单项选择题
| Some recent historians have argued that
life in the British colonies in America from approximately 1763 to 1789 was
marked by internal conflicts among colonists. Inheritors of some of the
viewpoints of early twentieth century Progressive historians such as Beard and
Becker, these recent historians have put forward arguments that deserve
evaluation. The kind of conflict most emphasized by these historians is class
conflict. Yet with the Revolutionary War dominating these years, how does one
distinguish class conflict within that larger conflict Certainly not by the
side a person supported. Although many of these historians have accepted the
earlier assumption that Loyalists represented an upper class, new evidence
indicates that Loyalists, like rebels, were drawn from all socioeconomic class.
(It is nonetheless probably true that a larger percentage of the well-to do
joined the Loyalists than joined the rebels.) Looking at the rebels side, we
find little evidence for the contention that lower-class rebels were in conflict
with upper-class rebels, indeed, the war effort against Britain tended to
suppress class conflicts. Where it did not, the disputing rebels of one or
another class usually became Loyalists. Loyalism thus operated as a safety valve
to remove socioeconomic discontent that existed among the rebels. Disputes
occurred, of course, among those who remained on the rebel side, but the
extraordinary social mobility of eighteenth -- century American society (with
the obvious exception of slaves) usually prevented such disputes from hardening
along class lines. Social structure was in fact so fluid -- though recent
statistics suggest a narrowing of economic opportunity as the latter half of the
century progressed -- that to talk about social classes at all requires the use
of loose economic categories such as rich, poor, and middle class, or
eighteenth-century designations like" the better sort." Despite these vague
categories one should not claim unequivocally that hostility between
recognizable classes cannot be legitimately observed. Outside of New York,
however, there were very few instances of openly expressed class
antagonism. Having said this, however, one must add that there is much evidence to support the further claim of recent historians that sectional conflicts were common between 1763 and 1789. The" Paxton Boys" incident and the Regulator movement are representative examples of the widespread, and justified, discontent of western settlers against colonial or state governments dominated by eastern interests. Although undertones of class conflict existed beneath such hostility, the opposition was primarily geographical. Sectional conflict -- which also existed between North and South -- deserves further investigation. In summary, historians must be careful about the kind of conflict they emphasize in eighteenth-century American. Yet those who stress the achievement of a general consensus among the colonists cannot fully understand the consensus without understanding the conflicts that had to be overcome or repressed in order to reach it. |