I've always considered the American Revolution a textbook example of a bougie revolution, in that a fuedal aristocrat's rule was overthrown by landowning capitalists not of the old fuedal nobility. IIRC Marx said something similar about it.

But last night a friend challenged that idea by pointing out that the fuedal base of society was de facto maintained via slavery, even if de jure there was no longer a king. In their interpretation, the war for independence wasn't actually a revolution, as the old divisions of nobility/serfs were maintained and simply rebranded along racial lines of white/Black, with indigenous peoples being considered almost completely outside the polity, similar to how many Jewish and Roma communities were regarded in Europe.

Thoughts?

Also wasn't sure if this went in history or askchapo

  • Bluegrass_Buddhist [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    The tricky part is actually reaching a prescriptivist definition of a revolution though.

    I guess that's the criticism that potentially undermines this entire line of questioning. I remember reading (I think, it's been a while) that Luxemburg called revolution the overthrow of one socioeconomic class by another, but it rarely works out quite so cleanly.