Rethinking the American Bourgeois Revolution

James Parisot, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

This paper argues that the consequence of the American Revolution was a bourgeois revolution. Existing perspectives have argued that the Revolution was, at best, a weak starting point for the more substantial bourgeois revolution of the Civil War. By contrast, I argue that the Revolution and state building process after constituted a process of bourgeois class formation that supported capitalist development in the long run. In other words, a bourgeoisie institutionalized their class power through the process of state making. The early American federal state and national state system, in this regard, provided the political foundation for American capitalism to further develop.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 21. Critical Perspectives on US History