To fill this perceived gap, the book provides a sustained narrative of the 1765–1775 resistance, followed by a set of interpretive essays aimed to provoke further discussion and inquiry.

[1][2][3] Resistance, Politics, and the American Struggle for Independence, 1765–1775 (RPASI), claims that most historians of colonial America have treated the events of 1765–1775 as merely a "prelude"[4]: ix to the US Revolutionary War.

[4]: ix In their preface, the editors state that their interest in the historical period covered in RPASI began in the 1970s, when they were studying nonviolent action as a pragmatic tool of civilian struggle.

In their work, they discovered a large number of events in American colonial history - boycotts, nonimportation, noncooperation, and protest demonstrations of many kinds - all of which could be described as examples of nonviolent action [and] the incidence and success... seemed so significant that we were surprised that the subject had received so little attention.

Although many scholars have described the decade in great detail, the richness and importance of the nonviolent activity was lost because of their emphasis on a seemingly inevitable rush toward war.

"[4]: 17  An example is that "Samuel Adams, whom many... associate with the tactics of violence, issued numerous statements prior to Lexington and Concord opposing the use of armed force"[4]: 17  (see quote at left).

The editors claim that the book "if read carefully, is likely to spark scholarly controversy and argument," and that they "believe that such debate can clarify the issues... and enhance the understanding of this critical decade in our history.

Nonviolent action is described as a technique that operates to bring about change through serving to "manipulate the shared social, cultural, economic and political system in which the opposing parties engage in conflict.

1) that previous scholarship has overlooked "the degree to which the colonists used a kind of 'weapons system' that operated without force of arms or violence in trying to compel the British government to change its policies.

Still, at the close of the decade, the nonviolent movement was abandoned in favor of military resistance, and the editors discuss six alternative hypothetical explanations for why this shift occurred (Ch.

"[3]: 165  Thus, for Roeber, "One comes away from this rich and stimulating series of essays with the disturbing sense that Americans had, at the very time of the Republic's founding, been swept up on a tide of violent resistance that fit with their colonial frontier experience.