what Americans usually call the American Revolution is best looked at as the American War of Independence it was thought of as the American War of Independence at the time and it's the same thing that British people call it today and at least initially it wasn't looked at as a revolution but a civil war between British subjects this idea of the American Revolution as a civil war is very critical even the leaders of

3:57 the American Revolution conceived of the war as a civil war first they hoped for greater political rights within the British Empire it wasn't a war of independence until the issuing of the Declaration of Independence so regarding the American Revolution several myths need to be debunked it was not necessarily a popular grassroots rep of We the People led from the bottom up we need to debunk the popular myth that the people rebelled against a small ruling elite or tyrannical King but really the American Revolution was a complex civil war in which class and political loyalties were complex you will see a lot of this in the Howard

4:44 Zinn reading the leaders of the American Revolution distrusted the poor and the mob as much as they distrusted the British and a lot of the American Revolution a lot of the American population was not necessarily in support of the revolution about one-third of the college opposed the revolution one-third supported it and one-third were sort of apathetic or neutral in the American Revolution popular mobilization was also complex for instance marginalized groups like blacks Indians and women all played critical roles in the revolution success but none of these groups were

5:29 compensated or enfranchise once the new regime too came to power revolution wasn't a much of a revolution for them nor was the product of the revolution a true democracy it produced a kind of democracy that benefitted property elites okay so I've been trying to introduce you to some general concepts in studying the American motion and let me sort of summarize these now in terms of four general topics ok so first thing is that the revolution the American Revolution the American War of Independence cannot be understood outside of the realm of international politics the American

6:15 Revolution was one of many revolutions occurring at this time parallel to the French Revolution the Haitian Revolution and other revolutions in the Spanish colonies and when compared with these other American Atlantic revolutions when compared with the other Atlantic revolutions the American Revolution actually seems far revolutionary even retrograde in terms of its attitudes towards towards race class and political participation and you'll see what I mean later we'll be looking at race and the Haitian Revolution in slavery but any case we have to look at it in the broader context second point is that the Revolution and its success was not

7:02 predetermined it was not preordained none of the revolution was foreordained even if active fault lines were visible the political earthquakes actually causing the revolution could have been invited up until the very last moment this is important the revolution was not guaranteed success even after it broke out it was not a predetermined thing that the Americans would be successful it was really against all odds loyalty to the Empire in the American colonies work was considerable one third of the colonists were actively against the revolution right so it's only that in the course of the war that the American

7:49 Revolution triumphs by a great deal of luck the third point is complex and divided loyalties in the American Revolution loyalties were complex and in some cases the main protagonist in the war were previously voiceless popular classes marginalized groups who were fighting for their own reasons their own reasons that had little to do with the motivations of the elite so complex and divided loyalties groups who were mobilized by the leaders of the revolution for the revolutions purposes let me give you a practical example of this a classic example is African

8:38 African American slaves African American slaves were 20% of the population of the American colonies on the outbreak of the revolution and they will be mobilized used by both sides both by the revolutionaries and the British but they are fighting for very different reasons than the respective leaders right African slaves for instance were promised their freedom if they fought to the British by British military leaders and they were pitted against their American owners but the interest of these black slaves freedom had little to do with the elite cry of taxation without representation they're fighting for their freedom again we'll come come

9:23 back to these ideas once again these marginalized groups who are mobilized for the revolution like women slaves others they will benefit little from the Revolution once it's over so we'll see these examples later finally the notion of a democratic revolution and the influence of the Enlightenment Oh actually so um in his classic and still influential study the historian are all

10:09 are are palmer presented this era the age of atlantic revolution as one of the triumphal march of democracy the name of this book was the age of the democratic revolutions and his view basically all of these revolutions that occurred the ones that I mentioned were really all about democracy but was the American Revolution truly democratic that's what we're going to be looking at was the American Revolution truly a popular revolution for and by the people um was it a true revolution defined in terms of class race and gender well we'll look at that and come back to some

10:55 of Howard Zinn's ideas and the at the American Revolution as a kind of revolution later in lecture now let me just say now that wow I think we need to debunk some of the myths surrounding the American Revolution I don't mean to say that it wasn't important progressive relatively liberal for its time right we don't want to judge the American Revolution by posthumous standards meaning standards that came about later after the after the time of course to some extent we are but on the other hand we should also recognize how it was progressive for its time right okay so um the last point democracy and the

