American Revolution Gordon S. Wood Summary

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Within the two articles presented, two largely varying views of the revolution and its radicalism surface. The first, written by Barbara Clark Smith, displays an understanding of the Revolution in a way that does not perceive it as radical, but as adequate and paving the way for the continuation of injustice that sects of Americans have had to and still do face. The second, written by Gordon S. Wood, presents a view of the American Revolution’s radicalism which is more geared to the general oppression of the American people, rather than focusing on individual issues society maintained at the time.
Wood perceives revolutionary radicalism as the will of Americans as a whole to be liberated from England. He emphasises more on general oppression …show more content…
She highlights more of how the American Revolution glossed over more important, historically radical idea, such as race relations, gender equality, and new societal changes. She writes, “Seventeenth-century English revolutionaries toppled a king and embraced startling, leveling and millennial ideas. Eighteenth-century French revolutionaries went so far as to abolish slavery and to consider the rights of women as citizens of the republic. And in early nineteenth-century Peru, and anticolonial revolution produced the impulse to include Native Americans as “Peruvians.”In the light of such events, how are we to understand Wood’s repeated emphasis on the radicalism of the American case?...” With this statement, Smith points out the radicalism of other revolutions which occurred in the same general time period. All of the other revolutions she lists have more ‘radical’ additions to the revolutionary changes, not just a change in allegiances, such as the American Revolution. They all embrace more progressive ideas, which in turn lead to more socially equal societies in the countries listed. Later on in her article, Smith highlights another contradiction she has to Wood’s view of revolutionary American radicalism. “If there was something radical about the era, it seems it could not be
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