The Radicalism of the American Revolution by {author}: summary and why it matters

What it argues

Wood contends that the Revolution was far more radical than the founders' own conservative language suggested. Colonial society was structured by patriarchy, patronage and deference to gentlemen. By the early nineteenth century, it had become a bustling, equal-minded and money-making democracy in which ordinary people claimed dignity and the pursuit of happiness.

He describes the founders' hope for a republic led by disinterested gentlemen and how that vision gave way to a more popular and commercial reality. Monarchy was discredited, ties of dependence loosened and the dignity of labor rose, while at the same time slavery became an anomaly that the new principles could not tolerate for long, though the nation took generations to resolve it.

The prose is clear, and the argument is large rather than narrative, so the book is best read after some knowledge of the period.

Why it matters

Wood pushes back against reductions of the Revolution to either a conservative legal quarrel or a class struggle. For conservatives who treat the founding as a model, it clarifies how much change followed from it, and how much the founders themselves feared the democratic energy they unleashed.

About the author

Gordon S. Wood (born 1933) is an American historian who taught at Brown University and was a student of Bernard Bailyn. His first book, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, appeared in 1969. The Radicalism of the American Revolution won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1993. He later wrote Empire of Liberty for the Oxford History of the United States.

Who should read it

Readers of American history who want an interpretation, not a chronology.