New Book Argues Duke of Richmond Masterminded American Revolution

In her new book "Radical Duke" (Liveright), Harvard professor Danielle Allen argues that the American Revolution was largely orchestrated by Charles Lennox, the third Duke of Richmond (1735-1806). Allen claims that Richmond, through his theorizing, parliamentary maneuvering, and patronage of Thomas Paine, served as the revolution's progenitor. She contends that key revolutionary ideas—rights of man, theory of revolution, popular sovereignty—developed earlier in London than in the colonies. Allen also presents a theory that Richmond secretly directed the "Letters of Junius," a series of radical political writings in the 1760s-70s, with a syndicate including Paine and Edmund Burke. Richmond was a member of the House of Lords, a great-grandson of Charles I, and a central figure in the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, which operated democratically. In 1780, he introduced the first motion for universal male suffrage in British history. Allen's discovery of an early copy of the Declaration of Independence in West Sussex archives sparked her research. The book reframes the Revolution as a product of a cosmopolitan, transnational elite rather than purely American forces.