if that how you read that you missed my point. It's not that what happened in the US was not significant, it's that is was NOT the overthrow of any existing social or political system, with the single exception of the top level authority. Everything in the colonies stayed the same after Yorktown: The state govs, the voting rights, the courts, legal and justice systems the social and economic system and everyone's place in it. It *had* to be the least 'revolution' producing 'revolution' in history. The colonists didn't want a different England, they just wanted a place in th existing one they were being denied - so they created pretty much a clone of everything in England as it had evolved locally - just without the King. That part was certainly important in its significance to the rest of the world, but it still didn't represent any change in the life of the average colonist. The comparison to France is exactly apt. The French revolution undertook to change *everything* and *everyone's* place in the existing order. It was bound to fail because that just isn't sustainable.