🔃 Unit 5: Revolutions

• 1750-1900

• Focusing on political revolutions and industrial revolutions

💡The Enlightenment

• The enlightenment provides much of the ideological context for political revolutions

• The Enlightenment - An intellectual movement that applied new ways of understanding, such as rationalist and empiricist approaches, to both the natural world and human relationships

  • “Scientific revolution 2.0“

• (context) The Scientific Revolution - developed the scientific method to study the natural world and cosmos methodically and rationally

  • Enlightenment thinkers applied this same rational way of thinking to human society

  • Both the enlightenment and scientific revolution challenged the role of religion in public life

  • Before, religion governed daily life

    • Authority came from religious texts

    • Enlightenment thinkers rejected this external authority and argued that authority comes from inside a person, not outside

• Six enlightenment political ideas

  1. The Individual was the most basic unit of society, not collective groups

  2. Natural rights

     • Human beings are born with natural rights: life, liberty, and property

     • These rights are given to all by God, not a monarch

  3. Social Contract

     • Governments are created by the people to protect their natural rights

     • If a government abuses their power, the people have the right to overthrow the government and establish a new one that upholds their rights

     • Huge change from ideas of divine right from the last unit

  4. Popular Sovereignty

     • The power to govern is in the hands of the people

  5. Democracy

     • All people (not just the nobility) have the right to vote and direct government operations

  6. Liberalism

     • Political and economic ideology that emphasizes protection of civil rights, representative government, protection of private property, free market

🌱 Effects of the Enlightenment

• Expansion of Suffrage (right to vote)

  • Ex: After American Revolution (inspired by Enlightenment ideas), only white landowning males could vote, then it got expanded to all white males then black males

• Women’s Suffrage

  • Feminist movement grows and women demand equality in all areas of life

• Abolition of Slavery

  • Ideas from philosophers like John Locke don’t hold well with forced servitude

• Abolition of Serfdom

  • Serfs - Agricultural peasants tied to the land

  • Czar Alexander II - Adopted western and liberal mindsets and abolished serfdom

    • got him in trouble with the nobility who profited from serfdom

    • serfs also led revolts that contributed to the end of serfdom

⚔ Causes of Revolutions

• Nationalism - a sense of commonality among a people based on shared language, religion, social customs, and often linked with a desire for territory

  • Powerful

  • Could define a common enemy

  • Before, what held people together was the empire they were in

    • Empires had lots of cultural diversity

  • With nationalism, people with shared cultural traits and ethnicities want to rule themselves

  • Some leaders used nationalism to foster a sense of unity among their people by:

    • injecting nationalist education into schools

    • public rituals to glorify the nation

    • military service

    • Ex: Russia

      • The Russian language was part of the people’s identity as Russians, and their leader required Russian to be spoken throughout the whole empire

      • This created a sense of unity among different ethnic groups under the state’s authority

• Growing discontent with Monarchist and Imperial Rule

  • Larger global context of a desire for self-rule

  • Ex: Muhammad Ali in Egypt

    • Egypt was part of the Ottoman Empire in early 19th century

    • However, it largely operated independently from the Ottoman sultan under a military government led by Ali

    • Ottomans were struggling due to corruption and internal conflicts

      • Ottomans couldn’t industrialize, while Egypt made steps towards industrialization by opening textile and weapons factories

• 3 Revolutions most inspired by the enlightenment

  • American Revolution

    • 13 colonies not happy under imperial rule by the British, so they rebelled

    • Enlightenment ideas seen in Declaration of Independence where it talks about the social contract, popular sovereignty, etc

    • Assisted by the French

    • Americans won and created the US as a republic

    • Inspired others to overthrow imperial rulers as well (like the French Revolution lol)

      • French Revolution produced a revolutionary document called the declaration of the rights of man and citizen

      • This doc inspired a revolution based on enlightenment ideas

  • Haitian Revolution

    • Haiti was a french colony, so when black slaves heard about the French Revolutionary ideals about liberty, they had their own revolution

    • Led by Toussaint Louverture

    • Established the first black government in the Western Hemisphere

    • The only truly successful large scale slave rebellion across the world

  • Latin American Revolutions

    • Central and South American Spanish and Portuguese colonies were influenced by enlightenment ideals and began to resent the authority of the imperial empires

    • In 1808, Napoleon invaded Spain

      • The King of Portugal was deposed

      • Created instability giving the Latin American Colonies an opportunity for a revolution

      • Creole leaders such as Simon Bolivar fought for Latin American Independence

      • Letter from Jamaica - A revolutionary document calling Spain’s rivals in Europe to support the colonies’ independence, and tried persuading other Latin American nations to unite to kick out Spanish colonial authority

      • A series of wars allowed Latin American colonies to gain independence

🚩 Nationalist Movements and Unification

• Not quite revolutions but still important to know

• Calls for greater degrees of self-rule

  • Ex: Propaganda movement in the Philippines (Spanish colony at the time)

    • Before Filipino society was rigidly controlled by the Spanish

    • Some Filipinos traveled to Europe for university education and were exposed to enlightenment and nationalist ideas

      • They then published lots of propaganda calling for more Filipino involvement in running their society

