What if the American Revolution had been conducted nonviolently?

Let’s consider. Walter Wink writes in The Powers That Be that the American revolutionaries overestimated the ability of the British to hold their colonies in the face of resistance, violent or nonviolent. This misconception of British strength thus was part of the reason the American movement went from tax refusal, noncooperation, etc (think Boston Tea Party) to armed struggle (which of course also met with initial failure, demonstrating that both methods faced essentially the same obstacles). Wink notes that in fact, “Britain was incapable of maintaining its American colony against any form of resolute resistance for any span of time”. This is surely true — just compare the situation in British-occupied India in the early twentieth century, when Gandhi led the nonviolent movement for that country’s liberation.

So what if the Revolution had been nonviolent?

America has often been called a “great experiment” in democracy. Despite its failures, the United States has indeed provided a model for democratic ideas and has thus inspired similar democratic movements around the world. Even when American government has acted against democratic interests abroad, American culture has acted as a forum for exploration into how to make democracy work and how to improve its weaknesses, and without both the failures and the successes of the American experiment it is probable that fewer countries around the world be embracing democratic principles today. (Of course, as Noam Chomsky has noted, there are many countries that might already have embraced democratic movements were it not for American imperialism — but that’s another story…)

These facts result, of course, from the peculiar circumstances of the American founding and the American Revolution. Analogously, then, consider the possibilities had the American Revolution been fueled not only by ideas of democracy, but also by ideas of nonviolence:

1. America could have become not only a “great experiment in democracy”, but also a “great experiment in nonviolence”. Though in later years the nation would surely depart from its ideals (as it has in the area of democracy), America would have emerged as an advocate for the nonviolent resolution of conflict and could have inspired other nations to embrace such principles far earlier than they did.

2. America has emerged as one of the most militarist powers in the world; however, if the “founding principles” of the nation had been rooted in nonviolence, our history could have been quite different. Nonviolent theory is currently in its infancy; if the United States had devoted its national resources over the years to research in active nonviolence, instead of military training and technology, the theory and practice of political defiance could have been developed far earlier. The world would be very different.

3. American foreign policy would be vastly different. Rather than focusing on using military means to further US objectives, a national ethic and culture rooted in nonviolence could have fostered foreign policy designed to reduce bloodshed and injustice. The country could have taken on the world role of benevolent encourager of justice, rather than that of international bully or “policeman of the world” (which is, of course, the actual perception that millions or even billions of people around the planet have of this country).

Tragically, all this merely is hypothetical. America wasn’t founded on nonviolence. But in recent years, many countries have undergone nonviolent revolutions. Perhaps in another two centuries, historians will call one of them a “great experiment in nonviolence” and will remark on the curious impact it will have had on the world.