Gordon Wood and Gary B. Nash are both are very vocal supporters of their respective schools of thought, occasionally to their detriment. However, there are few authors that present their cases as clearly as these two historians, and as a result much can be gained by taking a look at an exemplary work by each author. First we will consider Gordon Wood’s The Radicalization of the American Revolution (Random House, 1991). In this award winning synthesis Wood sought to challenge the widely held contention that the American Revolution was a conservative undertaking that was meant to maintain the status qou within the colonies. Instead Wood finds that “the amount of social change that actually took place by transformations in the relationships that bound people to each other, then the American Revolution was not conservative at all; on the contrary it was as radical a revolution as any in history.” (Wood p.
Gordon Wood and Gary B. Nash are both are very vocal supporters of their respective schools of thought, occasionally to their detriment. However, there are few authors that present their cases as clearly as these two historians, and as a result much can be gained by taking a look at an exemplary work by each author. First we will consider Gordon Wood’s The Radicalization of the American Revolution (Random House, 1991). In this award winning synthesis Wood sought to challenge the widely held contention that the American Revolution was a conservative undertaking that was meant to maintain the status qou within the colonies. Instead Wood finds that “the amount of social change that actually took place by transformations in the relationships that bound people to each other, then the American Revolution was not conservative at all; on the contrary it was as radical a revolution as any in history.” (Wood p.