11:42 Enlightenment we're gonna begin we're going to begin the lecture with a discussion of the Enlightenment because the Enlightenment was the ideological inspiration for all of the revolutions in this era including the American Revolution so we'll begin our discussion there the Enlightenment did not cause the American Revolution but it pried it provided the ideological roots and ideological inspiration for it so we need to begin with the general discussion of what was he enlightenment okay and there's the term enlightenment so the Enlightenment was a 17th and 18th century European intellectual movement

12:28 it's best to find as a new attitude towards knowledge new method toward knowledge the Enlightenment doesn't refer to any single one set of beliefs right so in an unenlightened person could believe any number of things are political ideology rather it referred to an attitude towards knowledge what was this attitude well it was a movement where by European intellectuals and philosophers applied the principles of science and the scientific revolution the scientific method to the political economic and social problems of the so I'll repeat that it was an intellectual movement where European intellectuals and philosophers applied

13:15 the principles of the Scientific Revolution and the scientific method to the leading political economic and social problems of the day the idea of enlightenment does not imply any single ideology but a method and attitude towards knowledge broadly speaking the Enlightenment involved call for human affairs to be guided by rationality not faith rationality not superstition it placed a tremendous emphasis on reason it called for a worldview based on science and it called for a worldview in which the scientific method and empiricism were applied to the

14:02 fundamental problems of government and society I mentioned the word empiricism the Enlightenment involved new attitude towards revealed knowledge reveal knowledge is religious knowledge that you cannot prove through any quantifiable facts or measurable data revealed knowledge would be like a religious revelation something that a prophet just knows messages that a prophet is given by God okay so the example of reveal and examples of revealed knowledge includes like the Moses receiving the Ten Commandments

14:48 from the Hebrew God or how the Prophet Mohammed received the Quran directly from God that's examples of revealed knowledge the Enlightenment took a critical stance towards revealed knowledge and emphasized empirical data empirical data empirical data is quantifiable data data that you can measure prove collect through numbers in that regard the Enlightenment is often misunderstood it's often views viewed as anti religious it's not necessarily true but it did involve an effort to bring

15:33 religion and science in harmony and it involved new ways of trimming the tree of knowledge it involved new ways of classifying knowledge reordering knowledge and definitely did push the boundaries between the known and the unknown and this in and of itself was to some people anti-religious the Enlightenment and the so called feel of sauce philosophers as you see here in the salon and in the coffeehouse the coffeehouse was a critical space of the Enlightenment they definitely pushed the boundaries between the known and the unknown and eliminate areas of the world

16:19 that were believed to be unknowable knowable sacred or perhaps only accessible by revealed knowledge so it did involve an effort to eliminate area areas that were believed to be unknowable like sacred in any case I'm gonna be relatively brief on the alignment and focus on the three main political philosophers of the Enlightenment now all of these philosophers will discuss three deal with what we call social contract theory social contract theory so sure social contract theory is the idea of some sort of contract like a written contract between the ruler and the rule you can think of it as a constitution of sorts okay the first we'll be looking at is

17:06 thomas hobbes he's english a little bit on background he was an enthusiastic supporter of the Scientific Revolution he knew Galileo in Italy and this is the keeping the enlightenment philosophers like Hobbes many of the enlightenment philosophers saw themselves as heirs to the Scientific Revolution he thought that he was a scientist of sorts but a scientist of the human condition so this is a key idea of the Enlightenment implying applying reason rationality a

17:51 sort of scientific method to the study of human affairs and government okay and this is what Hobbes does a little on context I won't dwell on it Hobbes wrote his masterpiece the Leviathan during the English Civil War after the execution of the king and he's writing in a very dark time during the authoritarian regime of Oliver Cromwell so all of this sort of dark political times definitely influences his ideas in a nutshell his masterpiece the Leviathan was an apology for absolute government for absolutist government the Leviathan

18:36 was a rigorous philosophical justification for a strong central political authority in the Leviathan he has he has a pretty you know pretty clear ideas on the human condition and in the Leviathan he portrays human beings as thoroughly materialistic and selfish he traced all human emotions as egotistical all human emotions and actions are intended to increase pleasure and minimize pan pain sorry according to Hobbes man was a creature dominated by his passions and carnal appetites and Hobbes believed that man would satisfy these carnal appetites at the expense of fellow man classic view

