The American Revolution as a Conspiracy: The British View

Abstract

JN the past four years Professor Bernard Bailyn has argued repeatedly and persuasively that fears of conspiracy not only lay at the heart of the Revolutionary movement in America but also influenced the way in which royal officials responded to that movement. During the early eighteenth century, according to Bailyn, radical English journalists and politicians believed they saw small groups of men working secretly -or at least with duplicity-to shape governmental policies toward their own selfish ends, to gain power at the expense of traditional English liberties. This conspiratorial vision quickly became popular among those colonists in North America who sought ways of comprehending and expressing their dissatisfaction with royal authority. It was not the only explanation of events current in the Anglo-American world-men still believed in Providence and a few now accepted deterministic forces. But after I763 it came to have a special fascination for kings and ministers as well as English radicals and disgruntled Americans. The colonists had little trouble deciding that a coterie of the king's friends was working secretly to deprive them of their liberties. Conversely, royal officials in the colonies as well as their superiors in London feared the Americans were conspiring against parliamentary authority. Although Bailyn concedes that the ministerial belief in a colonial conspiracy was . . not in itself determinative of events, it was, he argues, of great importance. The eighteenth century was an age of ideology; the beliefs and fears expressed on one side of the Revolutionary controversy were as sincere as those expressed on the other. The result . . . was an 'escalation' of distrust leading ultimately to the Revolutionary War.'