With a relatively empty continent blessed with abundant natural resources, population growth fostered even greater economic growth. From 1700 to the eve of the Revolution, exports to Britain in-creased seven times. Since the economy grew faster than the population, per-capita wealth steadily increased, providing the foundation for American industrial development.

Another distinguishing feature of eighteenth-century America was the system of self-government under which its citizens lived. Because the English monarchy and Parliament were engaged in a power struggle throughout much of the seventeenth century, they paid little attention to the internal affairs of the colonies. So, while England was occupied with its own problems, a remarkably uniform and indepen-dent pattern of government emerged in North America. Each colony had a governor, usually appointed by royal authority, who in turn was advised by a "council" of prominent citizens, also appointed. In addition, there were the increasingly powerful "lower houses" elected by the landholders. Until the 1760s, these self-governing colonial bodies operated without much interference from England.

While the colonial system of government resembled that of England, there were also subtle differences. The electorate was proportionately greater in America. There was no legal aristocracy that guaran-teed membership in the upper house And the royal governors found themselves increasingly handcuffed by the elected assemblies, which jealously protected and expanded their powers, especially those involving taxation. Many colonial citizens came to view their version of "balanced" government as more open, more responsive, less corrupt and therefore better than the English original.

If the American colonists in the eighteenth cen-tury were prosperous and well governed, how can we explain the American Revolution? For many historians, this question has not been easy to resolve. Scholars no longer refer to "bad" King George III and his evil advisers as a major fact or. Rather, they point to attempts by the Crown, beginning in l763, to rationalize and consolidate the British Empire along the lines already followed by Spain and France. The Navigation Acts, initiated in the l660s to confine American trade to the British Empire. were now to be enforced. For the first time, the colonies were ex-pected to provide revenue to Britain in order to maintain and protect the empire and to help pay its debts. These attempts, which included the infamous Sugar Act, Stamp Act, and Townshend Duties, were accompanied by ham-handed tactics and ignorance on the part of the king's ministers and the parliamentary leaders. For most eighteenth-century Americans, long accustomed to local government and self-taxation, the proposed changes and arbitrary' behavior reeked of tyranny. The result was a revolution.

It would be easy to dismiss the colonial revolt as a stubborn determination to preserve local privileges in the face of an imagined "conspiracy" to take them away. But to do so would ignore the profound impact that the British attempt at consolidation had on the American consciousness. In defying the new taxes and regulations, the colonists defined themselves in ways not contemplated before. They came to see themselves as "republicans," defenders of a "new order in the world," which the Old World-the British government-was trying to destroy. This was what John Adams meant when as an old man he wrote that the real Revolution was not the war against England; rather, it "was in the minds of the People . . . before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington."

The American Revolution was the first major watershed in American history. Before its inception, the colonists saw themselves, as the young Benjamin Franklin did, as part of a larger whole. They shared most of the characteristics of the "mother country, and were proud of it. But afterward, Americans, like the older Franklin, concentrated instead on their differences with Britain, defining their political, social and economic values in opposition to Britain and the rest of the Old World. Others went further, confronting the obvious inconsistency between revolutionary rhetoric and American slavery. In the years immediately following independence, slavery was abolished in all states north of Maryland, though it had never played a significant economic or social role there. The Revolution also accelerated incremental changes in the legal status of women, especially in the areas of marriage and divorce.

In l788, a national constitution was adopted based in part on "the right of the People . . . to institute new Government" when the old one no longer protects their rights. But at the same time, the U.S. Constitution made no attempt to alter or abolish the existing social or economic system. Slavery was maintained south of Pennsylvania, and voting remained the privilege of property holders, which al-most invariably meant white males.

Four features of the American Revolution distinguish it from the French and Russian revolutions with which it is often compared. First, it was directed primarily against an external enemy, the British Crown, rather than against a domestic monarchy or a local ruling class. Second, it was led by neither oppressed workers and peasants nor more affluent bourgeoisie. Rather, its leaders were a colonial elite: George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and John Hancock were not unwashed upstarts. Third, where other revolutions sought to consolidate and strengthen governmental power, the revolt of the American colonies was triggered by a reaction against centralization. Some Americans saw the new Constitution of 1788, with its enhanced federal government, as a betrayal of revolutionary intent. Finally, the American Revolution preserved as much as it destroyed. Ideas of local autonomy and "no taxation without representation" were long-held traditions in the colonies, and in American eyes it was the British who were the agents of dangerous innovation.

The Revolution also bears comparison with Afro-Asian nationalist movements of the mid-twentieth century. Like many of them, the leaders of the American Revolution sought no major social upheaval, but a change in political status for their country. However, American anticolonialists did not have to confront the racial and cultural issues so central to the more recent independence movements. Nonetheless, the rhetoric of the American Revolution has been echoed more than once in the twentieth century.

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