Gordon Wood's The Radicalism Of The American Revolution

In The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1991), Gordon S. Wood argues there were three distinct periods of social ideology in early American society, monarchy, republicanism, and democracy. While each era progressed chronologically, they were in no way distinct, with considerable ideological overlap occurring between them. The monarchy, which dominated American culture during the colonial period, was a series of hierarchical relationships denoted by various levels of dependency through personal ties. Republicanism, beginning in the 1740s, slowly chipped away at the fundamental principles of monarchical society. Revolutionary leaders highlighted the importance of classical virtues as changes in social demographics further disintegrated the traditional elements holding society together. The era of democracy, which Wood believes began after the defeat of the British, found its beginnings in the rhetoric of pre-revolutionary equality. This is the age when the revolutionary leader’s lofty ambitions of disinterested classical republicanism, was destroyed by the common man’s insistence on self-interested participation and a pursuit of personal gains.
To Wood, the major catalyst for this change was the American Revolution, which he describes as “one of the greatest revolutions the world has known,
In “Modernization and the Modern Personality in Early America, 1600-1865” (1972), Richard Brown agrees that the American Revolution played a prominent role in America’s long-term social development. The two historians also share a similar description of the British colonies seemingly paradoxical traditional/modern society. Brown views modern elements in widespread political participation and the reduced distribution of wealth, while associating decentralized government, a lack of formal institutions, and an economy based in agriculture as more