1750 - 1900
Describe the context of the Atlantic revolutions.
- In North America, France, Haiti, and Latin America.
- By the 1730s, the Safavid dynasty that had ruled Persia for several centuries had
completely collapsed, even as powerful Mughal Empire governing India also fragmented.
- About same time, Wahhabi movement in Arabia seriously threatened Ottoman Empire,
and its religious ideals informed major political upheavals in Central Asia and elsewhere.
- Catherine the Great experienced a series of peasant uprisings, one led by Cossack
commander Pugachev in 1773-1774 that briefly proclaimed the end of serfdom before
rebellion was crushed.
- China too hosted a number of unsuccessful rebellions, a prelude to huge Taiping
revolution of 1850-1864.
- New wave of Islamic revolutions shook West Africa, while in southern Africa a series of
wars and migrations known as the mfecane (the breaking or crushing) involved
widespread and violent disruptions as well as creation of new states and societies.
Know the periodization of Atlantic revolutions.
1) North American Revolution, 1775-1787
2) French Revolution, 1789-1799/1815 (Napoleon)
3) Haitian Revolution, 1791-1804
4) Spanish American Revolutions, 1808-1825
Describe how the Atlantic revolutions were distinctive.
1) Global rather than regional; Seven Years' War (1754-1763), where Britain and France
joined battle and expenses of conflicts prompted British to levy additional taxes on North
American colonies and French monarchy to seek new revenue from its landowners, so
launch revolutions.
2) Closely connected to one another where American revolutionary leader Thomas
Jefferson was U.S. ambassador to France on eve of French Revolution, and Simon
Bolivar, a leading figure in Spanish American struggles for independence, visited Haiti,
where he received military aid.
3) Shared a set of common ideas, as cultural exchange where European Enlightenment
ideas (radical notion that human political and social arrangements can be improved)
were shared through newspapers, books, and pamphlets.
4) New ideas of liberty, equality, free trade, religious tolerance, republicanism, and human
rationality but core notion was "popular sovereignty," where authority to govern derived
from people, not God or from established tradition (John Locke; social contract).
5) Nationalism was nurtured
6) Women, slaves, Native Americans, and men without property did not gain much from
these revolutions, but liberal ideas gave them arguments for the future.
7) Immense global impact, extending well beyond Atlantic world (ex. armies of revolutionary
France invaded Egypt, Germany, Poland, and Russia, carrying seeds of change and
, inspired efforts in many countries to abolish slavery, to extend the right to vote, to
develop constitutions, and to secure greater equality for women.)
NOTE: Because their overall thrust was to extend political rights further than ever before, these
Atlantic movements have often been referred to as "democratic revolutions." Ideas of human
equality articulated in these revolutions later found expression in feminist, socialist, and
communist movements.
- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948,
echoed and amplified those principles while providing the basis for any number of
subsequent protests against oppression, tyranny, and deprivation.
- In 1989, a number of Chinese students, fleeing the suppression of a democracy
movement in their own country, marched at the head of a huge parade in Paris,
celebrating the bicentennial of the French Revolution.
- And in 2011, the Middle Eastern uprisings known as the Arab Spring initially prompted
numerous comparisons with the French Revolution.
Explain the North American Revolution.
- 1775-1787; struggle for independence from oppressive British rule launched with
Declaration of Independence in 1776, resulted in an unlikely military victory by 1781, and
generated a federal constitution in 1787, joining thirteen formerly separate colonies into
a new nation.
- First in a series of upheavals that rocked the Atlantic world.
- By effecting a break with Britain, the American Revolution marked a decisive political
change, but was a conservative movement as it originated in an effort to preserve
existing liberties of the colonies rather than to create new ones.
Explain the causes of the North American Revolution.
- In 17th and 18th centuries, British colonies enjoyed local autonomy with local elected
assemblies, as British government was busy with own internal conflicts and various
European wars.
- Britain's West Indian colonies also seemed more profitable and of greater significance
than those of North America.
- Colonists came to regard autonomy as a birthright and part of English heritage so finally
broke away after thinking that breaking away was not good since participation in British
Empire provided many advantages (protection in war, access to British markets, and
confirmation of the settlers' identity as "Englishmen”).
- Revolution grew not from social tensions within colonies, but from a rather sudden and
unexpected effort by British government to tighten its control over colonies and to extract
more revenue from them.
- As Britain's struggle with France drained its treasury and ran up its national debt, British
authorities, beginning in the 1760s, looked to America to make good these losses.
