The Uses and Misuses of Revolutionary Memory: John Rees’s “The Black Oliver Cromwell, the Levellers, and the American Revolution”

John Rees’s essay, “The Black Oliver Cromwell, the Levellers, and the American Revolution,” thoughtfully traces how revolutionary memory was passed from the English Revolution of the 1640s to the American Revolution of 1776. It draws on a wide range of cultural, political, and biographical evidence to show that the memories of Cromwell, the Levellers, and Puritan revolutionaries remained alive in colonial America, rather than being mere historical curiosities. However, while the essay excels in cultural and intellectual history, it overlooks a key aspect: the absence of a class analysis. Rees uncovers the language of revolution but fails to address its social implications, highlighting the enduring radical memory while neglecting the class structures that shaped the American Revolution as a bourgeois movement.

John Rees’s historical writing is driven by a genuine aim to uncover the radical democratic traditions hidden beneath the official stories of the English and American Revolutions. His work frequently highlights overlooked figures, grassroots movements, and the cultural transmission of revolutionary memory. However, Rees’s historiography consistently suffers from a key theoretical flaw: replacing class analysis with radical symbolism.

Rees examines history by focusing on political inheritance — how ideas, slogans, and revolutionary methods travel through time. This approach helps him identify clear continuities between the Levellers of the 1640s and American radicals of the 1770s. However, it also causes him to exaggerate the political importance of these continuities. Just because Leveller language appears in colonial America does not mean Leveller politics did. Rees often confuses ideological similarities with real material parallels.

The core problem is that Rees treats revolutions primarily as contests of political ideas rather than as expressions of underlying class forces. His narrative foregrounds the circulation of pamphlets, sermons, and names, while relegating class relations to the margins. As a result, the American Revolution appears more democratic, more radical, and more continuous with the English Revolution than it actually was. The structural limits of 1776 — slavery, property qualifications, planter‑merchant dominance — are acknowledged but never made the organising principle of analysis.

This reveals a second flaw: political romanticism. Rees’s admiration for the Levellers leads him to seek modern counterparts, even when none are present. The American Revolution lacked a large democratic movement similar to the Levellers, and no class capable of executing such an agenda. By viewing 1776 through Leveller memories, Rees unintentionally hides the bourgeois nature of the revolution and the limited social class of its leadership.

Finally, Rees’s historiography often conflates revolutionary rhetoric with actual revolutionary capacity. For example, Jefferson’s reference to Rumbold’s scaffold speech is seen as proof of radical continuity. However, it actually exposes the ideological contradictions within a slaveholding elite that masks its class interests with universalist language. Rees notes the hypocrisy but overlooks its deeper roots in the property relations of a bourgeois revolution.

This critique contextualises Rees’s work within a Marxist framework, emphasising its contributions and political boundaries. It argues that the crucial historical connection is not just between 1649 and 1776, but also between both revolutions and the emergence of the modern proletariat — the only class capable of confronting the contradictions that challenged the Levellers and limited the American Revolution.

Recovering the Radical Memory of 1649

Rees’s essay convincingly illustrates that the English Revolution was more than an abstract concept; it left a lively cultural imprint in colonial America. His compelling evidence includes: Oliver Cromwell, a black soldier whose name embodies revolutionary ideals; the warship Oliver Cromwell, intentionally named to honour the regicide; the Cromwell’s Head Inn, featuring a low sign that makes passers-by bow—a satirical nod to monarchy; the frequent use of Leveller pseudonyms like “Joyce, Jun.” among American radicals; and Jefferson’s sermons on fast days, directly influenced by Puritan traditions as shown in Rushworth’s Collections. This highlights how deeply the Revolution’s symbols and ideas shaped American cultural identity.

These examples show that the memory of 1649 was widespread, not only among the Founding Fathers but also among farmers, artisans, and soldiers. Rees’s discussion of the Hudson Valley Levellers of 1766 offers particular insight. When Prendergast remarked, “if the king were there he would serve him so, for kings had been brought to by mobs before now,” he was speaking literally. He was referencing the regicide tradition as a current political tactic. This exemplifies the most direct form of cultural-political history. Rees emphasises the popular dimension of revolutionary memory, which mainstream history often neglects. Nonetheless, memory alone does not constitute politics, and that is where Rees’s analysis is limited.

