Before Bailyn's 1967 work, it was generally accepted that the American Revolution was driven by social conflict between settlers and the British government and class conflict in American society. However, Bailyn's Pulitzer-winning work proposed that radical ideas, not social conflict, fired the American Revolution, and it was an ideological, constitutional, and political struggle. He showed how American colonists were moved by radical antiauthoritarian beliefs cherishing liberty and distrusting centralized power. In his view, colonists felt their own oppression was part of 'a comprehensive conspiracy against liberty throughout the English-speaking world.' And revolution was the only escape.