Chapter 22: Revolutions in the West, 1750-1830 Notes

Revolutions in the West, 1750-1830

Focus Questions

• What do the revolutions of this chapter have in common?
• (American) What are the preconditions and causes of the American Revolution?
• (American) What were the outcomes of the American Revolution?
• (French) What are the causes of the French Revolution?
• (French) What are the key phases of the French Revolution?
• (French) What was the outcome of the French Revolution?
• (Haitian) What was the social structure of French Haiti?
• (Haitian) What inspired the slave revolution?
• (Haitian) How did slaves win freedom and independence?
• (Latin Am) What are the causes of revolutions in Latin America?
• (Latin Am) Who led and benefitted from the Latin American Revolutions?
• How was the Atlantic world different by the end of the revolutionary era?

Simón Bolívar

• Simón Bolívar was a revolutionary born in Venezuela.
• He led military forces throughout present-day Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru.
• He became the most important military leader in the struggle for independence in South America.
• Bolívar vowed to help liberate South America from the Spanish empire.
• Bolívar traveled to Europe and was inspired by the French Revolution.
• Studied Enlightenment ideas in Paris.
• Bolívar returned to Caracas in 1813 at the head of an army of liberation.
• By 1824, he had driven the Spanish out of Peru.

Memorable Quotes

• American Declaration of Independence, 1776:
  • "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed: whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government"
• Emmanuel J. Sieyès, What is the Third Estate?, 1789:
  • "We have three questions to ask and answer. First, what is the Third Estate? Everything. Second, What has it been in the political order? Nothing. Third What does it demand? To become something."
• The Haitian Declaration of Independence, January 1804:
  • "We have dared to be free, let us be thus by ourselves and for ourselves. Let us imitate the grown child: his own weight breaks the boundary that has become an obstacle to him."

Revolutions

• American War of Independence 1776-1783
• French Revolution 1789-1799
• Haitian Revolution 1791-1804
• Latin American Revolutions 1800-1824
• (English Civil War 1640s, Glorious Revolution 1688)
• Bourgeois Revolutions, Colonial Revolutions or Nationalist Revolutions?

Political Reordering in the Atlantic World

• The spread of revolutionary ideas across the Atlantic world in the second half of the eighteenth century followed the trail of Enlightenment ideas
• People began to believe that they had the right to participate in government
• A political revolution changes the fundamental basis of sovereignty and the country’s fundamental institutions.
• Some of these revolutions were “democratic” as they established representative government
• Some of these revolutions were anti-colonial as the revolutionaries declared independence
• North American and French revolutions overthrew monarchs and launched republics
• Ideas that spawned the American and French revolutions encouraged similar developments in the Caribbean and Central and South America
• Somewhat similar ideas in Islamic West Africa

Revolution in North America - 1776

(Map of North America with British, Spanish, and Indian territories before and after 1763)

Preconditions to the American Revolution

• Britain stood supreme in the Atlantic world and political revolution seemed unimaginable, however….
• Colonists resented:
  • Shipping, trading, and manufacturing restrictions
  • Taxation without representation
  • Land was a constant source of dispute
  • Big Crown-sponsored planters often collided with independent farmers
  • Settlers moved west seeking available land, often clashed with Indian and French interests
• Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) increased tensions between British and colonists
  • Increased military presence in North America hosted by colonists
  • British authorities imposed new taxes
  • Stamp Act of 1765
  • Colonists objected to these new measures
  • Resistance was first in the form of boycotts and petitions
  • Smuggled tea illegally
  • Protested publicly
  • Rallied to the slogan “no taxation without representation”
  • Became violent in 1775 between colonial militia and British troops in Massachusetts

Protesting Taxation

• Needing additional resources to control its expanded American frontier after victory in the Seven Years’ War, the British Parliament imposed new taxes on the North American colonies.
• Angry colonists have tarred and feathered one of the king’s officials beneath a “Liberty Tree.”
• Tarring and feathering, which often left the victim permanently disfigured, was an exceptionally violent form of vigilante justice.