19:24 of Hobbes is that men in the state of nature the state of nature be means before there is any formal government no government men in the state of nature are locked in a constant state of war it's a war of quote every man against every man however unlike previous Christian philosophers he believed that human society government only existed to provide for humans daily needs but not for a higher or moral spiritual forces so religion isn't really part of the equation of his idea of government

20:10 according to Hobbes all human beings in their natural state are inclined in petrol struggle for power and because men were more or less equal in their abilities their equality read em natee hatred competition and perpetual Whorley in the state of nature it was quote a war of every man against every man this is how Hobbes described the state of nature without government society is chaos here's what he says in such a condition there is no place for industry no navigation no commodious building no instruments of moving no arts no letters and the life of man is solitary poor

20:59 nasty brutish and sort so without a strong central government humans run amok that's taught the Hobbes main idea so contrary to previous Christian SiC thinkers Hobbes rejected the notion that human beings are naturally sociable but human beings were self-centered creatures lacking a master so once again the state of nature was a state of chaos in which human beings were hunt haunted by fear of destruction and death human beings only escaped the terrible state of nature according to Hobbes by entering into a particular type of political contract according to which

21:45 they agreed to live in a Commonwealth tightly ruled by a sovereign at absolute King this contract obliged every person to set aside personal rights and live according to the golden rule the golden rule was something like don't do to others which would you which you would not like to have done to yourself Hobbes believed that newman's needed some absolute ruler to enforce this otherwise the state of nature was chaos however because words and promises weren't enough to seal the contract the con the contract would allow for the cohesive use of force by the sovereign to compel compliance therefore because

22:35 the dangers of anarchy and chaos outweighed tyranny the contract established the cohesive use of force to compel compliance that is to say in plain language the authority of rulers should be absolute and unlimited in their power the dangers of tyranny tyranny is like an awl controlling unfair ruler the dangers of tyranny were better than the dangers of Anarchy chaos the specific the specific structure of the government was not really of the greatest concern to Hobbes it could be a monarch or king it could be a legislature but the sticking point was

23:21 that its authority was absolute and that God was nowhere in the equation it was really about the material interests of man so he did provide justification for an absolute monarch or an absolute legislature but one thing that's new is that divine right monarchy a monarch ordained by God is nowhere in the picture so in this theory of the social contract Hobbes you know takes religion out of the equation it is an absolute authority and the key thing is that human beings did not have a choice to enter into this contract with the ruler they were forced to submit and if

24:08 they didn't like it too bad according to Hobbes the dangers of tyranny outweighed the dangers of anarchy let's move on to Locke Locke is by far the most influential thinker on the framers of the American Revolution Locke we can look at as a defender of Liberty and toleration and he has a very different view on human nature government than Hobbes a little bit on his background so Locke is definitely the most influential political thinker of the 17th century he's much more radical than Hobbes and during the Civil War Locke was on a different sides Locke's family had

24:55 Puritans sympathy sympathies during the English Civil War his family fought with the parliamentary forces against the king he later opposed charles ii and wrote his works on government that were published later he was in exile for a while so in any case here are his major works the first treatise of government the first treatises of government rejected notions of government that based political authority on the patriarchal model of fathers ruling over a family what does that mean it rejected notions of government basing political authority on the paternal model of fathers ruling

25:41 over a family well in many societies where you have absolute divine divine right monarch there may have been no written constitution or social contract but the idea was that the unlimited authority of this king was sort of like on a big macro level the authority of a father over his family the father's authority was absolutely but the father was supposed to be a good benevolent ruler of his family and that all applied to notions of kingship the first treatise of government rejected this ok um let's look at his second treatise on government Locke has a very different view of human nature than Hobbes

26:28 according to Hobbes in the state of late nature the life of man is solitary poor nasty brutish and short Locke has a different view Locke portrays the natural human state of nature as one of perfect freedom and equality and in the state of nature Locke believed that everyone enjoyed certain natural rights as he said life liberty and property hobbes by contrast believed that these rights did not exist in the state of nature contrary to Hobbes Locke regarded human beings in their natural state of nature as creatures of reason and rationality and they acted out of goodwill they weren't just creatures of

