Colonial America was not a monolithic society. During the imperial crisis in the 18th century, America was primarily split into the elites, such as those in Virginia, and the middle and lower socioeconomic classes. As Woody Holton highlights, elites like the Virginia landed gentry were primarily concerned with protecting a sense of status in society that they thought was under threat. Elsewhere, Gordon Wood describes a mobile society with a middling class of people eager to exercise their own power. Unsatisfied with their social status in English hierarchical society, the middling classes and elites would eventually unify within the revolutionary movement with the goal to form a truncated society without fixed nobility. Both classes recognized that England was a common enemy that prevented their aspirations for power.

The bourgeoisie produced many of the social and cultural changes that led to the revolution. In The Radicalism of The American Revolution, American historian Gordon Wood argued that the American revolution was a radical shift socially and culturally caused by the bourgeoisie. When the British government controlled America in the 18th century, they economically deprived the colonies and made devaluing social distinctions (Wood 5). The colonies felt unseen and undervalued by the British government, and their rising needs for social and economic power grew restless. The bourgeoisie class wanted more social power and economic class mobility than the British empire was willing to grant, as Britain was a controlled empire with fixed social classes that made America subservient to England. The lower classes “challenged the primary assumptions and practice of monarchy — its hierarchy, its inequality [and] offered new conceptions of the individual, the family, the state” (7) Without any social status from the British government, the 18th-century middle class’ drive for status pushed them to strive for a more fair government: The bourgeoisie advocated for republicanism and meritocracy: a government representative of popular sovereignty and a society where power and goods are given to the talented and diligent.

On the other hand, in American historian Woody Holton’s Forced Founders, Holton claimed that the elite built on momentum from the lower classes to form a meritocratic government. Holton stated that “when Virginia gentlemen launched their struggle to preserve and extend their freedom, they were powerfully influenced by other freedom struggles-movements put together by Indians, debtors, merchants, slaves, and smallholders” (3). The success of the various movements of these lower classes builds up the argument of Wood and Holton’s that claims that the lower classes largely influenced, if not caused, the Virginian elites — and thus, the entirety of Colonial America — to break away from the British. However, the elite felt the same pressures as the middle class and used them to begin to organize an independent government from the British. Consequently, the Virginian gentry both assumed and seized and assumed authority during the transition away from English power to independence, to save their imperiled elite status.

The frustration of the elite and middle classes of America was fueled by British economic policy that only made their oppression more intolerable, leading to the onset of the Revolution. Incidentally, as the Virginian gentry fought for republicanism and meritocracy — a society based off of ability, rather than an innate hierarchy — they walked on eggshells as they threatened their own status. There lay a delicate balance between saving their elite status from British Rule, and also keeping their high status within this newer, meritocratic society, especially when the bourgeoisie wanted power for themselves. However, while the two classes’ rationale for opposing British rule contrasts — when summarized, it is merely the same: for more power, whether it be economically or socially. The British response to colony hostility began through economic means and control. The British empire established many social and economic policies that negatively impacted the colonies’ view of England and increased the debt to England. For instance, the Trade and Navigation Acts of 1651, which restricted colonial trade and taxed shipped goods, severely enlarged America’s debt to Britain. New England rebelled against the Navigation Acts by smuggling. The Virginians deemed the Navigation acts “a ‘capital violation of the colonists’ rights… many representatives at the congress so loathed the Navigations Acts that they wanted to insist that Parliament modify them” (31). Colonists had to pay higher prices for goods imported from non-imperial places. The Navigation Acts critically impacted the livelihoods of merchants and sailors, and as such, they protested vehemently against the act. Both the elites and lower classes disagreed with the British empire’s restrictions, and they acted in similar ways, angered at the British. Restrictive acts like these exacerbated tensions between England and New England led to more upheavals and rebellion amongst the colonies, causing tensions to spill over into the American Revolution of 1765.

Thus concludes New England’s rationale behind their radical change, in fighting for a free, independent government based on republicanism and meritocracy. While the Virginians organized the change, the bourgeoisie and lower classes first influenced and supported the shift away from Britain’s rule. This type of radical change, influenced from the bottom-up, is one repeated throughout history and is prevalent now more than ever — in the face of the current political crisis: red vs blue, Republican vs Democratic, and more distinct ways of separation. Social and political ideas influenced by the lower classes will only become more prevalent in the now and future as more conflict arrives.