Bernard Bailyn's Essay 'A Response To British Corruption'

In his essay “The American Revolution as a Response to British Corruption”, historian Bernard Bailyn makes the argument that the American Revolution was inherently conservative because its main goal was to preserve what Americans believed to be their traditional rights as English citizens. He argues that the minor infringements on traditional liberties, like the Stamp Act and the royal ban on lifetime tenure of colonial judges (even though Parliament ruled that judges in England should exercise this right), made the Americans fear that they would set a precedent for future greater infringements on their English liberties. To prove this argument, Baliyan quotes famous primary sources, like John Dickinson, Sam Adams, and various colonial rulings. Contrary to Bailyn’s

Wood argues that the prosperity of the revolutionaries and the destruction of paternalism in America prove the radical nature of the revolution. In most revolutions, the bulk of the revolutionary force is comprised of disenfranchised poor people, but the American Revolution was bizarrely made up mostly of well-to-do colonists who made their fortune in British America. Wood proves this fact by noting the statistical lack of mass poverty in America, as compared with other nations in the western world. Wood also argues that the American Revolution was inherently radical because it destroyed the entire system of dependency in America inherited from Great Britain’s ancient feudal tradition. From the onset, Wood claims, British America lacked the titles of nobility that Great Britain possessed. As such, there was an unprecedented amount of equality within the colonies, which many Americans enjoyed. Regardless of their social status, with enough work, an American was capable of gaining great prosperity, a feat which Wood claims was impossible in Europe. In Europe, the only way a man of no status could rise above his birth was in securing the