1676: The End of American Independence

The Governors-General #2

by Stephen Saunders Webb

Book by Webb, Stephen Saunders

Genres: History, Nonfiction

496 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Stephen Saunders Webb is the Maxwell Professor of History and Social Science, and Professor of History, Emeritus, in the Maxwell School of Syracuse University.

Reviews

[Edward]

[Scott] If I could make another suggestion, a book called 1676: The End of American Independence.
[Rushdoony] Yes. A very important work.
[Scott] By Stephen Webb.
[Rushdoony] Yes.
[Scott] Published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1984. Now Charles II’s brother, James the Duke of York, one of the more eccentric individuals in history, not stupid, very intelligent, but an autocrat.
[Rushdoony] Yes.
[Scott] And he determined that the provinces, you might say, the American provinces would stop being semi autonomous and would become colonies and would be governed from London and they would do what London wanted them to do and there was a rebellion, if you remember, in Virginia, in which a number of men were killed and it was suppressed with great savagery. And from 1676 onward in the drive for American independence began to grow. And unless Americans know that background, I would say their knowledge of American history is gravely incomplete.
[Rushdoony] Yes. And the sad fact is that that very important book scarcely had any notice and it has virtually disappeared from the minds and eyes of people who are interested in American history, but it tells us how after the Cromwellian commonwealth was destroyed, then the freedom of the Americas was destroyed.
[Scott] Exactly.
[Rushdoony] And we did not regain it with the glorious revolution. They kept us in subjection until the War of Independence created a counter movement to that earlier suppression.
[Scott] Well, the so-called glorious revolution, that is the greatest bunch of baloney that has ever been put out. They threw James II off the throne of England because he was a Catholic and he wanted to reintroduce Catholicism. And their glorious revolution was to bring over William and Mary, as you know. And the .... they... they explain this to this day, the English historians call this the introduction of religious tolerance. It was so tolerant that a Catholic wasn’t allowed. Lord Acton couldn’t get into Oxford because he was a Catholic. It wasn’t until the middle of the 19th century that Catholics were able to hold public office.

[Rushdoony] Or the dissenters gained their ...
[Scott] And the dissenters were equally barred from Oxbridge, as they call Oxford and Cambridge and equally barred from office. Only the Anglican Church members could rule, could even be counted as first class citizens. That was the glorious revolution. I don’t see how the words don’t choke in their mouth.
[Rushdoony] Well, power was seized from the crown by parliament.
[Scott] Yes.
[Rushdoony] That parliament was not interested in the liberties of the people.
[Scott] No. I...
[Rushdoony] Or the liberty of the Church of England.
[Scott] The liberty of anything except the power of Parliament.
[Rushdoony] Yes.
[Scott] I mean, the whole purpose of politics is... is power. This is why it always amuses me when people say, “Well, if we get in better men...” The only men we have are the men that are. There aren’t any better men..

[Mel Foster]

There is a great interest among historians and the general public in the founding generation of the English colonies in America. And there is a good deal of analysis from the Seven Years' War on. But there are not so many historians with a wide breadth of knowledge about the late 17th Century. Webb is one of them. He seems equally at home discussing ships (perhaps he lingers a bit long here), the King's court, the colonies of Virginia, and the intrigues of Haudenosaunee leadership.
Webb shows the interconnectedness of King Philip's War, Bacon's Rebellion, and the Iroquois war of subjugation against the Susquehannock. He shows how New York averted war with the natives by avoiding the genocidal propensities of the Chesapeake Colonies and the Puritan Colonies. He shows how in Virginia it was the tobacco ships that won the civil war, and in New York and New England it was the Iroquois who swung the balance of power. And ultimately he makes the argument that the convulsions of the 1670s set the stage for the American Revolution one hundred years later. A great book for getting a bit deeper into the times and personalities of the 1670s.