Rees highlights class conflicts, such as the Sons of Liberty's opposition to agrarian rebels, the reemergence of class tensions during Shays’ Rebellion, and the Federalists’ worries about plebeian uprisings. Yet, these points are presented as side notes rather than the main focus of analysis. From a Marxist standpoint, understanding the American Revolution requires examining its core nature. Although it was progressive in overthrowing colonial rule and establishing a republic, it was also constrained by the class interests that influenced it. The elite of merchant, planter, and lawyer backgrounds feared the common people almost as much as they opposed the British Crown.

Over a century ago, Charles Beard famously argued that the Constitution primarily served economic interests by protecting property owners from democratic influence. Voting qualifications based on property persisted, slavery continued and even grew, and the planter and merchant elites remained in control. Rees’s comment — that calling someone ‘Sir’ in 1776 was simply good manners — underscores the formal republican ideals of that era, but it obscures the deepening class divisions. Although the revolution abolished monarchy, it also reinforced capitalist property relations and upheld existing economic hierarchies.

Why Leveller‑Style Radical Democracy Could Not Be Realised in 1776

The American Revolution is often draped in the language of universal liberty, natural rights, and popular sovereignty. Yet the radical democratic program associated with the Levellers of the English Revolution — annual parliaments, near‑universal male suffrage, equality before the law, and strict limits on property‑based political power — was never remotely possible in 1776. The reason lies not in the moral failings of individual revolutionaries, but in colonial America's class structure and its stage of capitalist development.

The Levellers originated from a broad movement of artisans, small producers, and soldiers opposing the ruling elite's oligarchic power in England. Their goals reflected the interests of common people aiming to eliminate feudal privileges and increase political involvement. Conversely, the American Revolution was driven by merchants, planters, and lawyers whose wealth depended on existing property systems they did not wish to change. These elites feared popular uprisings more than the British Crown itself. Their main objective was to maintain control over the colonial government rather than promote democratic reforms.

The Levellers drew strength from a politically conscious and radicalised soldier population during the Civil War. Conversely, America lacked a comparable unified group. Colonial society was fragmented into enslaved Africans, indentured servants, tenant farmers, and small landowners, without a shared political structure to push for radical democratic changes. The Sons of Liberty could mobilise crowds strategically, but they generally did not support independent plebeian initiatives—as shown by their opposition to the Hudson Valley farmers and Shays’ Rebellion.

The Levellers envisioned a society of legally free individuals. However, during the American Revolution, nearly one-fifth of the population was enslaved. The dominance of slaveholding leaders such as Jefferson, Washington, and Madison hindered the realisation of universal rights. A republic based on slavery couldn’t fully embody Leveller ideals.

The Levellers were crushed because the English Revolution remained within the limits of a bourgeois transformation. The American Revolution was even more tightly bound to those limits. It abolished monarchy but entrenched capitalist property relations. The Constitution was designed explicitly to restrain democratic pressures from below. The new republic institutionalised elite rule through the Senate, the Electoral College, and property‑based political exclusion.

Leveller-style radical democracy was impossible in 1776 because the modern proletariat, the class capable of implementing it, had not yet formed. The American Revolution was a bourgeois revolution, advancing by ending colonial rule but structurally unable to realise the democratic goals later linked to the working class. The unresolved issues from 1776 would be addressed only with the rise of a class whose interests shifted away from defending property toward abolishing it.

Rees’s key argument—that Leveller radicalism reached America—is historically significant but politically sensitive. The Levellers were authentic radical democrats who opposed monarchy, oligarchy, and the property laws of the 1640s. Cromwell silenced them because they posed a threat to the developing bourgeois order. No extensive democratic movement challenged property relations at the time. The closest example—Shays’ Rebellion—was similarly suppressed by the same forces who fought the British.

Jefferson’s reference to Rumbold’s speech — asserting that “the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs” — is rhetorically striking but lacks genuine political impact. Jefferson owned over 600 enslaved people, including two named “Lilburn.” This isn’t merely hypocrisy; it exposes the core contradiction of a bourgeois revolution that claimed to promote universal rights while simultaneously endorsing the most extreme form of property rights: human ownership. As a result, Rees’s analogy risks idealising 1776 by suggesting that the revolution fully encompassed Leveller radicalism, which it actually did not.