Rebellion and War, 1763–1783

• Calls came to sever ties with Britain based on Enlightenment ideals:
  • Thomas Paine’s Common Sense in 1776
  • Declaration of Independence authored by Thomas Jefferson:
• Colonists convened a Continental Congress with representatives from thirteen colonies
• George Washington was appointed commander of its army
• On July 4, 1776, Congress approved Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence
• The Declaration listed the colonists’ grievances and stated the universal political values the colonists claimed to follow

Excerpt from the American Declaration of Independence

• “….We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
• — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…….”

The Revolutionary War, 1776–1783

• British advantages:
  • A significant minority of colonial Loyalists wanted compromise rather than confrontation
  • Many free blacks fought with the Loyalists
  • Many slaves sided with Britain and against the American revolution after being promised freedom
  • Mohawk nation supported the British
• Advantages of the Colonial Continental Army
  • French support
  • Washington surrounded the British at Yorktown in 1781
  • French ships cut off the British retreat
  • Lord Cornwallis, the British commander, surrendered to Washington
  • Treaty of Paris ended the war in 1783
  • British acknowledged the independence of the United States of America

Building a Republican Government

• In 1789, the Convention drew up the Constitution of the United States of America
• Absence of a privileged estate;
• The thirteen states were reluctant to surrender power to a new federal government.
• Much debate on the type of government to be built:
• The Constitution was a compromise
• Granted the federal government powers of taxation, judicial oversight, banking, diplomacy, and warfare
• Ensured a separation of executive, legislative, and judicial authority through checks and balances
• Prevented large states from overwhelming small states
• In 1791, the Constitution was amended by the Bill of Rights
• Guaranteed specific civil liberties, such as freedom of religion, of the press, of assembly, and other fundamental freedoms
• Protection of individual liberties from government interference
• Settlers were religious dissenters;
• However, no political agency was given to women, Native Americans, slaves, or free blacks
• Neither the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights resolved the debate between full personal liberty and the right to own slaves

Key Contradictions of the American Revolution

• It represented a rejection of colonial rule…. ….but resulted in westward expansion at the expenses of Native-Americans.
• It was the rejection of an empire…. but, some would argue, also the creation of one.
• Colonists called for freedom and independence….… but many groups were left out.
• Political arrangements designed by Americans gave voting rights only to white, male property owners
• The issue of slavery was held in a temporary truce until the frontier pushed westward, when new states sparked the debate again

The French Revolution 1789-1799

Timeline of the French Revolution

• 1 May 1789 Estates-General gather;
• June 1789 The Third Estate declares itself National Assembly;
• July 1789 Storming of the Bastille
• August 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen
• 1790-1 Major Reforms
• June 1791 The royal family attempts to escape and is reprehended;
• September 1792 Declaration of the First Republic
• March 1793: Committee of Public Safety
• July 1794 Robespierre is executed, Directory takes over
• 1799 Napoleon Overthrows the Directory;

The French Revolution, 1789–1799: Origins

• Louis XVI incapable of uniting his deeply divided subjects:
  • Treasury was empty and there was tremendous public debt
  • Most of the taxes were paid by commoners
  • Nobility lived in luxury at Versailles
• In 1789, in response to unrest, Louis convened the Estates-General, for the first time in a century
  • The purpose is to seek new forms of tax revenue to reduce the growing national debt
  • Each of the three Orders/Estates, sent representatives to Paris:
    • First Estate = the clergy (Catholic Church)
    • Second Estate = the nobility
    • Third Estate = everyone else – the majority of the French people; it included the rising bourgeoise
  • Reform turned to revolution as members of the Third Estate refused the traditional voting by estate.

“What is the Third Estate?” Abbé Sieyès (1748-1836)

• “We have three questions to ask and answer.
• First, what is the Third Estate? Everything.
• Second, what has it been in the political order? Nothing.
• Third, what does it demand? To become something.”

