History books contain the Russian Revolution, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and several others.
Until the reader has a relatively clear definition for this word, it is a muddy affair to determine when and where to apply it. This is seen, e.g., in discussions of whether or not the events from the early to the late 18th century constitute the American Revolution, or whether those events were merely an independence movement.
On the one hand, the argument goes, the American Revolution did not effect a significant change in culture or society. In government, it made changes in the legislative, judicial, and executive branches, which could be described as tweaks or adjustment, but not a revolution. This line of argumentation concludes that movement, which culminated in the beginning of the war in 1775, the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1777, the signing in 1783 of a treaty to end the war, and the composition, ratification, and implementation of the Constitution, was not a revolution.
To be sure, there is some truth in the above-outlined reasoning. But there is a different way to conceptualize the situation.
A counterargument happily cedes the point that society and culture didn’t change significantly during the American Revolution. For more than a century, the residents of the thirteen colonies had already been creating their own culture and society, different from that of England.
The counterargument recognizes that the American Revolution was primarily a political and economic change. In that way, it can be arguably labeled as a true revolution.
Prior to 1776, governments around the world drew their legitimacy — or their alleged legitimacy — from the principle of hereditary dynasticism. The king of England had the right to rule because he’d inherited it from his parents. The same was true of the king of France, the king of Spain, etc.
Prior to the American Revolution, the right to rule was the property of one family: the royal family. This principle was the foundation for the governments of most of the world’s states.
In 1776, for the first time in modern history — and for only one of a very few times in world history — a government was founded on the principles of liberty. The U.S. government was founded on ideas. Those ideas included things like majority rule, popular sovereignty (the idea that a government’s legitimacy arises from the consent of the people it governs), and freedoms of speech and religion. Among those ideas was the idea of limited government: that the citizens are justified in limiting a government’s power in order to protect their own freedom.
This counterargument, then, sees the American Revolution as truly revolutionary, because it instituted a form of government which was absolutely novel.
It will be left to the reader as an exercise to weigh the evidence for and against the above-outlined argument and counterargument.
