Jeff Hummel on the American Revolution

Every few years, I post on an excellent article on the American revolution by economic historian Jeff Hummel. It’s on Econlib. I asked Jeff to write it in 2018 and it has been a perennial hit.

Indeed, in  a newsletter a few years ago, Liberty Fund stated:

Our most popular Article ever is from Jeffrey Rogers Hummel in 2018, turning the Revolution into an externality story. He writes, “In fact, the American Revolution, despite all its obvious costs and excesses, brought about enormous net benefits not just for citizens of the newly independent United States but also, over the long run, for people across the globe.”

If you read it, you’ll see why. Jeff takes on so many of the misconceptions that apparently sophisticated people have about the revolution.

Here are the first two paragraphs of “Benefits of the American Revolution: An Exploration of Positive Externalities.”

It has become de rigueur, even among libertarians and classical liberals, to denigrate the benefits of the American Revolution. Thus, libertarian Bryan Caplan writes:  “Can anyone tell me why American independence was worth fighting for?… [W]hen you ask about specific libertarian policy changes that came about because of the Revolution, it’s hard to get a decent answer. In fact, with 20/20 hindsight, independence had two massive anti-libertarian consequences: It removed the last real check on American aggression against the Indians, and allowed American slavery to avoid earlier—and peaceful—abolition.”1 One can also find such challenges reflected in recent mainstream writing, both popular and scholarly.

In fact, the American Revolution, despite all its obvious costs and excesses, brought about enormous net benefits not just for citizens of the newly independent United States but also, over the long run, for people across the globe. Speculations that, without the American Revolution, the treatment of the indigenous population would have been more just or that slavery would have been abolished earlier display extreme historical naivety. Indeed, a far stronger case can be made that without the American Revolution, the condition of Native Americans would have been no better, the emancipation of slaves in the British West Indies would have been significantly delayed, and the condition of European colonists throughout the British empire, not just those in what became the United States, would have been worse than otherwise.

There are so many great paragraphs. I’ll settle for three:

As a result of the Revolution, nearly all of the former colonies adopted written state constitutions setting up republican governments with limitations on state power embodied in bills of rights. Only Rhode Island and Connecticut continued to operate under their colonial charters, with minor modifications. The new state constitutions often extended the franchise, with Vermont being again the first jurisdiction to adopt universal male suffrage with no property qualifications and explicitly without regard to color. Going along with this was a reform of penal codes throughout the former colonies, making them less severe, and eliminating such brutal physical punishments as ear-cropping and branding, all still widely practiced in Britain. Virginia reduced the number of capital crimes from twenty-seven to two: murder and treason.

And:

The U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on titles of nobility may seem trivial and quaint to modern eyes. But such titles, still prevalent throughout the Old World, always involved enormous legal privileges. This provision is, therefore, a manifestation of the extent to which the Revolution witnessed a decline in deference throughout society. No one has captured this impact better than the dean of revolutionary historians, Gordon Wood, in his Pulitzer Prize winning The Radicalism of the American Revolution.  He points out that in 1760 the “two million monarchical subjects” living in the British colonies “still took it for granted that society was and ought to be a hierarchy of ranks and degrees of dependency.” But “by the early years of the nineteenth century the Revolution had created a society fundamentally different from the colonial society of the eighteenth century.”4

One can view this transition even through subtle changes in language. White employees no longer referred to their employers as “master” or “mistress” but adopted the less servile Dutch word “boss.” Men generally began using the designation of “Mr.,” traditionally confined to the gentry. Although these are mere cultural transformations, they both reflected and reinforced the erosion of coercive supports for hierarchy, in a reinforcing cycle. In the Revolution’s aftermath, indentured servitude for immigrants withered away, and most states eliminated legal sanctions enforcing long-term labor contracts for residents, thus giving birth to the modern system of free labor, where most workers (outside of the military) can quit at will. Contrast that with Britain, where as late at 1823 Parliament passed a Master and Servant Act that prescribed criminal penalties for breach of a labor contract.5

There’s so much there. I strongly recommend that you read the whole thing, especially if you want to make an informed comment.

Happy July 4th in advance. I might not be posting tomorrow because I’ll be in the local July 4th parade with my group called “Monterey County Libertarians for Peace.”

Note: The picture is of the Betsy Ross flag hanging in front of my house.

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