The First Moderate/Reformist Phase, 1789-91

• The Third Estate organized themselves into the National Assembly, the new legislative body for France
• Louis reacted with fear and called 18,000 troops to defend Versailles
• On July 14, 1789, a Parisian crowd attacked the Bastille, an armory and infamous political prison
• Louis opts for compromise and recognizes the National Assembly
• The assembly declared the principle of equality before the law and issued the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen”:
  • Men are born free and equal
  • Men have natural and inalienable rights, including liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression

The First Moderate/Reformist Phase, 1789-91: Key Reforms

• Noble Privileges are eliminated:
  • All citizens are eligible for government positions
  • Wealth and merit replace blood and birth
  • Women, however, were not extended equality
• Serfdom and Slavery are abolished
• The National Assembly declares freedom of worship, and grants citizenship to Jews and Protestants;
• Church property is nationalized and the clergy is required to swear allegiance to the state

The flight to Varennes

(Image of the Royal Family being apprehended during their escape attempt)

The Second Republican/Radical Phase, 1791-93

• June 1791: the Royal Family attempts to escape to Belgium to orchestrate an anti-Revolution coalition and restore “order” to France
• The attempted escape strengthens the radical wing in the national assembly:
  • After being apprehended, Louis XVI accepts the constitution after the attempted escape, but it is too little too late.
  • The National Assembly dissolves itself and is replaced by the National Convention:
    • Elected through universal male suffrage
    • Declares the Republic
    • Declared preemptive war against Austria, Prussia, Britain and Russia
    • Offers “fraternity and assistance to all peoples who want to recover their liberty”.
  • Executes Louis XVI for treason

The Third Phase: the Terror 1793-95

• The National Convention became dominated by a radical party called the Jacobins led by Maximilian Robespierre
• Influenced by the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Jacobins wanted a state based on absolute equality and the “general will”
• The Jacobins claim the revolution is in danger and create a Committee of Public safety that acts with dictatorial powers:
  • Growing culture of conspiracy
  • Ruthless repression of the “Counter-revolutionaries”
  • Conservative Resistance (Church; Nobility; Peasantry) especially in the countryside (250,000 deaths)
  • Committee of Public Safety executed 40,000 and imprisons 300,000.
  • Radical Initiatives : New Calendar, de-Christianization, Cult of Reason and Cult of the Supreme Being;

Fourth Phase: The Directory, 1795-99

• Members of the middle class favored a more moderate republic that could guarantee property rights. In July 1794:
  • Committee of Public Safety is disbanded, Robespierre is arrested and executed, Jacobin clubs are banned
  • In 1795, the National Convention created a new constitution
    • Electorate was limited and powers of state were separated
  • From 1795 to 1799, ultimate power lay with the Directory, an executive body comprised of five members
    • Partial restoration of pre-revolutionary order;
    • Seen by many as the end of the French Revolution proper.
    • It remained in place until 1799 when Napoleon takes over.

The Age of Napoleon, 1799–1815

• Napoleon Bonaparte staged a coup d’état in 1799, aided by two members of the Directory
• French people voted their approval of Napoleon’s enhanced power
• Napoleon seemed an “enlightened despot” –
• At first, Napoleon had many military victories that increased French nationalism
• Napoleon’s downfall began with his attempt to conquer Russia in 1812
  • Russian army put up little defense
  • Retreated and burned their own cities before the French army arrived
• Napoleon’s final defeat was caused by a coalition of European powers

Napoleonic Europe in 1810

(Map of Europe in 1810, showing the extent of the French Empire and its satellite states)

Haitian Revolution

Toussaint L’Ouverture

• This contemporary engraving shows the Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint L’Ouverture in an equestrian pose associated with civil and military power.
• Toussaint brought Enlightenment ideals to the elemental struggle of Haiti’s slaves for liberation. His leadership was sorely missed in Haiti after he was tricked into negotiations with France and died in a French prison.

