21 revolutionary changes in the atlantic world
TRANSCRIPT
Revolutionary Changes in the Atlantic World, 1750-1850
Prelude to Revolution: the Eighteenth-Century Crisis
The American Revolution, 1775-1800
The French Revolution, 1789-1815
Revolution Spreads, Conservatives Respond,
1789-1850
Learning Objectives:
After reading and studying this chapter you should be able to discuss:
1. Be able to discuss the causes, course, and importance of the French and American revolutions.
2. Be able compare and contrast early independence movements in Spanish South America, Mexico, and Portuguese Brazil.
3. Be able to describe late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century efforts to end slavery and achieve equal rights for women and blacks.
Focus Questions:
How did the costs of imperial wars and the Enlightenment challenge the established authority of monarchs and religion in Europe and the American colonies?
What were the direct causes of the American Revolution?
What were the origins and accomplishments of the French Revolution?
How did revolution in one country help incite revolution elsewhere?
Prelude to Revolution: The Eighteenth-Century Crisis
Path to the Enlightenment
18th century philosophical movement of
intellectuals who were greatly impressed
with achievements of the Scientific Revolutions
Isaac Newton and John Locke
Newton: the world-machine
Locke: theory of knowledge and “tabula
rasa”
People believed that they could discover the natural laws to produce
an ideal society
Philosophes and Their Ideas
The intellectuals of the Enlightenment were called
*philosophes
Writers, professors, journalists, economists, etc.
Most were French with a few important English thinkers
Three key thinkers: Montesquieu, Voltaire, and
Diderot
Montesquieu
Came from French nobility, writing The Spirit of the Laws
Tried to use the scientific method to find the natural laws that
govern the social and political relationships of human beings
Wrote on governments: republics, despotism, and
monarchies
*separation of power
Voltaire
Came from prosperous middle-class
wrote pamphlets, novels, plays, letters, essays, and
histories
especially well known for his criticism of
Christianity
*deism
DiderotAuthor of the first
Encyclopedia
He wrote the text to “change the general way
of thinking”
Many articles attacked religious superstition
and supported religious toleration
Consumed by doctors, clergy, teachers, and
lawyers
Toward A New Social Science
EconomicsThe Physocrats, a French
group interested in identifying the natural economic laws that
govern human society
*Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
wrote on *laissez-faire, “let it be” — the state should not
interfere in economic matters
The Later Enlightenment
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Discourse on the Origins of the Inequality of Mankind
People adopted laws and governments to preserve
private property
The Social Contract
Entire societies agree to be governed by its general will
The Growth of ReadingThe number of published titles issued each year by
French publishers rose from 300 in 1750 to about
1,600 in the 1780s
Along with magazines came daily newspapers—a relatively cheap and even
free publication at coffeehouses
Social World of the Enlightenment
The Salon
Salons were elegant drawing rooms of the wealthy upper class in
which writers and artists gathered together with aristocrats, government
officials, and wealthy middle-class people
The cost of wars fought among
Europe’s major powers over colonies and
trade precipitated the revolutionary era
Unpopular and costly wars funded by new
taxes, fueled by changes in Western intellectual thought,
led to revolution
Colonial Wars and Fiscal Crisis
As Dutch power ebbed, Britain and France began
a long struggle for political preeminence in
western Europe
Territory and trade outlets in the Americas and Asia precipitated
massive wars
War of the Austrian Succession
In 1740, a major war broke out in connection with the succession to the Austrian
throne
Maria Theresa took the throne when her father,
Charles V, died
Prussia invaded because a women ruled Austria. France
allied with Prussia.
Austria allied itself with Great Britain
The War expanded and was fought in other parts of the world, the far east, India, and North America
The Seven Years’ WarNew Allies
A great reversal occurred in alliances
France allied with Austria
Russia allied with FranceBritain allied with
Prussia
The reversal was precipitated by colonial rivalries between Britain
and France
The War in Europe
Europe witnessed the clash of the two major alliances: the British
and prussians against the Austrians,
Russians, and French
This conflict spread, creating a global war
The War in India and North America
The struggle between Britain and France in the rest of the
world had more decisive results
The greatest conflicts arose in the North America
French North America was run by the French government as a vast trading area: fur, leather,
fish, and timber
The British and French fought over two primary
areas in North America: the water ways of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Ohio River
valley
The French were able to gain the support of the Indians. As
traders and not settler, the French viewed by the Indians
with less hostility than the British
The American Revolution, 1775-1800
Britain and British North America
A new dynasty came to power—the *Hanoverians
George I, from the German state of Hanover, became
king
*Robert Walpole served a s head of cabinet (Prime
Minister) pursued a peaceful foreign policy
The American Revolution
After the Seven Years’ War, British leaders wanted to get
new revenues from the colonies—a source to fund the cost of
war and defense of the colonies
1765, Stamp Act, required on all printed materials,
newspapers, etc.
