Chapter 17: Atlantic Revolutions and Their Echoes

The French Revolution

The "centerpiece" of a more extensive revolutionary process that unfolded all round the Atlantic world in the century or so following 1775

The order of the Atlantic revolutions

the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, and the Latin American Revolutions

Nationalism

The most "potent ideology of the modern era"

Socialist and Communist movements

Ideas of equality that were articulated in these revolutions

Radical notion developed in the Atlantic basin

That human political and social arrangements could be engineered, and improved, by human action.

New ideas that generated during the Atlantic revolutions

Answers could include:

liberty, equality, free trade, religious tolerance, republicanism, and human rationality

"Popular sovereignty"

Political core notion of the Atlantic revolutions in which the authority to govern derived from the people rather than from God or the established tradition

The American Revolution originated in this effort

An effort to preserve the existing liberties rather than to create new ones

Some of the conditions that Americans enjoyed before their Revolution

Answers could include:

less poverty, more economic opportunity, fewer social differences, and easier relationships among the classes

What was revolutionary about the American experience?

What was revolutionary about the American experience wasn't the revolution itself, but rather it was the kind of society that had already emerged within the colonies. Independence from Britain was not accompanied by any wholesale social transformation. Rather the revolution accelerated the established democratic tendencies of the colonial societies.

These actions launched the French Revolution and radicalized many of the participants in the National Assembly

Representatives of the third estate organized themselves as 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, which forthrightly declared that "men are born and remain free and equal in rights"

The character of the French Revolution

The French Revolution had a much more violent, far-reaching, and radical character than its American counterpart. It was a profound social upheaval, more comparable to the revolutions of Russia and China in the twentieth century than to the earlier American Revolution

The Terror (1793-1794)

A period of time where France was under the leadership of Maximilien Robespierre and his Committee of Public Safety, tens of thousands deemed enemies of the revolution lost their lives on the guillotine. Shortly thereafter, Robespierre himself was arrested and guillotined, accused of leading France into tyranny and dictatorship. "The revolution," remarked one of its victims, "was devouring its own children."

How the impact of the French Revolution was felt in many ways

Answers could include:

Streets got new names;

monuments to the royal family were destroyed;

titles vanished;

people referred to one another as "citizen so-and-so."

Real politics in the public sphere emerged for the first time as many people joined political clubs, took part in marches and demonstrations, served on local committees, and ran for public office. Common people, who had identified primarily with their local community, now began to think of themselves as belonging to a nation.

How did the French Revolution influence others compared to the American influence?

While U.S. influence became a world power that inspired others through its example of its revolution and its constitution, French influence spread through conquest (largely under the leadership of Napoleon Bonaparte)

How was Napoleon's conquest influential/important?

Answers could include: a discussion on the new empire, his revolutionary practices (ending feudalism, proclaiming equality of rights, insisting on religious toleration, codifying the laws, and rationalizing government administration), and the seeds of nationalism that were planted

Saint Domingue (later renamed Haiti)

The example of the French Revolution echoed loudest in this French Caribbean colony. Also widely regarded as the richest colony in the world at the time.

The social groups of Saint Domingue

Answers could include:

slaves, well-to-do plantation owners, merchants, and lawyers,

grands blancs (rich white land owners)

petits blancs (poor whites)

gens de couleur libres (free people of color)

Result of Haitian Revolution

Answers could include:

Socially, the last had become first. In the only completely successful slave revolt in recorded history, "the lowest order of the society—slaves—became equal, free, and independent citizens." Politically, they had thrown off French colonial rule, becoming the second independent republic in the Americas and the first non-European state to emerge from Western colonialism.

How did the Haitian slave revolt (Revolution) impact others?

Answers could include:

Slave owners in the Caribbean and North America observed a new "insolence" in their slaves. Its example inspired other slave rebellions, gave a boost to the dawning abolitionist movement, and has been a source of pride for people of African descent ever since.

As for the rich white landowners, the cautionary saying "Remember Haiti" reflected a sense of horror at what had occurred there and a determination not to allow political change to reproduce that fearful outcome again. In Latin America, it injected a deep caution and social conservatism in the elites that led their countries to independence in the early nineteenth century.

Ironically, though, the Haitian Revolution also led to a temporary expansion of slavery elsewhere. Cuba's sugar production and need of slave labor skyrocketed because Haiti stopped producing it.

Napoleon's defeat in Haiti persuaded him to sell to the United States the French territories known as the Louisiana Purchase, from which a number of "slave states" were carved out.

The Spanish American Revolutions shaped by these

preceding events in North America, France, and Haiti as well as by their own distinctive societies and historical experience

creoles

native-born elites in Spanish America

Like British North America, creoles were offended and insulted by these

The reigning government's (in this case, the Spanish monarchy's) efforts during the eighteenth century to exercise greater power over its colonies and to subject them to heavier taxes and tariffs.

The idea of personal liberty for all of the Atlantic derived from this

European Enlightenment

Unlike in the British colonies, these conditions (similar to North America's) led to

Spanish America's conditions led initially only to scattered and uncoordinated protests rather than to outrage, declarations of independence, war, and unity

All of this inhibited the growth of a movement for independence, despite the example of North America and similar provocations

The settlers in the Spanish colonies had little tradition of local self-government such as had developed in North America, and their societies were far more authoritarian and divided by class. In addition, whites throughout Latin America were vastly outnumbered by Native Americans, people of African ancestry, and those of mixed race.

The process of independence lasted more than twice as long as it did in North America, partly because of this

Latin American societies were so conflicted and divided by class, race, and region that this occurred

What are some of the most important echoes from the Atlantic Revolutions?

Answers could include a discussion on:

Slavery- it's ups and downs

Nationalism

Other forms of "equal rights" movements such as feminism

The answer to the revolutionary leaders' dilemma (the lack of support from civilian counterparts) during the South American Revolution

"nativism", which cast all of those born in the Americas—creoles, Indians, mixed-race people, free blacks—as Americanos, while the enemy was defined as those born in Spain or Portugal