I found Gordon Wood’s ideas in his piece Radical Possibilities of the American Revolution<\/em> to be a good reminder that sometimes the unstated obvious can provide new revelations about history. \u00a0Reminding us that there was “no mass poverty, no seething social discontent, no grinding oppression”, the sentiment established in the Taylor readings of a successful colonization process is revisited (Wood 110). \u00a0The foreground for political participation at this time came at the whim of the gentry elite. \u00a0The reading describes this as encouragement from above to participate in politics, which seems to be derived from the upper class desire to gain even more independence and wealth at the expense of the lower classes.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, he parallels a number of \u00a0social groups experiencing the revolution differently. \u00a0 For instance, Wood mentions the social assault between the couriers and the patriots. \u00a0These opposing groups seemed to provide a basis for the desired political system of the elite gentry. \u00a0The paper also makes the connection between the independence that these colonists were fighting for and the continued dependence, which the disenfranchised peoples at the time were experiencing. \u00a0Specifically, women and African Americans experienced the fight for independence without the benefit of independence.<\/p>\n

Wood evokes another paradoxical relationship when relating how the aristocratic landholders in the colonies were fighting for independence (something they had a substantial amount of compared to the lower class colonists) from fellow aristocrats in England. \u00a0This seemed to be a classic case of the rich getting richer and establishing themselves as the “natural aristocracy” while the poor fell to the wayside. \u00a0This is not to discount the fight waged for independence in the war to come but as Wood points out there is much more to the equation than seems at first glance. \u00a0There seems to be social tension within the colonies themselves, although it may have gone unnoticed by the lower-middle classes.<\/p>\n

As Alex writes in his post from early today, there is a “broad spectrum” of factors to be considered when looking at the revolution occurring in America. \u00a0I found the approach that Wood takes to be very interesting and very novel as compared to the other readings regarding the political and social environment surrounding the revolution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I found Gordon Wood’s ideas in his piece Radical Possibilities of the American Revolution to be a good reminder that sometimes the unstated obvious can provide new revelations about history. \u00a0Reminding us that there was “no mass poverty, no seething social discontent, no grinding oppression”, the sentiment established in the Taylor readings of a successful … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Unnoticed Tension in Revolution”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,114,210,235],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aristocracy","tag-gordon-wood","tag-revolution","tag-social-tension"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}