Rees contends that although language from the English Revolution can motivate resistance against current capitalist leaders, rhetoric alone is not enough for real political change. Simply referencing history does not generate revolutionary awareness. The American Civil War, often called the “second American revolution," ended slavery but primarily served as a bourgeois revolution. Reconstruction's failure to sustain reforms allowed planter dominance to re-emerge in new ways. The key insight is not a lack of revolutionary memory, but that bourgeois revolutions are naturally limited in their ability to achieve full democracy.

The Levellers lost because the modern working class, the social group able to lead a revolution, had not yet developed. This applies similarly in 1776. The important historical connection isn't just between 1649 and 1776, but also involves both revolutions and the emergence of the modern working class. Ultimately, only the proletariat can address the contradictions that led to the Levellers' failure and limited the American Revolution.

 

Sources and Bibliography

Primary Sources: English Revolution

• The Putney Debates, 1647. In Puritanism and Liberty, ed. A.S.P. Woodhouse. London: J.M. Dent, 1938.
• The Clarke Papers, ed. C.H. Firth. 4 vols. London: Camden Society, 1891–1901.
• Rushworth, John. Historical Collections. London, 1659–1701.
• Rumbold, Richard. Scaffold Speech, 1685 (widely reproduced in contemporary pamphlets).
• Cromwell, Oliver. Letters and Speeches, ed. Thomas Carlyle. London: Chapman & Hall, 1845.

Primary Sources: American Revolution

• Jefferson, Thomas. Writings, ed. Merrill Peterson. New York: Library of America, 1984.
• Adams, John. The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams. Boston: Little, Brown, 1850–56.
• The Federalist Papers, ed. Clinton Rossiter. New York: Signet, 2003.
• Records of Shays’ Rebellion, Massachusetts Archives.

Secondary Sources: English Revolution and Levellers

• Hill, Christopher. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution. London: Penguin, 1972.
• Hill, Christopher. The Experience of Defeat. London: Penguin, 1984.
• Manning, Brian. The English People and the English Revolution. London: Bookmarks, 1991.
• Rees, John. The Leveller Revolution: Radical Political Organisation in England, 1640–1650. London: Verso, 2016.
• Sharp, Buchanan. In Contempt of All Authority: Rural Artisans and Riot in the West of England, 1586–1660. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.

Secondary Sources: American Revolution

• Beard, Charles A. An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. New York: Macmillan, 1913.
• Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York: Vintage, 1993.
• Nash, Gary B. The Unknown American Revolution. New York: Viking, 2005.
• Holton, Woody. Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007.
• Linebaugh, Peter & Rediker, Marcus. The Many‑Headed Hydra: Sailors, enslaved people, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. Boston: Beacon Press, 2000.

Marxist Historiography and Theory

• Marx, Karl. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
• Marx & Engels. The Communist Manifesto.
• Trotsky, Leon. History of the Russian Revolution.
• Trotsky, Leon. The Permanent Revolution.
• Draper, Hal. The “Two Souls” of Socialism.
• Anderson, Perry. Lineages of the Absolutist State. London: Verso, 1974.
• Anderson, Perry. Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism. London: Verso, 1974.
• Pashukanis, Evgeny. The General Theory of Law and Marxism. London: Pluto, 1980.
• Slaughter, Thomas P. The Whiskey Rebellion. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Rees’s Own Works (for contextual critique)

• Rees, John. The Black Jacobins Reader (co‑editor). Durham: Duke University Press, 2017.
• Rees, John. Timelines: A Political History of the Modern World. London: Routledge, 2012.
• Rees, John. The Black Oliver Cromwell, the Levellers, and the American Revolution. (Essay referenced in your analysis.)

Useful Articles and Scholarly Essays

• Hill, Christopher. “The English Revolution and the American Revolution.” Past & Present (various essays).
• Nash, Gary. “The Urban Crucible.” The William and Mary Quarterly, 1976.
• Holton, Woody. “Did Democracy Cause the Recession That Led to the Constitution?” Journal of American History, 2005.
• Linebaugh, Peter. “The Levellers and the Atlantic.” Radical History Review, 2008.
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