Mid-eighteenth-century America was not a democracy by any standard definition.
Evidence
- “[I]f ‘democracy’ implies government by consent of the governed or at least by consent of a majority of those governed and not merely of an adult white male elite, then those historians from Bancroft to Brown who have described American society of the mid-eighteenth century as ‘democratic’ are simply wrong.” Ibid., p. 368. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1722
Categorization
- DEFINE: Fixes a rigorous definition of democracy (consent of the governed majority) against which the colonial record plainly fails.