Nash, Gary B. Urban Crucible: The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American Revolution. Abridged edition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986.

Summary
This book examines the urban seaport towns of the colonial time period and argues that urban people “upset the equilibrium of an older system of social relations and turned the seaport towns into crucibles of revolutionary agitation.” The origins of the American Revolution were in the experiences and beliefs of the working poor in these urban seaport towns. From 1690 to 1770s, the urban seaports of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York were transformed from relative communal towns (with an elite in its formative years) to cities and urban centers that were highly stratified. There are three key subthemes to Nash’s work: the narrowing of opportunities, widespread poverty, and the formation of class in mid-18th century colonial America. The growth and commercial development of northern seaport towns brought about multifaceted changes that restructured social groups, redistributed wealth, altered labor relations, and led to the emergence of class-consciousness and the mobilization of lower ranks of laboring people in public life. As a result, he writes that many “urban Americans, living amidst historical forces that were transforming the social landscape, came to perceive a'''ntagonistic divisions based on economic and social position” and through their struggle of these conditions came to develop as a “laboring class,”''' one that shaped their activities and relations with other classes. Their positions – as slaves, indentured servants, laboring poor, women, and illiterate – also shaped an ideology. Thus, the Revolutionary conflict involved not only resistance to Britain, but also a far reaching dispute within the colonies themselves, and the struggles of the 1760s emerged from a long tradition of popular politics and political debate amongst laboring classes in urban seaport towns. The revolution “could not have unfolded when or in the manner it did without the self-conscious action of urban laboring people…who became convinced that they must create power where none had existed before.” (383)

Example: All of the facets of urban politics – voting, election, and structure of governments – were contained within a “framework of social deference, which insured that those of interior rank would normally bow to their superiors.” Nonetheless, these opportunities and the challenges of the urban polity led to underlying political tensions. In New York, for example, Jacob Leisler’s government drew wide support from laboring people of the town and persons of humble backgrounds were given positions of power in the new government. Leislerian supporters also attacked the property of New York’s wealthiest.

See also: Linda Kerber, Douglas Egerton, Woody Holton