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
I would agree that the American Revolution was not an major economic revolution, it maintained the existing system. But it did change where money was retained vs. sent to the crown - it went to the US ruling class exclusively, which way a bourgeoisie-ifying group that included the landed gentry types of the south as well as more typically bougie greater accumulators of industry and commerce in the north. It should also be noted that the ruling class wasn't either plantation owners or bourgeoisie: few only owned plantations, they extracted wealth and used it on "investments" to extract more through wage slavery and speculation. The revolution increased the power of the bourgeoisie and the governments established were in the interests of that group (and literally written by them).
One important aspect of Marx's analysis of class is that the class conflicts and class dominance described is not one of clean breaks and clean transitions. At a given time, many class dynamics exist simultaneously and vary geographically even within a society. 1776 American colonies had many aspects of feudalism, mercantilism, and capitalism simultaneously and bleeding into one another, but capitalism was already dominant.