Rebellion erupted
The War BeginsThe colonies organized the
First Continental Congress of 1774 to consider to “take up arms and organize militias”
War erupted in 1775 at Lexington and Concord,
Massachusetts
1776, Second Continental Congress approved a
declaration of independence written by Thomas Jefferson,
an “Enlightened” thinker
Foreign Support and British Defeat
Of great importance to the colonies’ cause was
support from foreign countries during their
rebellion
The French supplied arms and money to the rebels
from the beginning of the war
Spain and the Dutch Republic also entered the
war against Great Britain
The Treaty of Paris, signed in
1783, recognized the independence of the American
colonies
The Birth of a New Nation
The states feared concentrated power and each one was primarily concerned
for its own interests
The Articles of Confederation did little to provide for a
strong central government
The Constitutional convention in 1787 drafted a
new national government
The ConstitutionThe new system created a federal system in which power would be shared
between the national government and the state
governments
The federal government’s powers were broken into three separate branches to prevent a monarchy:
executive, legislative, and Judicial
The Bill of Rights
The new congress created a “Bill of Rights”—10
amendments (changes) to the constitution granting
freedom of religion, speech, press, etc.
Many of these rights directly derived from the
European intellectual during the Enlightenment
The French Revolution, 1789-1815
Background to the Revolution
1789: the beginning of a new United States of
America and the beginning of the French Revolution
The French Revolution was more complex, more violent, and far more
radical
It created both a new political and social order
The causes of the French Revolution include both long-
range problems and immediate forces
French society was based on inequality:
the three estates
The Three Estates
The First Estate consisted of the clergy and
numbered about 130,000 people and were exempt from the taille (France’s
chief tax)
Parish priests were often poor and from the class
of commoners
Higher clergy came from aristocratic families
The Second Estate, the nobility included about
350,000 people
They held many of the leading positions in the
government, the military, the law courts, and the higher church
offices
They were exempt from the taille
The Third Estate, or the commoners of
society, made up the overwhelming
majority of the French population
This estate was divided by vast differences in
occupation, level of education, and wealth
Peasants, (75 to 80 percent of the total
population)
Serfdom no longer existed on any large scale in France, but
obligations were owed—”relics of feudalism”
Skilled craftspeople, shopkeepers, and wage
earners
The *bourgeoisie, or middle class, was another part of the
Third Estate; merchants, bankers,
and industrialists, and professional people—lawyers, doctors, and
writers
8 percent of the population
Members of the middle class were unhappy with
the privileges held by nobles
Aristocrats and members of the
bourgeoisie were drawn to the new political ideas
of the Enlightenment
Many were upset with the abuses by the
monarchical system
Financial Crisis
The immediate cause of the revolution was the
near collapse of government finances
Bad harvests in 1787 and 1788 and a slowdown in
manufacturing led to food shortages, rising prices for food, and
unemployment
In spite of these economic problems, the French
government continued to spend enormous sums on
costly wars and court luxuries
The government had also spent large amounts to help
the American colonists against Britain
Louis XVI was forced to call a meeting of the Estates-General to raise new taxes—the French
parliament
From Estates-General to National Assembly
The Estates-General was composed of representatives from the three orders of French society:
the first and second held the majority despite the third estate
holding the majority
The 3rd wanted to establish a constitutional government and
equal taxes
The king and the 1st and 2nd maintained the traditional system
The 3rd estate rebelled and held a meeting in the
Tennis Court, having been locked out of the assembly
The storming of the Bastille
Royal authority soon collapsed
Popular rebellions emerged
“The Great Fear”
The Destruction of the Old Regime
The establishment of the “National
Assembly”
One of the assembly’s first acts was to
destroy the relics of feudalism, or
aristocratic privileges
The Declaration of the Rights of Man
The National Assembly adopted the *Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen—inspired by the American Declaration,
Constitution, and English Bill of Rights
Reflecting the Enlightenment, equal
freedom was declared for all men
*Olympe de Gouges saw this as an
incomplete declaration and penned the
Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Female
Citizen—women should have all the same rights as men
The National Assembly ignored her demands
The King Concedes
He refused to accept the National Assembly’s decrees on the abolition of feudalism and the
Declaration of Rights
Church Reforms
The National Assembly seized and sold the lands
of the Church
The Church was secularized: bishops and priests were elected by
the people
The French government now controlled the
Church
A New Constitution and New Fears
The National Assembly set up a limited monarchy but the Legislative Assembly
would make the laws