[Debra Booton]

A detailed analysis of the problems Virginia had with landowners, small farmers and freed slaves in the years building up to 1676 and Bacon's Rebellion. The rebellion was a year long attack on the status of the colony, ending with extreme reactions by the government, including stricter slave regulations.

[Kent Sturcken]

good summary of Bacon's Rebellion, but waaaay too long

[Nick]

Stephen Saunders Webb’s 1676 offers a provocative reframing of a pivotal year in colonial history, arguing that the crises of King Philip’s War and Bacon’s Rebellion didn’t just expose colonial fragility—they catalyzed a royalist revolution that reshaped Anglo-America. Far from a straightforward tale of settlers inching toward independence, Webb’s narrative reveals 1676 as the moment a unified imperial vision supplanted the chaotic patchwork of proprietors and charter companies, pulling the colonies into a tighter British orbit. It’s a book rich in archival detail but one that grapples unevenly with its own tensions, leaning republican in tone while building a case for the crown’s pragmatic triumphs.

Webb’s core premise shines through in his portrait of Edmund Andros as the architect of this shift in the second half. Serving James, Duke of York, Andros forged the Covenant Chain alliance with the Iroquois—ironically empowered by the fallout of Philip’s War—and championed the Dominion of New England as a model of centralized governance: governor, council, and assembly. This structure, Webb notes, formed the nucleus of the later American federal system, enduring even after the Dominion’s collapse in the Glorious Revolution. Andros himself outlasted James, serving the Stuarts into Queen Anne’s reign, a testament to the durability of his imperial blueprint. In Webb’s hands, 1676 emerges as comprehensive change—a “royalist revolution” that stabilized the colonies through diplomacy and administration where local elites had failed.

Yet Webb’s analysis is laced with contradictions that make the thesis all the more compelling. He bookends his argument with republican sympathies, casting Bacon’s Rebellion as a proto-revolutionary spark infused with commonwealth rhetoric, a multiracial uprising against elite control that prefigures American independence. But the bulk of the evidence undercuts this: royal governance secured colonial safety precisely by allying with Native powers like the Iroquois, sidelining the very frontier expansion that fueled Bacon’s revolt. Webb acknowledges repeatedly that settler democracy rested on Native dispossession—a grim foundation that clashes with his romanticizing of the rebellions as anti-colonial. It’s as if he’s torn between celebrating populist fire and admitting its land-hungry roots.

Webb’s exploration of Stuart absolutism in the 1670s adds another layer, portraying it as a forward-looking mix of bureaucratic efficiency, commercial alignment, and strategic religious tolerance. This vision crumbled domestically under parliamentary pushback and scandals like the Popish Plot, but it flourished in the colonies, where Anglican imposition was feeble and royal authority was in high demand post-1676. Lord Treasurer Danby, James, and Charles form a capable triumvirate in Webb’s telling—loyal administrators undone by forces beyond their grasp. Danby’s rational budget plan, aimed at syncing the crown with an emerging capitalist economy, was scuttled by the need to placate Parliament and his role in Charles’ French intrigues, a pattern James would echo disastrously. The Stuarts’ prerogative even fostered unintended tolerance, curbing Boston’s Puritan zealotry in ways Webb underplays.

These nuances make 1676 a rewarding, if demanding, read—dense with primary sources that reward patient historians but may overwhelm casual ones. Webb doesn’t share royalist leanings, yet his data inadvertently bolsters them: the crown’s modernizing bureaucracy outshone feudal holdouts like Governor Berkeley, turning crises into a century of stable imperial rule. For all its republican framing, the book convincingly shows how 1676 ended early American autonomy not through conquest, but through effective, if ruthless, statecraft. A bold corrective to Revolution-centric histories, it’s essential for anyone unpacking the empire’s tangled roots: insightful where it probes, frustrating where it hedges.

[Tim Brown]

Fascinating study of the unknown years between Jamestown and the Mayflower and the American Revolution.