27:15 uncontrolled passion and selfish like Hobbes believed for Locke humans possessed a strong capacity for code welling peacefully when they entered into the contract with the ruler they don't experience a state of Locke warfare in the state of nature society without government but they do require some sort of political authority to sort thing out to sort thing out to sort things out when problems arise so a very different view than Hobbes according to Locke humans enter in to the contract with the ruler to preserve and secure rights that already existed that they already had prior in the state of nature so this is a very different idea human

28:02 beings enter into the social contract with the ruler to preserve and secure the natural rights that already exist in life and liberty and property according to Locke government existed to protect the liberty of the state of nature not overcome this remember Hobbes believed that these rights did not exist in the state of nature by contrast Locke believed that government only existed to protect the rights that were already there according to Locke government must be responsible for and protect protect the concerns of the government of the govern government must be responsible for and responsive to the concerns of the governed if you and if

28:50 the ruler did not look out for net for human beings natural rights then it was the duty and the right of the citizens to overthrow that government the conflict that Hobbes believed characterized the state of nature this chaos and emiti and strife and whirl for Locke this only emerges when rulers failed to protect people's natural feedin freedom and attempted to enslave them by absolute rule so Locke believes that absolute role is bad according to Locke the relationship between rulers and the rulers and the government is one of trust and critically locked Locke believed that if the ruler did not abide for the rights

29:38 of the people then the people had the duty and responsibility to overthrow that government Hobbes remember did not believe that that human beings had no choice but to submit to the authority of the ruler other next important work is letter concerning toleration this was a plea for extensive religious toleration among Christians according to Locke government existed to preserve private property life and liberty other natural rights but government was not there to legislate religion governments that

30:24 attempted to impose religious uniformity countries like France were really misunderstanding their real purpose and only and had only created dangerous dangerous and destructive conflicts so this was a work that advocated toleration among most Christian religious groups not Catholics because he believed that Catholics gave their allegiance to a foreign prince the Pope and yeah so it did not apply to Catholics so once again he was in favor of religious toleration and what we would look at as separation of church and state we actually already covered

31:13 this earlier Locke's ideas on the capacity of citizens to peacefully coexist and dwell together through their capacity to reason something that was really based in his ideas of early childhood education and how children should be educated ideas that we already covered earlier um by far it was locked ideas that were most influential on the leaders of the American Revolution and particularly Jefferson the main writer of the Declaration of Independence so let's look directly at Locke's influence up Hobbes is influential in a general sense in the way that he rejects

31:58 you know religious foundations for government and Divine Right theory but in terms of the specifics it's really locked so let's look at Locke's Memphis blacks influence on Jefferson the writings of John Locke were widely influential on Jefferson and the writing of the Declaration of Independence the influence of Locke Locke was very strong in the preamble Locke and Jefferson were both what we call classical liberals who believed in limited limited government and freedom when we refer to classical liberalism it's different than when we say like liberal and conservative today classical liberalism was a political

32:43 ideology stressing individual rights individual rights like freedom of speech property religious toleration liberals believed in a constitutional government there had to be some sort of social contract between the ruler enrolled they believed in they typically had skepticism towards traditional religion liberals typically favorite religious toleration whether or not they believed in full equality is a bit doubtful but you can add equality to the list and classical liberals tended to favor

33:29 limited government small government government is there to protect the rights of individuals that existed before the formation of government but in other in other areas for instance economics the government's intervention should be minimalist for instance they took a free-market live a fair view of the economy the government should intervene minimally in the economy ok so as we saw Locke's philosophy of government was generally one of preventing tyranny tyranny is like an unfair all controlling ruler preventing tyranny if the rights of the people that

34:17 are being ruled are not provided for they have the duty to overthrow the government and this idea comes across very clearly in his treatises on government unlike Hobbes who favored absolute monarchy Locke rejects this so Locke's philosophy was generally one of preventing tyranny tyranny and having mens freedom guaranteed through limited government he saw the role of government as guaranteeing fundamental rights to citizens but not interfering in people's everyday lives and one critical idea I didn't say it in so many words the or but I'll say it in these words now one critical idea of lock is that

