Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, & the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia (review)

Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, & the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia. By Woody Holton. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999; pp. xxi + 231. $39.95 cloth; $15.95 paper.

The title of Woody Holton's history of revolutionary Virginia seems to promise an account of how enslaved Africans and Native Americans were compelled toward independence against their will and interest. On the contrary, the forced founders of Holton's account are the Virginia gentry: "In complex ways and without intending to, Indians, merchants, and slaves helped drive gentlemen . . . into the rebellion against Britain" (xvii). Holton represents the relationship among the gentry, and other classes (or groups) as a "web of influences" that "from 1763 to 1776 . . . helped propel free Virginians into the Independence movement" (xviii). Holton's story tells of three primary causes propelling and compelling the Virginia gentry.

The first cause involved the gentry's political failures: "free Virginians' efforts to influence imperial policy were contested by Native Americans, British merchants, and enslaved Virginians. The elimination of the government as an instrument or ally of merchants, Indians, and slaves was one reason for white Virginians to rebel against Britain" (xviii). The gentry's competition with Indians in North America was centered on land. Many gentry were actively involved in land speculation (7). Because the British government wished to avoid another costly Indian war, imperial policy--in the form of the Proclamation of 1763--favored the Indians by establishing a fixed western boundary to North American colonies. Fearing for their profits, the (gentry-controlled) House of Burgesses objected to the Proclamation, only to have their petition rejected by the Privy Council (6-8, 35). The gentry--and many smallholders--were also burdened by huge debts to merchants. When debtors' insurgencies threatened civil order in Virginia (and the unity among white Virginians necessary to keep forty percent of the population enslaved), the House of Burgesses passed a bankruptcy law to ease the disruptive impact of debt. This measure, too, was vetoed by the Privy Council (61). Again the gentry had lost out to a competing class. Finally, the Virginia gentry were moved to independence by their slaves. In 1775, British governor Dunmore began to arm fugitive slaves against the increasingly recalcitrant colonists. Once again, British imperial authorities had sided with a class--this time slaves--whose interests were opposed to those of the gentry (148, 160-63). By successfully influencing British imperial policy, Indians, merchants, and slaves consistently frustrated the interests and desires of the Virginia gentry. In this respect, the gentry's desire for independence was initially kindled by their failures to prevail against competing interests and classes.

Holton argues that the Virginia gentry were propelled toward independence by two other causes related to their class and material interests. One cause was an outgrowth of the gentry's problem with debts and merchants: "free Virginians were attracted to the most important resistance strategy of the prewar period--the commercial boycott against Britain--because it seemed likely not only to impel Parliament to repeal laws considered oppressive to white Americans but also to reduce the Virginians' debts to British merchants" (xviii). The boycott, then, provided concrete material incentives that helped to edge Virginia further toward independence (106-7). The third cause propelling the gentry toward independence followed from the unintended consequences of their strategy of resistance: "the thoroughgoing boycott adopted by the First Continental Congress in October 1774 transformed Virginia's society and economy in unexpected ways. It presented opportunities to enslaved Virginians and put extraordinary pressure upon the colony's small farmers. . . . Those challenges indirectly helped induce gentlemen to turn the protests of 1774 into the Independence movement of 1776" (xviii). Again the issue was essentially one of order. Riots inspired by shortages of commercial goods threatened social order. Restoring order required the revival of government and commerce. The revival of government and commerce, in...