Revolutionary New England, 1691-1776 was published by Atlantic Monthly Press in 1923, the second volume of Adams’s New England trilogy. Where The Founding of New England covered the settlement period, this volume traces the century-long process by which colonial subjects became revolutionaries — a transformation that Adams attributes not primarily to abstract political ideals (liberty, natural rights) but to concrete economic grievances, class tensions, and the growing divergence between colonial and imperial interests.
Adams’s interpretation emphasizes internal conflict within colonial society: the Revolution was not simply colonists versus the Crown but also poor versus rich, frontier versus coast, debtors versus creditors. The patriot movement drew energy from class resentments that had been building for decades, and the rhetoric of liberty served multiple masters — including some who had no interest in extending liberty to those below them on the social scale.
This economic interpretation of the Revolution anticipated the work of later progressive historians and remains influential in its insistence that political ideas do not exist in a social vacuum — that the appeal of revolutionary ideology must be explained by reference to the material conditions that made it attractive to specific groups.
Collecting Revolutionary New England
First edition (Atlantic Monthly Press, Boston, 1923): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $30–$80
- Without jacket: $10–$25