Any revolution that brings about benefits for a large sector of the population faces serious free-rider problems. Revolutionary activity is extremely risky and, once the revolution succeeds, excluding from any general benefits those who did not participate is difficult if not impossible. This explains why revolutions are always so messy and produce mixed results. It also explains why so few revolutions actually bestow genuine benefits. Gordon Tullock, in a classic 1971 article, contended that “Historically, the common form of revolution has been a not-too-efficient despotism which is overthrown by another not-too-efficient despotism with little or no effect on the public good.”14 Nonetheless, sometimes people will eschew the free-rider incentive to bring about a better world, bearing costs that exceed any individual material gains. The anti-slavery movement, first sparked by the Revolution, is one clear case.
The American Revolution is another such case. The embattled farmers who stood at Lexington green and Concord bridge in April 1775 were only part-time soldiers, with daily cares and families to support. Their lives were hard. The British redcoats they faced were highly trained and disciplined professionals serving the world’s mightiest military power. Yet when they fired the “shot heard ’round the world” that touched off the American Revolution, they initiated a cascade of positive externalities that not only U.S. citizens but also people throughout the world continue to benefit from today, more than two centuries later. They had no hope—indeed no thought—of charging for these non-excludable benefits. Nonetheless, they took the risk. What better reason to celebrate the 4th of July?
These are the concluding two paragraphs of Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, “Benefits of the American Revolution: An Exploration of Positive Externalities,” Econlib, July 2, 2018.
Last year, I posted the opening paragraphs, this year the closing ones. Of the approximately 130 Econlib Feature Articles I lined up and edited during my 11 year tenure as the editor of the Econlib Feature Articles, this is my favorite.
Here is an excerpt from a comment that Jeff Hummel wrote last year in response to other commenters:
Even after military conflict broke out in April 1775, a majority of the Continental Congress did not favor independence until February 1776, and it was a slim majority. The first colony to actually instruct its delegates to vote for independence was North Carolina the following April. Thus we have nearly a year of hard fighting during which a majority of Patriots favored and expected to achieve reconciliation within the British Empire. It was Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, published in January 1776, that ultimately tipped the scales in favor of secession.
Also the difference between the French and American Revolutions can be overdrawn. The American Revolution admittedly had no reign of terror, but the treatment of Loyalists could be quite appalling, with disturbing instances of brutality and killing. Given that many Loyalists fought for the British, some historians have started referring to the Revolution as a civil war, a term neither of you [the two people he’s responding to] consider. At the end of the War for Independence, an estimated 50,000 Loyalists left the United States, out of total population of 2.5 million. The French Revolution generated as many as 130,000 émigrés and deportees, out of a total population of 25 million. Thus the American Revolution produced refugees at almost four times the rate of the French Revolution. And while many émigrés eventually returned to France, very few Loyalists returned to the U.S.
I still maintain that the American Revolution brought momentous benefits, but let us not overlook its costs and excesses.
Postscript: Rereading Jeff’s article has pumped me up for marching with the Libertarians for Peace banner later this morning in Monterey’s July 4th parade.
READER COMMENTS
BC
Jul 4 2019 at 12:51pm
Love the description of the Revolution as “initiating a cascade of positive externalities that…people throughout the world continue to benefit from today, more than two centuries later.” In my view, the Revolution is mostly about its (universal) natural rights foundations even more than the birth of a single nation. It was a revolution in political thinking, not just a garden variety rebellion. The externalities sprung from the Declaration (the document), more so than from the Independence.
The line about the Revolution sparking the anti-slavery movement also seems quite apropos today, as would a reminder that the Civil Rights movement also drew its moral grounding from the same natural rights foundations.
Happy (Declaration of) Independence Day!
Alan Goldhammer
Jul 4 2019 at 1:54pm
Former Washington Post writer Rick Atkinson, one of the preeminent military historians writing today, has published the first volume of his history of the Revolutionary War. There is a nice excerpt in the paper today on the perils of an empire as relates to the situation England was in at the beginning of the hostilities.
Happy independence day and belated Canada Day to David (we were in Banff last week and unfortunately left town the day before all the festivities).
David Henderson
Jul 4 2019 at 3:57pm
Thanks, Alan.
Alan Goldhammer
Jul 4 2019 at 1:56pm
For some reason the link to Atkinson’s article was stripped out when I posted.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/07/02/what-revolution-reveals-about-americas-modern-day-empire/
Phil H
Jul 4 2019 at 11:23pm
I think there’s a fairly strong argument for calling the war of independence the greatest historical event ever. The two obvious candidates to me seem to be the American revolution and the industrial revolution. The problem with the industrial revolution is that Britain took the fruits of it and simply repeated the same strongman empire-building activity that had been going on for the last few millennia. Only in the USA had the genocide been successful enough that when industrialisation came, there were no more empires to build. And that allowed the USA to lead the late 20th century into a new norm of not building political empires by invading, but building economic empires by mining the human and natural resources of your own territory.
And, of course, the freakish genius of the constitution, which still seems to be the most impressive political document ever produced.
David Seltzer
Jul 6 2019 at 3:30pm
And, of course, the freakish genius of the constitution, which still seems to be the most impressive political document ever produced.
Well stated Phil. When King George III ignored their 27 grievances it became became necessary to dissolve the political bonds from flawed circumstance. The freakish brilliance of those men rendering the Constitution was, they recognized they were flawed as well. If the Republic was to survive, the Constitution not only recognized those flaws, it provided civil resolution via rule of law to the human infractions of slavery, via the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments.
Roland Martin
Jul 5 2019 at 12:39pm
Oh dear… let us not overlook its (the American revolution) costs and excesses. Pray tell, why we must not overlook “costs and excesses”?
Is there something therapeutic in that exercise? Wars and revolutions are never scripted and generally we learn very little for future use, other than to prepare for serious unintended consequences.
Mike Wilson
Jul 6 2019 at 2:48pm
Had Ilhan Omar been alive at the time, I wonder if she might have described the American revolution as just, “Some people doing something.” Sarcasm aside, I had never entertained the possibility of the American Revolution as a civil war until I read Daniel Hannan’s “Inventing Freedom.” It’s an interesting notion.
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