Affluent members of society were still elected
and controlled France
Many claimed the “old order” had been destroyed
War with Austria
The rulers of Austria and Prussia threatened to use force to restore
Louis XVI to full power
Legislative Assembly declared war on
Austria in the spiring of 1792
Rise of the Paris Commune
Defeats in war and economic shortages resulted in new political demonstrations
Radical political groups in paris organized a mob attack
on the royal palace and Legislative Assembly
They forced the Legislative Assembly to suspend the
monarchy
A radical phase in the French Revolution
emerged
The *sans-culottes (without breeches)—patriots without fine
clothes took the lead in the radical movements
Power was transferred from the Assembly to the Paris Commune
The Move to Radicalism
The sans-culottes sought revenge on those who had aided the king and resisted
the popular will
*Jean-Paul Marat, a revolutionary, published a
radical journal called Friend of the People
This publication, read by many, encouraged the
rebellion further
The Fate of the KingThe newly elected National
Convention acted as the sovereign ruling body of France
Lawyers, professors, and property owners
National Convention’s first major act was the abolishment of the
monarchy and establishment of a republic
Factions split the Convention: All were members of the *Jacobin
club
*Girondins represented the provinces and outside the city,
fearing and supported the king
*The Mountain represented the interests of the radicals,
largely from Paris
The latter condemned Louis XVI and sentenced him to
death
This execution created many enemies abroad
Crisis and Response
The Commune, another fraction, favored radical change and put constant pressure on the National
Conventions to adopt ever more radical positions
A foreign crisis also loomed—an informal coalition of Austria, Prussia, Spain,
Portugal, Britain, and the Dutch Republic took arms
against France
The National Convention gave broad powers to a
special committee of 12 known as the *Committee of
Public safety—later run by *Maximilien
Robespierre
The Reign of Terror
The Committee acted to defend France from foreign
and domestic threats
*Reign of Terror
During the course of the Reign of Terror, close to
40,000 people were killed
16,000 people died under the blade of the guillotine
Crushing Rebellion
Revolutionary armies were set up to bring
rebellious cities under the control of the National
government
Robespierre enacted harsh punishments to control the “radical elements”
People from all classes were killed during the
Terror
The Republic of Virtue
Under Robespierre, the title “republic of virtue” was
given to the state
Slavery was abolished in French colonies
Price limits on goods considered necessities were established—but ultimately
failed
A new order that reflected reason, the National Convention pursued
a policy of dechristianization
The priests were encouraged to marry
Notre Dame was converted to the “temple of reason”
New Calender, 10-day weeks (the elimination of Sunday) and
months were renamed
France remained overwhelmingly Catholic
A Nation in Arms
To save the republic from its foreign
enemies, the Committee of Public
Safety declared for the mobilization of the
nation
The French raised a huge army, conquered
the *Austrian Netherlands
The End of the Terror
Robespierre, who had become very powerful,
was obsessed with ridding France of all its
corrupt elements
Robespierre was guillotined in 1794, the result of the National
Conventions condemnation
Jacobins lost power
The DirectoryThe National Convention reduced
the power of the Committee of Public Safety
A new constitution was established, 500 leaders were
elected
The new centralized power, the Directory, ruled with the
legislature
In 1799, a *coup d’etat led by a popular general, Napoleon
Bonaparte, overthrew the Directory
The Rise of Napoleon
*Napoleon Bonaparte dominated French and European history from
1799 to 1815
“I am the revolution”
Early Life
Napoleon was born in 1769 in *Corsica, an
island in the Mediterranean Sea
Received a royal scholarship to study
at a military school in France
Student of the French Enlightenment
Military Successes
Napoleon rose quickly through the ranks of the
French army
Made commander of the French armies in Italy, where he used speed,
deception, and surprise to win a series of victories
He attacked Britain indirectly by invading its
colony in Egypt
Consul and EmperorNapoleon aided the coup that
overthrew the Directory
The new government—the *consulate—was proclaimed
Napoleon held absolute power, controlling the entire government
1802, he named himself ruler for life
1804, he crowned himself Emperor
Napoleon’s Domestic Policies
The idea of republican liberty
had been destroyed by Napoleon’s
takeover of power
Peace with the Church
Napoleon himself had no personal religious faith, but made an agreement
with the pope
He recognized Catholicism as the religion of a
majority of the French people
The Catholic Church was no longer an enemy of the
French government
Codification of the Laws
Napoleon’s most famous domestic achievement was his codification of the laws
The *civil code, or Napoleonic code preserved
most of the gains of the revolution—equality under
the law, choose a profession, religious
toleration, abolition of serfdom
A New Bureaucracy
Development a bureaucracy of capable
officials
Promotion was based on ability, not rank or birth
Napoleon also created a new aristocracy based on merit in the state service
Preserver of the Revolution?
