In the standard narrative of American independence, the colonies broke from Britain because Parliament tried to tax them without their consent. In his book, Revolution against Empire, Justin Du Rivage suggests something rather different. Challenging the enduring libertarian image of the American colonists, he suggests instead that independence resulted from a civil war within the British Empire between parties with competing visions of imperial state power.
Du Rivage is part of a growing group of historians of capitalism working to put politics back in economics. These scholars rightfully insist that government and business are inseparable, that there is nothing “natural” about money and markets, and that politics is partly about who controls and distributes fiscal resources. By focusing on ideas about political economy in general and the issue of taxation in particular, this study highlights the role that ideology plays in economic debates. In the eighteenth century, ideological divides over the shape of the imperial economy literally broke the British Empire.
Drawing on archival sources from both sides of the Atlantic, Du Rivage argues that the American Revolution was part of a larger struggle over two models of imperial political economy. “Radical Whigs” like Benjamin Franklin and William Pitt envisioned “a republican empire based on settlement, popular sovereignty, and a comparatively egalitarian economy,” whereas “authoritarian reformers” including Joseph Galloway and George Grenville demanded fiscal austerity and believed that Parliament had a right and obligation to tax the colonies (8). The revolution began when authoritarian reformers gained traction and attempted to transform the empire into one in which the colonies were “subordinated economically and politically to Britain” through taxation (37).
In the first half of the book Du Rivage traces the emergence and evolution of the battle over imperial political economy in the decades preceding the American Revolution. After the War of the Austrian Succession, establishment Whigs’ bloated fiscal-military state came under fire in Britain from authoritarian reformers, who blamed Whig governance for the economic and moral decline of the empire, as well as from radical Whigs, who accused the administration of failing to promote colonial growth. While authoritarian reformers on both sides of the Atlantic denounced consumer society, legislative power, and inflationary paper money, radical Whigs from London to Boston decried standing armies, regressive taxation, and “an extractive imperial state” (52). The Seven Years’ War exacerbated tensions between the two groups, as they clashed over militia reform, taxes, and the terms of peace with France. By the war's end, George III's penchant for fiscal austerity had authoritarian reformers poised to dominate British politics.
Central to the study is Du Rivage's analysis of the role taxation played in competing visions of imperial political economy. The Stamp Act and other efforts to raise revenue in the colonies were not simply “taxation without representation” but an attempt by authoritarian reformers under Grenville to reorganize the empire in a lopsided manner that benefitted the metropole at colonists’ expense.
For colonial radicals, the Stamp Act was an abomination. It represented an austere vision of imperial political economy that contradicted radical Whig principles about liberty, property, and (voluntary) taxation as a force for public good; it also threatened existing colonial institutions. By forcing colonists to pay extra for stamps on land deeds and newspapers, the Stamp Act discouraged investment in land and restricted the flow of information throughout the colonies. By taxing legal documents, it made it more expensive to be in debt—or jail. While the Stamp Act was never fully enforced, Grenville's other reforms had real economic consequences. The Sugar Act crippled New England commerce, while the Currency Acts caused a credit crunch that made it impossible for people to pay their debts, let alone taxes. With the Stamp Act and other measures portending the disruption of colonial society, radical colonists responded by “[articulating] a vision for the future of their empire based on political accountability, mutual prosperity, and greater equality” (117).
In the second half of the book Du Rivage analyzes the authoritarian transformation of the British Empire beginning in the late 1760s and the colonial response. As colonial opposition to authoritarian reform grew violent, British voters “embraced authoritarian reform” (165). Numerous proposals for reconciliation failed because colonial radicals demanded fiscal autonomy. Yet, the Townshend Acts and the Mutiny Act were designed to take fiscal control away from the colonies by denying their legislatures the ability to raise money. As Du Rivage points out, “The problem was not taxation itself but unaccountable taxation … Only colonial legislatures, whose election depended on the people's well-being and their knowledge of local circumstances, could be trusted to levy taxes” (182). Authoritarian reformers’ refusal to budge—on not only Parliament's right to tax the colonies but also its demand for revenue—caused an imperial civil war.
In declaring their independence, Americans rejected “the empire that Britain was becoming” (204). Instead, they drew on radical Whig principles to create a republican union that exercised “considerable influence over the economy” as a means of promoting growth, equality, and prosperity (222). Revolution against Empire concludes with the Articles of Confederation, a flawed government that nevertheless fulfilled radical colonists’ dream of a republican empire.
There is much to be commended about this study. By situating the American Revolution within its imperial context, Du Rivage reminds readers that independence was not so much about differences between the colonies and Britain as it was the outcome of a civil war among different groups of people within the empire. That it was a war over the political economy of empire illustrates that economics is, and always has been, inseparable from politics. While Du Rivage occasionally delves into the material conditions underlying ideas about political economy, Revolution against Empire is primarily a work of intellectual history. It will be the task of future scholars to more fully examine how ideas about political economy shaped and were shaped by social and economic relationships on the ground in eighteenth-century Britain and America.
