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An Economic Interpretation of the American Revolution Author(S): Marc Egnal and Joseph A An Economic Interpretation of the American Revolution Author(s): Marc Egnal and Joseph A. Ernst Reviewed work(s): Source: The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Jan., 1972), pp. 3-32 Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1921325 . Accessed: 19/08/2012 20:56 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The William and Mary Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org An EconomicInterpretation of the AmericanRevolution Marc Egnal and Joseph A. Ernst* HE Atlantic economyin the half centurybefore American Inde- pendence underwent deep, wrenching changes. As a result, English capital and English decisions increasingly dominated the colonial economy. The freedom of the wealthy colonists, merchants and planters alike, to conduct business as they chose was restricted.Profit margins were lessened and possibilities for local development sacrificed. These broad, structural changes, and the accompanying short-run economic crises, troubled the colonial elite at least as much as did the parliamentary en- actments which followed the Seven Years War. These new British mea- sures remain one ostensible cause of revolt. But the colonial reaction to them was determined in large part by a growing concern for the economy and for economic sovereignty, a concern that only coincidentally rein- forced the dictates of patriotic principle. This transformation of the colonial business world is the framework for the following broad and tentative reinterpretation of the American Revolution. Our reinterpretation,however, does not argue a monocausal explanation for the colonies' struggle with Britain. Consequently, an examination of the strengths and weaknesses of earlier writers provides a necessary introduction to the presentation of a new hypothesis. Modern historians of the American Revolution conveniently fall into two schools: the Progressive and the neo-whig. In seeking to explain the colonists' break with the mother country, Progressive authors wrestled with two stubborn problems for which they never achieved a happy resolution. One was the question of the impact of the Navigation Acts. At the turn of the century, the architects of the so-called "Imperial School" of British-American history, George Beer and Charles M. Andrews, pronounced the administration of the empire from Whitehall *Mr. Egnal and Mr. Ernst are members of the Department of History, York University,Toronto, Ontario. 4 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY and Westminister remarkably evenhanded.1 Some progressive historians, including Arthur Schlesinger and Carl Becker, went along with this interpretation. For these writers no fundamental conflict existed between English and American societies. There was only a series of unwise measures passed by Parliament after 1763.2 Other Progressives found this analysis of colonial-metropolitan rela- tions less satisfactory. Charles A. Beard, and later Louis Hacker, saw the rending of empire in I776 as the product of long-standing conflicts be- tween Britain and America, conflicts embodied in the Acts of Trade. Their condemnation of the Navigation Acts sits uneasily, however, and seems a weak foundation for any "economic interpretation." Hacker, for instance, dwelt on the restrictions on manufacture and trade before I763.3 Yet these regulations either were ignored by the colonists (as in the case of the Molasses Act of I733) or touched only the periphery of trade. The ambivalence of these historians' explanation is best illustrated by Beard's comment: Modern calculators have gone to some pains to show that on the whole American colonists derived benefits from English policy which greatly outweighed their losses from the restraints laid on them. For the sake of argument the case may be conceded; it is simply irrelevant to the uses of history. The origins of the legislation are clear; and the fact that it restrictedAmerican economic enterprise in many respects is indisputable.4 In addition to the difficulties raised by the Navigation Acts, the Progressives wrestled with a'second problem: the complex nature of 1 For a recent and suggestive discussion of these schools, see Gordon S. Wood, "Rhetoricand Reality in the American Revolution," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., XXIII (i966), 3-32. Concerning the views of the "ImperialSchool," see esp. Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History, IV (New Haven, Conn., I938); Andrews, The Colonial Background of the American Revolution: Four Essays in American Colonial History (New Haven, Conn., 1924); and George Louis Beer, British Colonial Policy 1754-1765 (New York, i907). See also A. S. Eisenstadt, Charles McLean Andrews: A Study in American Historical Writing (New York, 1956). 2 See Arthur Meier Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution 1763-1776 (New York, i9i8); and Carl Lotus Becker, The History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, I76o0I776 (Madison, Wis., 1969). 3 Louis M. Hacker, "The First American Revolution,"Columbia University Quar- terly, XXVII 935), 29. 4Charles A. and Mary R. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization, I (New York, 1927), I96, ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF THE REVOLUTION 5 the Revolutionarymovement in the decadebefore Independence. Seeking to answerthe "why"of the Revolution,men like Becker,Andrews, and Schlesingercame up with two hypotheses.First, while dismissingthe idea -oflong-standing conflict between Britain and the colonies,these historians arguedthat the measuresadopted by Britainafter the end of the French and Indian War in I763, coupledwith the postwarcolonial depression, causedthe ruling classes,the merchantsin the North, the plantersin the South, to take the lead in opposing British policy.5 And in sharp dis- tinction to what neo-whig historianscontend, this hostility to British measures stemmed not from whiggish constitutionalprinciples, but from economics.;'Restrictive commercial regulations were imposed by the British upon colonies whose merchantswere suffering in the depthsof depressionand whose large land- and slaveholderswere groan- ing under a burden of indebtedness.This "economicinterpretation" of the Progressiveswas narrowlyfocused upon the yearsafter I763 and was basedupon an analysiswhich went little beyond the depictionof "hard times."Questions of the structureof the economy,or of long-termdevel- opmentswithin the merchantand planting communities,were foreign to the concernsof these historians.The conclusionthat merchantsand wealthy planterssought imperial reform but shunned rebellion seems almostdictated by the limitsof the economicanalysis. Since economic concerns did not make the merchantsor planters into full-fledgedrevolutionaries, a differentdynamic must have carried the movementof protestto fruition.Accordingly, an examinationof the behavior of the "lower orders"provided the Progressiveswith their second, complementaryhypothesis. During the decade before Indepen- dence, the argumentran, the lower classesof the cities fought to gain greaterrights for themselvesin what was essentiallyan undemocratic society.These "lowerorders" supposedly joined the Revolutionarymove- ment both becauseof a desirefor greaterpower and becauseof a dedica- tion to constitutionaland democraticprinciples-the latterpoint strangely sounding more neo-whiggishthan Progressive.6With their adherence 5See n. 2 and Charles M. Andrews, The Boston Merchants and the Non-Tm- portation Movement (New York, i968). Reprinted from Colonial Society of Mas- sachusetts,Publications, XIX (i9i6-i9i7), I59-259. 6The democratic ethos of the lower classes is explored by Jesse Lemisch, "The American Revolution Seen from the Bottom Up," in Barton J. Bernstein, ed., Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History (New York, I968), 3-45. See also the earlier statement by Merrill Jensen, "Democracyand the Ameri- 6 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY to the cause, the Revolutionary movement was transformed, in Carl Becker's famous phrase, into a two-fold contest: a struggle not only over "home rule" but also over "who shall rule at home." Furthermore, in the course of the Revolutionary struggle, these "radicals" (i.e., in the North, the "lower orders" of the cities and their leaders, and in the South, certain of the debt-ridden tobacco and rice planters) came to dominate the protests against Great Britain. The radicals were now opposed in their desire for imperial change by their natural enemies, the "conservatives"-wealthy merchants of northern cities and Charles Town and certain of the aristocraticplanters. The two theses offered by Progressive historians were tied together by a transition in the nature of the protest movement during I770. Pinpointing this change, Charles M. Andrews stated, "The non-importation movement [against the Townshend Acts] began as a merchant's device wherewith to obtain a redress of trade grievances; it ended as an instrument in the hands of political agitators and radicals
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