35:04 government would only rule through the consent of the government government should only be based on the consent of the people this is not part of Hobbes's thinking as Locke wrote that's not on the screen reason which is that law that is taught to all mankind who would but consulted that being all equal independent no one ought to harm another and his life liberty or possessions so government should only rule through the consent of the people and abide for human beings natural rights you can look at the influence of Locke on Jefferson in the preamble to the Declaration and

35:51 it's very very clear you can see the direct similarity between Locke's views on life health liberty or possessions and Jefferson's views life liberty and property and it's basically the idea that government passed to be based on the idea on the consent of the governed and provide for human beings natural rights life liberty and the pursuit of happiness I suppose he chose happiness to make it more ideal ideological idealistic than material based possessions Jefferson was very much influenced by Locke on the

36:37 role of the government Locke believed that a government had to rule through the consent of the people and hated the concept of absolute monarchy hated the cause concept of paternalistic monarchy and these are some of the main main points of influence so definitely like Locke Jefferson rejects the notion of absolute monarchy in which rulers derived the right to rule from God and didn't respect social contract theory now of course we'll talk about how the American democracy wasn't perfect but still it was relatively

37:23 progressive for the time and the main source of influence is Locke now I'm gonna go over one other thinker of the Enlightenment herself where cells influence on the American Revolution is not really that strong but I want to just go over it anyways because it's an idea that will refer to in general terms and come back to so result was a native of Geneva and really belonged to the end of the Enlightenment he was a strange isolated genius who never felt comfortable with the other filo sauce of the Enlightenment he had very close he had very few close friends but had

38:11 numerous illegitimate children I'm not really gonna deal with his personal life but Rousseau was undoubtedly the most radically democratic and egalitarian thinker of his time he advocated basically what he advocated was a radical direct democracy something like the city-states of ancient Greece in the tradition of john locke most 18th century political thinkers regarded human beings both on the level of individuals and society as pursuing self-interest for Hobbes the danger was when the self interests of humans ran amok you know human beings were at each

38:56 other's throats without government for Locke the danger was when rulers behaved arbitrarily Rousseau approached the problem from the other end of the stick unlike both Locke and Hobbes we're so are we're so argued that man is hot and best off in the state of nature before the political state man doesn't corrupt society like Hobbes said society itself corrupts man as we saw reflected in his views on education for Rousseau society itself cities civilization books

39:43 was actually the source of evil according to Rousseau human beings in an original state of nature had been good and fundamentally evil but as they formed States and social institutions they lost that goodness and unequal distribution of property sharpen inequality sharpen so let's break it down and look at these thinkers in really really simple terms Hobbes Locke and over so let's just look at some of their really basic ideas on human human beings and government so Hobbes basically believed that man corrupt

40:32 society right man corrupt society man was basically evil greedy and needed the authority of an absolute ruler to keep his primal instincts in check he didn't have a choice he had to submit to the authority of the absolute ruler Rousseau was at the opposite end of the stick man doesn't corrupt society like Hobbes said society itself corrupts men Society was the problem not was Society was the problem not necessarily man Locke is somewhere in between Locke didn't say that man was necessarily corrupt like like

41:19 Hobbes but he basically said that corruption occurred when there were certain stresses in society so remember for Hobbes the danger in human society was when rulers behaved arbitrarily and did not abide for the natural rights of human beings how is Locke how our Locke and we're so different well we're so goes much further than previous thinkers in giving everyday man a share of political the share of political power where soul is really the first thinker to advocate starting from scratch wiping the slate clean

42:05 I'm started to boo la raza okay so here's his main ideas in the social contract in the social contract he argues that big states are necessarily corrupt and people should live in small states why well if you lived in a small state like a city-state the influence of civilized society would be as small as possible so if you have to live in a society live in a small one the ideal form of government was not like Hobbes and absolute monarchy nor was it like Locke a representative Parliament but what Rousseau advocated was a radical direct democracy a radical

42:54 direct democracy representing the interests of the majority of the populations we today have a representative democracy you know we had elect representatives elected officials and he's advocating a direct democracy that is to say if you want to put if you want to take part you show up and first person and vote in the assembly each and every day each and every day it's like the democracy of ancient Athens um let me just add something unlock locks ideal form of government was not a king but likely a representative Parliament a representative Parliament didn't actually mention that before one critical idea so Russo is really the first to advocate

