How influential and revolutionary was the American Revolution for its time? The Revolutionary War led to the drafting of the Constitution which reflected the social and political realities of the time, including the prevalent attitudes towards race, gender, and class. The Constitution would ultimately exclude the experiences of marginalized groups such as enslaved people and women as both groups were denied basic human rights. Enslaved people were recognized as property rather than citizens or human beings, while women were largely sidelined from political participation and lacked legal recognition in many aspects of society. Although the revolution drew on Enlightenment principles such as liberty, republicanism, and democracy, how would one measure its legacy?profound ideological shifts, particularly regarding ideas of governance, rights, and representation. Concepts such as liberty, democracy, and republicanism gained prominence, influencing political thought not only in the United States but also globally.
did not read but the american revolution inspired everyone south of the border
It led to the establishment of one of the world's earliest modern republics, characterized by a representative form of government and a constitutionally limited executive power.
>>16547072More revolutionary than Europeans want to believe but less revolutionary than Americans want to believe.
>>16547072It blew the starting whistle on independence movements from the mother country, but in my opinion, the single most important legacy of the American revolution is the sentence “all men are created equal.” Not joking. Yes, it was hypocritical. Yes it was written by a slave holder. Yes it was not enforced. Yes it, at least explicitly, excludes women. But having that statement, with no weasely qualifications that would make it more “accurate” to it’s writer’s circumstances, be near the top of the first ever independent formerly-colonial republic’s founding document, was revolutionary for the time, and still is today. There hasn’t been a single subsequent debate about rights and liberty that hasn’t looked back to that sentence for basic justification.
>>16547072>How influential and revolutionary was the American Revolution for its time?The American Revolution's greatest legacy is the fact that it caused the French Revolution, which turned the entire Western social/political/economic order on its head. In terms of actual ideology, I don't think it had that much of a lasting impact. The early French revolutionaries, like Lafayette, were very much taking their cues from the American Revolution, but they were quickly steamrollered by the Jacobins, Girondins, later the Thermidoreans, and eventually the Bonapartes.The only reason the American Revolution is more than a historical footnote, a predecessor helping spark the French revolution, is the fact that the US became the world's dominant power about 200 years later.
>>16547183>in my opinion, the single most important legacy of the American revolution is the sentence “all men are created equal" ... was revolutionary for the time, and still is today. This retains a pull on people in other countries. Americans don't think about it much, but last time I was in D.C., I went over to the Jefferson memorial and met a guy from Djibouti who came up to me and was asking questions, about who was who, and oh, that's Jefferson here, and Lincoln over there... and was genuinely "into it" in a way that 4chan shut-ins are with weird ideologies that alienate girls. Kind of an Ameriboo I guess but who knows what kind of tribalism and ethnic conflict goes on there. I thought the Christian rock band D.C. Talk presented that line with a lot of punch and power:https://youtu.be/kbB0QrBIs9k
>>16547072It was a major advancement in the concept of putting freedom and liberty to practice and an advancement in showing the possibilities that existed, and this actually being real caused the world to shift in that direction as a whole. In particular, the idea of not dictating what subjects must believe in was an absolutely revolutionary concept. It is one that the Constitutional framers borrowed from the Rhode Island charter of 1663, which at that time had been unlike anything in the entire world at the time.Nowadays, many of these things are simply taken for granted, and I don't mind the fact. In actual practice they started in the U.S. and people still today value and realize the possibilities of freedom in many parts of the world where it is lacking.
>>16547824I plan to visit america in 2026, 250 years after the beginning of the revolution (yes the revolution technically began earlier I know)
>>16547449The ideological influence was rather limited except that they both drew common influence from the Enlightenment. Lafayette and other veterans of the American War were certainly affected but they didn't get the ball rolling and as you mentioned were quickly superseded by revolutionaries far more radical than anything in America. Early, more moderate, revolutionaries such as Sieyès looked inward at the disenfranchised Third Estate as an issue to be addressed incrementally within the existing political order, rather than aiming for some American-style republic. Limited constitutional monarchy was the goal for the first couple years of the Revolution. That said, that a state framed in Enlightenment terms could exist in practice rather than just in the imagination of various political theorists, I think, had an impact in maintaining morale of the revolutionaries.Of course, the largest influence by far was that French support for the American War led to France's financial woes throughout the 1780s, with repeated failures at tax reform eventually leading to the desperate act of convening the Estates General.
