Within this provocative reinterpretation of one from the best-known events in American history, Woody Holton demonstrates when Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and other top notch Virginians joined their peers from other colonies in declaring independence from Britain, they acted partly in response to grassroots rebellions against their own rule.

The Virginia gentry’s efforts to shape London’s imperial policy were thwarted by British merchants and by a coalition of Indian nations. In 1774, elite about Compelled Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, as well as the Making of the American Trend in Virginia Virginians suspended trade with Britain to be able to pressure Parliament and, at exactly the same time, to save lots of restive Virginia debtors from a terrible recession. The boycott as well as the growing imperial conflict resulted in rebellions by enslaved Virginians, Indians, and tobacco farmers. By the springtime of 1776 the gentry believed the only path to regain control of the normal people was to take Virginia out of the British Empire.

Compelled Founders uses the new social history to shed light on a classic politics query: why do the owners of vast plantations, viewed by many of their contemporaries as aristocrats, start a revolution? As Holton’s fast-paced narrative unfolds, the old tale of patriot versus loyalist becomes decidedly more complex.