43:42 a sort of mass democracy giving power to the everyday common man his famous idea in the book was the general will government should be the result of the general will of the people the general will not a king not God and not Parliament Rousseau would be the first to assert this this idea of the general will is a widely influential concept that could influence politicians across the political spectrum from freedom-loving liberals to authoritarians and would directly influence many things but like the French Revolution what did this idea of the general mill will mean well this meant that the social contract or

44:27 contract Constitution between the ruler and ruled should reflect the general will of the population the general will is can simply be defined as the wishes of the majority of voting citizens the danger so so what's so radical about this you're saying he's saying government should be based on the Democratic majority what so what's the big deal well there's a danger the danger and Russo's thinking let's put it this way both Locke and Hobbes stress individual human rights particularly long Locke is all about protecting individual human rights but the danger in Russo's thinking was that the rights

45:12 of the collective the rights of the group the rights of the state the rights of the general will trumped the rights of the individual so the rights of the collective the state as a whole trumped the rights of the individual the dangerous of the dangerous implication of Rousseau's thinking is that citizens had to submit to the democratic general will even if it went against their individual principles stated otherwise a collective society is more important that it's individual members and we're so believed that the general will was always right so therefore under some circumstances citizens had to be forced

45:59 to be free they had to be forced to go along with the general will and collective action could be taken against individual citizens if they did not submit to the general will also like the other thinkers traditional religion was not part of the equation we'll just leave it at that now I'm recording this lecture in September 2018 and you know where sells ideas have been widely influential they have been used by authoritarian rulers totalitarian rollers they have been used by progressive left-wing rulers but his ideas of the general will are not irrelevant to our society today right our nation today is very polarized

46:47 politically and you know without being specific many groups today many groups today do not agree with what the Democratic General will have had to had has decided in our country right so again how do you balance the right to the individual and rights of minority groups with the rights of the Democratic general will you don't have to look very far back in history to see how democracy could be dangerous and produce fascism so in any case we're so is not so directly influential on the American Revolution it's things he's an author that the revolutions would have read but

47:33 really not so directly influential now we're going to finish the lecture by looking at and summarizing some of Howard Zinn's ideas right so you had the excerpt from Howard Zinn which is called a kind of revolution I'm not going to repeat everything there but I'm just gonna help you pull together a few things what does Howard it means when he called the American Revolution a kind of revolution well what do you think what I think he means it's that it involved class struggle the American Revolution was as much a struggle against the British as against the lower classes overall general enthusiasm for the war was limited one

48:21 third of the population opposed the war one third supported the war and one-third were neutral moreover as much as one-fifth of the overall population was actively treasonous they were actively supporting the British who was it that fought in the American Revolution well at least initially it was property-owning white men respectable white men of their communities who joined the colonial militia specifically excluded from the colonial militias were Indians free blacks and dependent white men like servants but several colonies notably Massachusetts and Virginia and Virginia

49:07 several colonies like Massachusetts and Virginia passed laws to draft the Poor mob like beggars and vagrants into the militia going back to one of our main themes for the for the lecture how loyalties were complicated and divided I'm gonna quote then directly quote the military became a place of promise for the poor who might rise in rank acquire acquires some rights and change their social status here was the traditional device by which those in charge of any order mobilized and recalcitrant population offering the adventure and Ward's of military service to get poor

49:54 people to fight for a Cause they might not clearly see as their own so all I already mentioned this at the beginning of the lecture how did the elite leaders of the revolution mobilize use different minority groups to support the revolution groups like let's say Indians or women slaves and then give them little benefit another thing that Xin stresses is class conflict Xin stresses that class conflict between rich and poor was something that was suppressed because everyone was focused on the war but it kept cropping up it kept reappearing intermittently throughout the war in

50:40 many colonial towns men of property fought a relatively short time in the colonial militias while the lower orders were really the ones sticking it out fighting throughout the whole war and really making up the rank and file of the militia and Continental Army Xin makes the point that the Continental Congress the provisional government as we'll talk about the Continental Congress represented the point of view of the elite interconnected families that dominated colonial politics for instance the Continental Congress voted to give lifetime pensions to officers who served throughout the war but did not grant the same privilege and