In his domestic policies, Napoleon did preserve
aspects of the revolution
Napoleon shut down 60 of France’s 73
newspapers—all manuscripts must be
subjected to government scrutiny
Napoleon’s EmpireBuilding the Empire
When Napoleon became consul in 1799, France was at war with
the coalition of Russia, Great Britain, and Austria
Napoleon’s Grand Army defeated the Austrian, Prussian,
and Russian armies, trying to create a new European order
French Empire created dependent states and allied
states
Spreading the Principles of the Revolution
Napoleon sought to spread some of the principles of
the French Revolution
He tried to destroy the old order of other nations
The spread of French revolutionary principles
was an important factor in the development of liberal
traditions in these countries
The European Response
Napoleon hoped that his Grand Empire would last for centuries
The British navy’s decisive defeat of a combined French-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar in
1805
Economic blockade
The Allied States resented Napoleon’s economic
regulations
Britain’s Survival
Nationalism
*Nationalism is the unique cultural identity
of a people based on common language,
religion, and national symbols
Napoleon established Nationalism in France and to other regions: They were hated as oppressors, stirring
patriotism
The Fall of Napoleon
Disaster in RussiaThe Spanish debacle
The Grand Army and Russia
Russian forces retreated for hundreds of miles, burning
their own villages
The Grand Army discovered Moscow ablaze, lacking food
and supplies
“Great Retreat”
This military disaster led other European states to rise up and attack the crippled
French Army
Exile on the island of Elba
The Bourbon monarchy was
restored to France under Louis XVIII
The Final Defeat
Napoleon escaped from Elba, rallying France to
his side again
Mustering another army, Napoleon was defeated at
Waterloo, Belgium
He was exiled to the island of St. Helena, a
small island in the South Atlantic
Revolution Spreads, Conservatives Respond, 1789-1850
News of revolutionary events
in France destabilized the
colonial regime in Saint Domingue
(present-day Haiti), a small French colony
on the western half—resulting in the first
successful slave rebellion
The Haitian Revolution, 1789-1804
The colony’s high mortality and low fertility rates created
an insatiable demand for African slaves
The gens de couleur, the free mixed-race population sought an end to race discrimination,
not for slaves but for themselves
Open conflict between the white elite and gens de couleur
led to destabilization
A slave rebellion began on the
plantations of the north and spread
throughout the colony
In 1802, Napoleon sent a large military
force to Saint Dominque to
reestablish both French colonial
authority and slavery
The Congress of Vienna and Conservative Retrenchment,
1815-1820*Congress of Vienna, a convention to reestablish political order in Europe
The French Revolution and Napoleon’s imperial ambitions had
threatened the very survival of Europe’s old order
French monarchy was reestablished
Liberal and Conservative Nationalism contested for
dominance
Nationalism, Reform, and Revolution,
1821-1850
Greece had been under Ottoman control until patriots launched and
independence movement
After years of struggle, Russia, France, and Great
Britain forced the Ottoman Empire to
recognize Greek independence in 1830
*Revolutions of 1848
The desire for democratic reform and national self-
determination and the frustrations or urban
workers
Reforms swept through France, Hungary, Italy, Bohemia, and Russia
Class conflict erupted