Woody Holton, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. xxi + 231 pp. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN: 0-8078-2501-8; $15.95 (paper), ISBN: 0-8078-4784-4.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Robert E. Wright, Department of Economics, University of Virginia.

Woody Holton uses social history to reinterpret a major topic in political history, the causes of Virginia's entry into the Revolutionary War. Eschewing the traditional story that the great land-owning elite (e.g. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson) led the revolutionary movement, Holton argues that "Indians, merchants, slaves, and debtors helped propel free Virginians into the Independence movement" (p. xviii). Holton's analysis is Marxian, or, in the lingo of historians, "neo-progressive." For Holton, the Revolution was as much about "who would rule at home" as "home rule" (p. 161). "Emerging class conflict," he argues, forced the elites to proclaim independence (p. 42). Although thrust into the Revolution by the actions of nonelite groups, the elites gained the most from the conflict. Indeed, Holton goes so far as to argue that slaves and Indians were not just denied the benefits of the Revolution, they "were the fruits of independence" (p. 211, original emphasis). For Holton, the American Revolution was a thoroughly bourgeois affair.

This book received several rave reviews, awards, and nominations because, like many recent history monographs, it puts a new, politically correct spin on an old subject. Unfortunately, the book has little to offer economic historians, except to exemplify the chasm between the research methodologies of economic and social historians. Holton readily admits that he has not discovered a new set of primary sources to support his revisionist thesis. He uses the same set of "top-down sources," the letters of elites, that earlier historians had used to come to almost opposite conclusions (p. xxi). This is standard operating procedure for historians, who usually offer little to explain such discrepancies. [Holton hints that he used the standard sources with more "care" than previous authors (p. xxi) and that he paid more "attention" to three specific "Revolution texts" (p. 206)].

Unfortunately, Holton displays little understanding of economic or business issues. Clearly (e.g. p. 128 fn. 49), at least one astute economic historian, probably Ronald Hoffman (p. viii), attempted to sharpen Holton's economic analyses, but to little avail. For example, although aware of Jacob Price's Capital and Credit in British Overseas Trade: The View from the Chesapeake, 1700-1776 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), Holton completely misrepresents the purpose and meaning of debt. For economic historians, firms assume debt to finance projects thought to have a positive net present value. For Holton, individuals have debts imposed upon them by hard economic times and the social necessity to engage in "conspicuous consumption" (p. 81). "Debtors," therefore, were members of a "class," likely to be "driven to early graves by their debts" (pp. 44, 82). Holton claims that in the years leading to the Revolution, many Virginians "had fallen deep into debt to British merchants" (p. 50). Readers do not learn, however, whether debt-to-asset ratios deteriorated or merely that nominal debt totals increased. Although Holton knows that economists see debt as a sign of the borrower's economic strength (p. 81), he dismisses that view because he wants readers to believe that Virginians hated the British for extending liberal trade credit to them (p. 60).

Holton barely mentions the illiquid nature of most colonial assets and does not make linkages between the money supply, interest rates, and asset values. Indeed, his discussion of the colonists' monetary woes is extremely limited and often confusing; at one point he calls Virginia's unit of account "fictitious" while simultaneously claiming that it "traded at par with Virginia paper money" (p. 176)! To be fair, some of Holton's discussions of economic issues are more cogent, but they are never original and rarely penetrating.

Additionally, Holton's grasp of political history and theory could be stronger. For instance, he views elite politicos as an homogenous entity, bound together by class interests, rather than as a disparate group that often splintered into competing factions. He therefore treats the defeat of conservative elites in the 1776 elections as a grassroots "voter revolt," rather than as a victory for radical elites who successfully garnered the support of smallholders (p. 202).

The four parts (seven chapters total) of Forced Founders do show that Virginia's elite had to consider the existence of nonelite groups. But this is not a revelation -- to us or the Founders. Whether Holton proves his thesis that nonelites "powerfully influenced" Revolutionary politics is unclear (pp. xxi, 206). The thesis, as stated, is too vague to test in any meaningful way. Given Holton's imprecise parameters, one wonders if any group, or thing, could have had less than powerful influence. Interestingly, Holton could have presented his views with increased analytical clarity if he had followed the lead of Virginia's elite, who clearly looked upon the independence question as a cost-benefit problem (pp. 44-59). Unfortunately, Holton did not exploit the founders' cogent cost-benefit analyses because that would have meant treating the nonelite groups merely as variables or background noise.

Robert E. Wright is author of Origins of Commercial Banking in America, 1750-1800, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001 and The Wealth of Nations Rediscovered: Revolution, Integration, and Expansion of the U.S. Financial Sector, 1780-1850 (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press). He is editor of Development of Corporate Finance: Anglo-American Securities Markets, Laws, and Financial Practices, 6 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto Publishers, 2002).