51:27 compensation a lifetime pension to rank-and-file soldiers so once again the Continental Congress voted to give lifetime pensions to officers who served throughout the war but did not grant the same pension to the average rank-and-file soldiers these policies often led to violence and even mutinies against their elite leaders which were sometimes handled very violently and definitely reflected class tensions for instance there was the Pennsylvania line mutiny this is in the reading that occurred the Pennsylvania line mutiny occurred on New Year's Day in 1781 a

52:15 group of Pennsylvania troops were angry and drunk from drinking on New Year's Eve and on New Year's Day they rejected the authority of their officers proclaiming their own independence killing one wounding of wounding others and led an armed March and insurrection on Philadelphia Delphis Continental Congress the mutiny was handled with wish with caution half of the men were discharged and the other were put on leave now there were other mutinies like this one in which rank-and-file soldiers rebelled against their elite commanders and many of these later mutinies were treated much more harshly in later

53:01 mutinies mutineers were subject to martial law execution and again the mutinies were triggered by class tensions and demands for pay there were also economic riots on the civilian front and in many parts of the country the revolutionaries faced apathy from the population they faced apathy apathy from everyday people against this war that seemed to bring them little tangible benefit for instance the states drew up new state constitutions between 1776 and 1784 you know voting requirements for these state

53:46 legislatures but little changed among all the colonies only Pennsylvania abolished the syph property requirements for holding office and office and suffrage so once again when the state established new constitutions it was only Pennsylvania that established that that got rid of the property requirements for holding office and suffrage so was this truly a democratic revolution when land was confiscated from loyalists those who supported the British these people who fled this land was gobbled up by revolutionary leaders who used it for their own political benefit to enrich their own force fortunes or those of their cronies I guess it deserved dirt deserves

54:33 emphasis to state to state the obvious the leaders of the revolution root were rich white men many of whom owned slaves sometimes we forget that George Washington was also the richest man in colonial America and many of his contemporaries most of them were quite wealthy too yes we hear of Thomas Jefferson Jefferson was constantly plagued by financial problems but still he was doing quite well at Monticello and was still a member of the American land owning gentry American version of aristocracy um so looking at this was this a war of We the People well still the rhetoric of We

55:18 the People was persuasive and at least promised to enfranchise the lower classes the lower classes didn't feel empowered by participating in the revolution the general idea was that by serving the army the notion of the nation would be lowered to include the middle and lower classes now this is an idea that we spoke about before in discussing the English political culture and the heritage of the English Civil War remember the English Constitution and political culture was notable for its relative liberalism its relative equality and critical principle of parliamentary approval of taxation and eventually parliamentary approval of lawmaking after the English Civil War

56:05 and Glorious Revolution however this is the critical thing that we talked about in England England was a society of in cloth inequality and class privilege for a very long time the notion of the nation in England was defined as the nobility in order to vote you had to have land and a considerable amount of land so in this regard we really have to give the American Revolution the credit it deserves in this regard the American Revolution was more progressive in giving more non noble people a slice of political power yes in the American Revolution afterwards property qualifications would be lower than Great Britain okay so it

56:51 was in fact revolutionary more progressive than Great Britain but still as we will see hierarchies of class and gender and race existed I'll leave this for you to consider then argues that the rebellion against British rule allowed a certain group of the colonial League to replace those loyal to England give some benefits small ant landowners and leave poor white working people and tenant farmers very much in their own situation was it a revolution of We the People or was it this elite revolution of white men Zinn also reminds us that Native Americans were ignored by the Declaration they were not considered equal as Zinn writes quote now with the

57:38 British out of the way the Americans could begin the inexorable process of pushing the Indians off their lands killing them if they resisted end quote so ironically even at the Americans were rebelling against British imperialism the Americans were achieving their own sort of imperialism against Indians pushing the Indians off of their land and moving into the interior going back into the French and Indian War remember how much the Americans resented the proclamation line that prevented Western settlement finally the American Revolution brought an end to the long resented proclamation of 1763 line and allowed them to move in the red West

58:24 now the Zinn reading also has some fantastic material on the American Revolution and race we're gonna deal with this in a separate lecture this week and that's it for this lecture so this lecture has been a sort of somatic introduction to the American Revolution looking at the influence of Enlightenment ideas on Jefferson and in the next lecture we're going to go to a sort of chronological overview of the revolution not this thematic ideological material thank you very much