      • Did NOT call for revolution against the Spanish

    • Spanish crushed this movement, causing the Philippine Revolution near the end of the 19th century

• Effort toward Unification

  • Inspired by nationalistic fervor

  • Took place in Italy and Germany (uh oh)

    • Both were made up of fragmented semi-independent states

    • Military leaders from both nations inspired their respective populations to unite, creating Italy and Germany

🏭 The Industrial Revolution

• Massive political, economic, and social effects

• Potentially the most profound change in the history of the world

• Began in Great Britain as they had all of the key factors required

• Seven key factors to determine where and how fast Industrialization would spread

  1. Proximity to waterways

     • Great Britain is an island with many rivers and canals allowing rapid transportation of manufactured goods

  2. Distribution of Coal, Iron, and Timber

     • Great Britain had a huge empire so they had access to lots of these raw materials

  3. Access to Foreign Resources

     • Originally focused on textile production so having access to lots of cotton was important

  4. Improved Agricultural Productivity

     • New technologies and agricultural methods were introduced which caused great population growth

  5. Urbanization

     • Movement of rural people into cities because farming was being mechanized making many lose jobs and seek jobs in the city

  6. Legal protections of Private Property

     • Britain passed laws protecting entrepreneurs who took risks

  7. Accumulation of Capital

     • Britain had many people who got rich off of colonial shenanigans and they could invest in industrial tomfoolery

Factories

• Factories allowed goods to be mass produced and sold across the world for much cheaper compared to goods being hand-crafted

• Factories were originally water-powered and had to built near fast-moving streams

• When the steam engine was invented, factories could be built anywhere

• Effects:

  • Increasing specialization of labor - Each person would perform one part of a process to make a good over and over again, decreasing the demand for skilled labor

⚙ Spread of Industrialization

• As industrialization spread from Britain, some places industrialized quicker than others and some not at all

  • Depends on the seven factors above

• Effects of the spread of Industrialization:

  • Shifted global distribution of manufacturing to industrialized states and declined manufacturing in non-industrialized states

    • Ex: India and Egypt used to dominate textile production but now Britain was mass-producing textiles for far cheaper so the market share for India and Egypt declined

🇫🇷 French Industrialization

• 1815 - Industrialization arrives in France

  • Initially slow due to lack of coal and iron

• Government sponsored construction of railroads and canals

  • Made it easy to sell goods once they were made

• Pace of Industrialization was slower

  • Didn’t go through major social changes more common in Britain

🇺🇸 United States Industrialization

• Started industrializing at the end of the 19th century

  • Civil war distracted them

• Industrialized fast and became a major world power

  • Large territory, lots of raw materials

• Political stability post-civil war

• Growing population

  • Growing market for mass-produced goods

• Economy prospered

  • Higher standard of living than in European industrial states

🇷🇺 Russian Industrialization

• Ruled by an absolutist czar

• Industrialization was state-driven while Britain and the US industrialization was more private

  • Built railroads to link their vast territories into an interdependent market

• Made good progress but brutalized workers which led to many uprisings

🇯🇵 Japanese Industrialization

• Industrialization outlier

  • Most Asians states were losing importance as industrial powers began to rise and push them around

• Meiji Restoration

  • Japan did not want to be pushed around by Industrial powers

  • Engaged in state-sponsored defensive industrialization

  • Became the most powerful state in the region

🇹🇷 Ottoman Industrialization Attempt

🇨🇳 Chinese Industrialization Attempt

🧪 Industrial Technology

• First Industrial Revolution (~1750 - 1830)

  • Main source of power was coal and steam

  • Steam Engine - invented by James Watt and used coal to make steam

    • Used to power locomotives and steam ships

  • Mainly used iron (not steel)

• Second Industrial Revolution (~1870 - 1914)

  • Main source of power was oil

  • Methods were developed to distill oil into gasoline

  • Internal Combustion Engine - smaller and more efficient than the steam engine

  • Electricity - invented by Thomas Edison

    • developed incandescent light bulb to light factories and homes

    • Electric street cars and subways

    • Telegraph - invented by Samuel Morse

      • Morse code could be used to send signals through long distances

  • Many more steam engines (trains, ships, etc)

    • Increased commerce by linking large nations into a national economy

    • Railroads facilitated moving into cities

    • Steel ships made long-distance maritime trade much easier

  • Mainly used steel (Bessemer process)

  • Chemical engineers made Synthetic Dyes for Clothes which were much cheaper than organic dyes

  • Vulcanization (made rubber more durable for belts in machines, wire coating, tires)

Effects of Technologies

• Development of interior regions (rather than just coastal areas)

• Increase of trade and migration

  • Interconnected global economy

  • Increase migration from rural areas to urban areas in search of jobs

🪙 Economic Developments and Innovations

• Shift away from Mercantilism

• The Wealth of Nations - written by Adam Smith and argued that mercantilism is coercive and only benefited a smart part of society (the elite)

  • Called for free markets away from state intrusion (Laissez-faire policy).

  • Believed the benefit of an individual would benefit the whole society due to more even wealth distribution and economic flourishing

• After 1815, several western governments abandoned some state regulations on trade, increasing trade and wealth which proved Adam Smith right

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