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

  • SerLava [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I think this makes sense. The American bourgeoise gained a lot of power and freedom that was previously held by the British nobility. They had limits on what colonist businesses could produce, in order to force them to buy British goods. I think blacksmithing was literally illegal or something.

    • Alaskaball [comrade/them]A
      ·
      3 years ago

      They had limits on what colonist businesses could produce, in order to force them to buy British goods. I think blacksmithing was literally illegal or something.

      Also that sounds similar to the situation the other colonies found themselves in, with their regional industrial output being stifled in order to generate an artificial market for completed British goods while extracting the raw materials to process into those goods to repeat the process. An example would be how India's textile production was quite literally stomped out - they not only produced enough for themselves but also sold it internationally when they could - in order for the Crown to redirect the raw resources that went into india's domestic industry into the British factories to quickly and cheaply produce textiles to sell back to their Indian subjects for a profit.

      Now it's comparing Apples to Strawberries to hold the two on the same plane of exploitation, yet it doesn't change the fact that both colonies were subject to exploitation in the same manner that both Apples and Strawberries are fruit.