The Atlantic Revolutions: American, French, Haitian, and Latin American

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the key terms, leaders, social structures, acts, and turning points of the American, French, Haitian, and Latin American Revolutions.

Crown Mercantilism

An economic policy requiring Latin American colonies to trade exclusively with Spain and Portugal while draining colonial wealth to Europe.

Colonial Caste System

The rigid racial and social hierarchy in Spanish America that stratified society into Peninsulares, Creoles, Mestizos, Indigenous Peoples, and Enslaved persons.

Peninsulares

Spanish-born elites residing in the Americas who held the highest government and church offices.

Creoles

Wealthy descendants of Spanish settlers born in the Americas who possessed significant economic wealth but lacked high-level political power.

Simón Bolívar

Venezuelan military leader known as "El Libertador" who liberated Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, crossed the Andes to win at Boyacá, and envisioned a united Gran Colombia.

José de San Martín

Argentine general and "Liberator of the South" who led the Army of the Andes across high-altitude passes to free Chile in 1817, liberated Lima in 1821, and conceded command to Bolívar at Guayaquil in 1822.

Grito de Dolores

The 1810 call to revolt issued by Catholic priest Miguel Hidalgo, which mobilized indigenous and mixed-race workers to fight against Spanish colonial rule for land reform and freedom.

José María Morelos

Mexican priest and revolutionary leader who took command of the independence movement following Hidalgo, drafting a constitution that abolished slavery.

Gran Colombia

Simón Bolívar's envisioned republic intended to unite northern South American regions into a single powerful state to resist foreign empires, which eventually collapsed into separate nations.

Caudillos

Military strongmen who seized political control across newly independent Latin American nations amid post-independence civil instability.

Three Estates

The legal social orders of pre-revolutionary France, dividing the population into the Clergy (First Estate), Nobility (Second Estate), and Commoners (Third Estate).

First Estate

The Roman Catholic clergy in France, making up only $1\%$ of the total population, owning $10\%$ of all land, and exempt from paying taxes.

Second Estate

The French nobility and aristocracy, constituting approximately $3\%$ of the population, holding $20\%$ of the land, controlling government offices, paying no taxes, and living off public revenues.

Third Estate

The vast majority ($95\%$) of French society, encompassing the bourgeoisie, urban laborers, and rural peasants, who bore the entire tax burden and church tithes while lacking political representation.

Bourgeoisie

The educated urban middle class of the Third Estate in France, including doctors, lawyers, merchants, and businessmen.

Abbé Sieyès

French clergyman and member of the Estates General who championed Third Estate empowerment with the influential political pamphlet declaring the Third Estate to be everything.

Tennis Court Oath

A historic pledge taken in June 1789 by Third Estate delegates locked out of the Estates General meeting hall, vowing not to disband until they had drafted a new constitution for France.

Storming of the Bastille

The armed capture of a medieval royal fortress and prison in Paris by revolutionaries on July 14, 1789, signaling the physical outbreak of the French Revolution.

The Great Fear

A wave of peasant riots across the French countryside in the summer of 1789, during which manor homes were ransacked and feudal records destroyed.

Committee of Public Safety

A revolutionary executive body led by figures such as Georges Danton and Maximilien Robespierre to defend the Republic against internal and foreign threats during the French Revolution.

Reign of Terror

The radical phase of the French Revolution (1793–1794) led by Robespierre, characterized by the mass execution of thousands of suspected political dissidents via the guillotine.

Napoleonic Code

A unified legal code established under Napoleon Bonaparte that eliminated the hereditary Estate System, simplified French laws, and recognized legal equality.

Congress of Vienna

An 1814–1815 peace conference led by Prince Metternich of Austria that restored European monarchies, redrew national borders, and established a balance of power doctrine following Napoleon's defeat.

Saint-Domingue

A French Caribbean colony and major global trade powerhouse producing $50\%$ of the world's sugar and coffee, sustained by an enslaved population that comprised $90\%$ of the island.

Grand Blancs

The wealthy white plantation-owning ruling class of Saint-Domingue who exercised predominant economic control.

Petit Blancs

The working-class white population of Saint-Domingue, consisting of laborers, merchants, and artisans, who sought greater political influence and seized Port-au-Prince in 1790.

Free People of Color

A social group in colonial Saint-Domingue that owned significant land and plantations but was systematically denied equal civil and political rights.

Toussaint Louverture

A former enslaved military strategist and diplomat who led the Haitian Revolution, drafted the 1801 autonomous constitution, and instituted a paid agricultural labor system before being captured by French forces.

War of the Knives

A 13-month civil war in Saint-Domingue in which Toussaint Louverture defeated rival general André Rigaud to consolidate control across the territory.

Leclerc Expedition

A French military force of $40,000$ troops dispatched by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1801–1802 to reassert direct colonial authority and restore slavery in Saint-Domingue.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines

The revolutionary general who took command of the Haitian forces after Louverture's capture, defeated the French, and declared the sovereign independence of Haiti on January 1, 1804.

Haiti

The world's first free Black republic, founded on January 1, 1804, whose name was derived from the indigenous Taíno designation for the island.

Navigation Acts

A series of laws passed beginning in 1650 designed to regulate colonial shipping and trade strictly within the British Empire.

Salutary Neglect

The unofficial British policy of loose trade regulation enforcement in the American colonies, allowing widespread smuggling to proceed largely unchecked.

Proclamation of 1763

A royal decree by the British crown closing the western frontier to colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains to reduce conflicts with Native Americans.

Sugar Act of 1764

British revenue legislation that lowered the foreign molasses tariff from six pence to three pence per gallon while aggressively enforcing tax collection and levying duties on sugar, wine, and coffee.

Currency Act of 1764

Parliamentary act that barred the American colonies from printing their own paper money, resulting in a severe shortage of currency for trade.

Quartering Act of 1765

British law compelling colonial authorities and inhabitants to provide food, munitions, and housing for stationed British troops.

Stamp Act of 1765

A direct British tax requiring purchase stamps on legal documents, newspapers, pamphlets, licenses, and playing cards, which popularized the rallying cry "No taxation without representation."

Sons of Liberty

A secret resistance group founded in 1765 by Samuel Adams that intimidated royal stamp distributors into resigning and organized direct protest actions against British taxation.

Declaratory Act of 1766

A statute passed by Parliament alongside the Stamp Act's repeal declaring Great Britain's absolute power to pass binding laws over the colonies "in all cases whatsoever."

Townshend Acts

1767 British revenue measures placing duties on colonial imports of glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea; all duties except the tea tax were repealed in 1770.

Boston Massacre

A confrontation on March 5, 1770, in which British soldiers fired into a hostile mob of colonists in Boston, killing five individuals and injuring six.

Tea Act of 1773

An act of Parliament granting the financially struggling British East India Company a monopoly on the colonial tea trade, underselling local merchants while preserving the tea tax.

Boston Tea Party

A December 16, 1773 protest in which approximately $150$ colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians dumped $342$ chests ($92,000\,\text{pounds}$) of East India Company tea into Boston Harbor.

Coercive/Intolerable Acts

Harsh punitive measures passed by Britain in 1774 that closed Boston Harbor, dissolved Massachusetts self-governance, and expanded troop quartering in response to the Boston Tea Party.

Olive Branch Petition

A formal appeal sent to King George III by the Second Continental Congress on July 5, 1775, seeking a peaceful resolution to disputes over taxation without demanding independence, which the King rejected.

Common Sense

A pamphlet published anonymously by Thomas Paine in January 1776 that used moral and republican arguments to persuade the American public to declare complete independence from Great Britain.