Colin Bonwik, writing a book called The American Revolution in 1991, said that "the American Revolution, after two hundred and more years, is superficially well-known and inadequately understood." His argument was that most historians were beginning to treat it as a mere "colonial rebellion" and there was nothing really revolutionary about it.

Bonwik argued that these views were misconceived and that there was a key internal revolution where the new United States accomplished several revolutionary goals: a republican system of governance, gave supremacy to the people, altered the relationship between the elite and the "social inferiors," and created a federal union. In Bonwik's view, it took almost twenty years for this internal revolution to be completed. What do you think of this perspective on this time period? Was it a revolution or a rebellion?