The Radicalism of the American Revolution
Gordon Wood is Professor of History at Brown University. He is one of the leading scholars researching issues of the American Revolution in the country. In 1970, his book “The Creation of the American Republic 1776–1787” was nominated for the National Book Award and received the Bancroft and John H. Dunning prizes. His outstanding book, “The Radicalism of the American Revolution” won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. It is considered to be one of the most engaging scientific books among the classic works on the social, political and economic consequences of the Revolutionary War. This book has a power to redirect historical thinking and well-established knowledge about the Revolution and its place within the national consciousness. In the book “The Radicalism of the American Revolution”, Professor Wood represents for readers a revolution that transformed almost feudal society into a democratic one, whose emerging realities sometimes confused and disappointed its founding fathers. Professor Wood has written a wide range of interesting books. He was also involved in Ken Burn's PBS production on Thomas Jefferson, and is contributing his knowledge and understanding in the National Constitution Centre that was built in Philadelphia and on a regular basis dedicates a share of his time teaching history to high school students around the country.
The values and lessons of the American Revolution seem to be so “natural” and also have become so deeply integrated in American politics and social life that they are irrefutable. We may state that actually no one today seriously supports a monarchy and hereditary aristocracy for the United States. Thus far, the political and social theories behind the American Revolution were as radical as, for instance, the ideas of Mao and Lenin seem to us. In this masterpiece of a history book, Professor Wood analyzes the comprehensive social changes set free during the developments of the American Revolution. He tries to show the process of rapid transformation of a near-feudal society into a democratic society with guaranteed liberties and freedoms, such as freedom of speech, belief, and many others that are even today, in times of modern world are unknown in many countries. Author’s device is to let a reader look at the American Revolution through an entirely new perspective and appreciate its significance with all the seriousness.
The talented author Professor Wood offers a fresh current in modern history on the formative years of the United States, giving description of the astounding transformation of distinct, quarrelling and fighting colonies. In fact, historians have always had some problems researching revolutionary nature of the American Revolution. In this brilliantly represented and convincingly argued book, one of the most celebrated American historians renovates the radicalism, brings it to the debate and define as one of the greatest revolutions the world has ever known.
As one of the specialists said “The Radicalism of the American Revolution” is the most important study of the American Revolution to appear in over twenty years. This work is also considered a breathtaking social, political, and ideological analysis of crucial historical events of the American country. Historian professor Wood depicts in this impressive and incalculably readable mixture of historical, political, cultural, ideological and economic analysis much more than just a break with England. He represents for his audience a revolution that resulted in serious changes within the country. Once again, we may say that almost feudal society was made a democratic one.
The work “The Radicalism of the American Revolution” is in fact a continuation of Professor Wood’s earlier work “The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787”. We as readers may claim that this is a magnificent study and fully deserves the Pulitzer Prize it had actually received. “The Radicalism of the American Revolution” covers different issues and gives answers to different problems. It researches somehow the same challenges as Bernard Bailyn's “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution” (Harvard University Press, 1967), but in contrast, Professor Wood develops a much more detailed, precise, and persuasive representation of a society transformation from one of feudal relationships to the other that was predicated on democracy, republicanism, and capitalism based on a market economy.
We see that primary Gordon Wood argues that the American Revolution was beyond doubt a radical chapter in world history and in history of the United States in particular. He states, “The republican revolution was the greatest utopian movement in American history. The revolutionaries aimed at nothing less than a reconstitution of American society. They hoped to destroy the bonds holding together the older monarchical society - kinship, patriarchy, and patronage - and to put in their place new social bonds of love, respect, and consent. They sought to construct a society and governments based on virtue and disinterested public leadership and to set in motion a moral government that would eventually be felt around the globe” (p. 229). Wood represents this as “a single and most powerful and radical ideological blow in all of American history” (p. 234). He calls all these ideas utopian, for had little trust in what was planned. He has little belief in a completion of all the radical steps that were undertaken. He comments, “Perhaps nothing separated early-nineteenth-century Americans more from Europeans than their attitude towards labour and their egalitarian sense that everyone must participate in it” (p. 286).
We are bound to say that Gordon S. ............
