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 antagonistic 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