- Britain began to act like a genuine imperial power, imposing a variety of new taxes and
tariffs on colonies without their consent.
, - Colonists were infuriated as such measures challenged their economic interests, their
established traditions of local autonomy, and their identity as true Englishmen.
- So armed with Enlightenment ideas of popular sovereignty and natural rights went to
war, and by 1781 prevailed, with considerable aid from French.
Describe the British colonies before the American Revolution.
- Differences between Englishmen in England and those in the North American colonies.
- Within colonies, class distinctions were real and visible, and a small class of wealthy
"gentlemen" - the Adamses, Washingtons, Jeffersons, and Hancocks - wore powdered
wigs, imitated the latest European styles, were prominent in political life, and were
generally accorded deference by ordinary people.
- But ready availability of land following dispossession of Native Americans, scarcity of
people, and absence of both a titled nobility and a single established church meant that
social life was far more open than in Europe.
- No legal distinctions differentiated clergy, aristocracy, and commoners, like in France.
- All free men enjoyed same status before law, a situation that excluded black slaves and,
in some ways, white women as well.
- These conditions made for less poverty, more economic opportunity, fewer social
differences, and easier relationships among classes than in Europe.
Describe the impact of the American revolution on the colonies.
- Independence from Britain was not accompanied by any wholesale social transformation
but revolution accelerated established democratic tendencies of colonial societies.
1) Political authority remained largely in hands of existing elites who led revolution,
although more white men of modest means, such as small farmers and urban artisans,
were elected to state legislatures.
2) Widening of political participation gradually eroded power of traditional gentlemen and
land was not seized from its owners.
3) Although slavery was gradually abolished in northern states, it remained firmly
entrenched in southern states, where it counted for much.
4) United States became world's most democratic country, but this development was less
direct product of revolution and more gradual working out in a reformist fashion of earlier
practices and principles of equality announced in Declaration of Independence (ex. on
eve of French Revolution, a Paris newspaper proclaimed that United States was "the
hope and model of the human race.")
Explain how the American revolution inspired other revolutions.
- “Right to revolution" proclaimed in Declaration of Independence inspired revolutionaries
and nationalists from Simón Bolivar in 19th century Latin America.
- Also Ho Chi Minh in 20th century Vietnam.
- New U.S. Constitution with its Bill of Rights, checks and balances, separation of church
and state, and federalism was one of first sustained efforts to put political ideas of the
Enlightenment into practice.
, Explain the causes of the French Revolution.
- 1789-1815; French soldiers had helped in American revolution and returned home full of
republican enthusiasm.
- French government, which had generously aided the Americans in an effort to
undermine its British rivals, was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
- Three estates were unfair; clergy had most legislative power even though constituted
smallest %age of population, then nobility (first 2 estates comprised about 2% of
population) and commoners (majority).
- Also poverty and lack of bread (inflation) angered third estate.
- Educated middle-class men such as merchants were growing in numbers and wealth
and were offended by remaining privileges of the aristocracy, from which they were
excluded (should have same amount of rights).
- Enlightenment ideas penetrated French society mostly in Third Estate but also including
some priests and nobles, where Jean-Jacques Rousseau talked about General WIll.
- When body convened in 1789, representatives of Third Estate soon organized
themselves as the National Assembly, claiming sole authority to make laws for country
and claimed in Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen that "men are born and
remain free and equal in rights."
- During first few years, some peasants attacked residences of their lords, National
Assembly decreed end of all legal privileges, slavery was briefly abolished, and church
lands were sold to raise revenue.
NOTE: Whereas the American Revolution expressed tensions of a colonial relationship with a
distant imperial power, French insurrection was driven by sharp conflicts within French society.
- Members of the titled nobility resented and resisted monarchy's efforts to subject them to
new taxes.
- Much more radical and violent than American revolution (more like Russia and China in
the 20th century).
Describe the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution.
- In 1793, King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were executed as an act of regicide that
marked a new stage in revolutionary violence.
- Terror (1793-1794) under Maximilien Robespierre and his Committee of Public Safety
arrested “enemies” of revolution using guillotines
- Unlike the Americans, who sought to restore or build on earlier freedoms, French
revolutionaries perceived themselves to be starting from scratch and looked to future by
becoming a republic for first time and briefly passing universal male suffrage (never
implemented).
- Mass conscription for nationalism.
Explain the debate about women during the French Revolution.
- Raised question of female political equality more explicitly than American Revolution.
- French women were active in major events of the revolution; inJuly 1789, they took part
in the famous storming of the Bastille.
