In 1764 the King and Parliament started
trying to exercise power over the colonies for which there was no practical precedent and
which many colonists believed threatened their economic futures. This produced largely
nonviolent resistance that escalated to war. The war was accompanied by relatively
minor democratic gains that seem to have been accomplished through nonviolent
negotiations among colonists as they organized themselves to resist the British military.
If this is accurate, it makes the American Revolution more like the “Velvet Revolution”
in Eastern Europe in 1989 than the French, Russian, and other violent revolutions whose
accomplishments are more controversial today.
