Chapter 16 Atlantic Revolutions, Global Echoes

Atlantic Revolutions were distinctive wars that cost and strained European imperial states specifically:

1. Britain
2. France
3. Spain

In the 7 years war (1754-1763), Britain and France joined battle in North America , the Caribbean, West Africa and South Asia. The expenses of these conflicts made the British enforce more additional taxes on their North American colonies and the French Monarchy to seek revenue from its landowners. These actions launched the American and French revolutions. 

Atlantic revolutionaries shared same ideas

• New ideas of liberty
• equality
• free trade
• religious tolerance
• republicanism
• human rationality

Politically, the core notion was popular sovereignty which meant the authority to govern derived from the people rather than God. Ideas were born of Enlightenment caused controversy. A distinctive feature of the revolutions lies in their global impact, extending well beyond the Atlantic world. EXAMPLE: Armies of France invaded Egypt, Germany, Poland, and Russia. The ideas of the revolution inspired many countries to abolish slavery, extend the right to vote, develop constitutions, and secure greater equality for women.

Nationalism was perhaps the most potent idea of the Revolution. Ideas of human equality found expression in feminist, socialist, and communist movements. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the UN in 1948.

The North American Revolution :

Declaration of Independence 1776. The American revolution grew out of efforts by the British government to tighten its control over the colonies and extract more revenue from them. The revolution accelerated the established democratic tendencies of the colonial societies. The New US constitution- bill of rights, checks and balances, separation of church and state, and federalism- was the first sustained efforts to put political ideas of the Enlightenment into practice.

The French Revolution (1789-1815)

Thomas Jefferson- US Ambassador in Paris at the time said that France had been awakened by the American Revolution. Meeting with the king ended up with the birth of the National Assembly, claiming the sole authority to make laws for the country. They drew up the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (claims that men are born free and equal in rights). This launched the French Revolution. The revolution was partly on the members of the elite society refusing to pay more taxes. Doctors, lawyers, merchants were offended by being excluded from privileges of the aristocracy. In 1793, King louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were executed. The difference is that French women were active in the major events of the Revolution. They stormed the basil. Effect of the Revolution? Streets got new names; monuments to the royal family were destroyed; titles vanished; people referred to one another as citizen and so on. It also laid the foundations for feminism. 

The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804)

French revolution echoed more loudly in Haiti than anywhere else in the world. Regarded as the richest colony in the world at that times due to plantations produced 40% of the worlds sugar and perhaps half its coffee. Revolution meant for grands blancs (the rich white landowners) greater autonomy for the colony and fewer economic restrictions on trade. Meant for others the equality of citizenship for all whites. Slaves burned 100 plantations and killed whites and mixed whites. Thrown off French colonial rule and renamed their country. NAPOLEON'S defeat in Haiti persuaded him to sell the "Louisiana Purchase" to the United States of America.

The territory in the middle is what was sold to the United States from France for $15,000,000 after the Haitian experience. 

Spanish American Revolution (1810-1825)

These revolutions were shaped by the events in North America and Haiti. Native born elites in Spanish colonies were offended by Spain's efforts to subject them to heavier taxes and tariffs. The USA grew increasingly wealthy, industrialized, democratic, internationally influential and generally stable with the major exception of the civil war.