Colonial America and the debate about transition to capitalism

Abstract

The uniqueness of eighteenth-century American society and politics is a historiographical commonplace of long standing; perhaps because it is a commonplace it is not generally regarded as an interesting problem in social theory. In contrast to European social theory, which developed partly through attempts to explain the long transition from feudalism to capitalism, American social theory lacks this conceptual focus. Indeed, American historiography has seized upon the absence of a feudal past as a major explanatory premise.1 This negative conceptualization has led in turn to the assumption that America, unique in never having been feudal, is unique also in always having been bourgeois. The belief that even early America can be characterized as bourgeois is widely held. Both mainstream and marxist scholars are in general agreement on this point, though not on the precise terminology to describe early American social relations. Some even describe the colonies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as capitalist, while others merely point to an entrepreneurial spirit and profit-seeking, marketoriented activity. Another widely accepted point concerns the relatively undramatic political transformations on this side of the Atlantic. Even before the War for Independence Americans enjoyed a broad suffrage (at least in the North) and popularly-elected legislative assemblies. Thus the social theories that inform historical accounts tend to be those that each scholar thinks best illuminate bourgeois democracy.