Is it possible that he’s overstating the hierarchical nature
of colonial society in order to make his thesis about the great change brought
about by the Revolution?
“The colonists’ sense of hierarchy
was reinforced in a multitude of ways.”
And he gives the military as an example?
Wasn’t the militia notoriously ill-disciplined? Didn’t they elect their officers?
“We will never comprehend the
distinctiveness of that premodern world until we appreciate the extent to which
many ordinary people still accepted their own lowliness.”
-What about the shock w/ which we
looked at the way British officers dealt w/ soldiers during the French and Indian
war?
What about the example that Morgan
gave of lowly people coming into the house of a planter and taking off their
shoes? What about the “easy familiarity”
that existed between planters and freedmen?
Also, doesn’t Daniel Boorstin argue
that artificial distinctions couldn’t survive in the colonies?
Wasn’t there something of an idea
that through education effort and honesty you could make yourself a gentleman? Wasn't his what Washington tring to do by
copying maxims?
On another note, he says that the colonists' “compliance [with the Navigation Laws] was
remarkably high.” I’ve never heard this
before (and it’s not what I’ve been teaching).
Was anyone else surprised by this?
I certainly see what you are saying. Sometimes it feels like Wood is implying that it wasn't necessarily the American Revolution that was radical, but that colonial society had just developed significantly different than English society rather than the Revolution being a turning point.
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