The Haitian Revolution, 1791–1804

• Saint-Domingue was France’s richest overseas colony.
  • Occupied the western half of the island of Hispaniola
  • Derived its wealth came from the sugar plantations
  • Most profitable French colony, biggest sugar plantation in the world;
  • Saint-Domingue was dominated by a small white minority
  • 500,000 black slaves produced wealth for a small, rich minority of 40,000 white French settles and 30,000 free people of color
  • Slave Society

The Haitian Revolution, 1791–1804

• After 1789, whites campaigned for self-government, while slaves used the language of the French Revolution to call for freedom
• In 1791, a civil war broke out between the white minority and the gens de couleur, inspired by the American and French revolutions
• Slaves rebelled and started to take over the island

The Haitian Revolution, 1791–1804

• In 1792, the French army was sent to Saint-Domingue to restore order
• Led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, slaves fought for freedom and won control of most of the island;
• Planters were supported by Britain and Spain;
• French army intervened to defend the island and outlaw slavery; Revolutionary France supported the slave-revolutionaries against the planters and their foreign allies
• In 1794, the French National Convention abolished slavery
• 1795-1800 Continuous warfare between revolutionaries, planters, British.
• 1801 - Touissant L’Overture, leader of the black revolutionaries, declares independence and issues a constitution
• 1802 - Napoleon attempts to restore French control and slavery, but fails.
• Haiti’s independence recognized by the French in 1804.

Latin America

(Map of Latin America showing independence dates and major battles)

Revolutions in Spanish and Portuguese America

• Revolutionary enthusiasm spread to Spanish and Portuguese America among the Creole elites as well as the lower classes
• Political upheaval began first from subordinated people of color:
  • Mestizos, Amerindians and slave revolts
  • Mobilized European ideas against European colonizers
  • Even before the French Revolution, Andean Indians rebelled against Spanish colonial authority
  • 1780s: 40,000 to 60,000 Andean Indians besieged the capital of Cuzco and demanded freedom from forced labor
  • Rebellions temporarily renewed the loyalty of the Creoles (Iberian American elites) to the crowns of Portugal and Spain

Revolutions in Spanish and Portuguese America

• Revolts led by Creole elites, direct descendants of European settlers
• The Creoles are the economic elites of Latin America, primarily of European descent; 5%
  • Their identity was both European and Latin American: they were culturally European but their economic interests clashed with Spanish-Portuguese interests.
  • Dissatisfaction with empire and fear of indigenous populations pushed creoles towards independence
  • Revolts led by creoles were for their control of countries & enjoyment of Enlightenment ideals;
  • The Creoles resented the peninsulares

Spanish South America

• Venezuela's Simon Bolívar and Argentine José de San Martín waged extended wars for independence against Spain between 1810 and 1824
  • During and after the Napoleonic Wars
  • Political revolution against Spanish colonial authority escalated into a social struggle (civil war) among Amerindians, mestizos, slaves and creoles.
  • Debate over forming new Latin American confederation or national republics
  • Bolívar advocated confederation but local identities prevailed
  • Bolivar led Latin America to independence, but failed to keep Latin America united.
  • Independence resulted in 18 different nations lead by military strongmen (caudillos) with little respect for democracy and the rule of law;

Mexico’s Independence

• Mexico gained autonomy from the Spanish crown during the Napoleonic wars
• Locally born creoles resented the reappointment to power of peninsulares (colonial officials born in Spain) after the wars.
• When the Spanish crown was unable to govern effectively, Mexican generals with creole support proclaimed Mexico’s independence in 1821

Brazil and Constitutional Monarchy

• Brazil’s road to statehood involved little political turmoil and no social revolution
• When French troops occupied Lisbon, the royal family fled to Brazil and ruled their empire from there
  • The royals made reforms in administration, agriculture, manufacturing
  • Established school and hospitals
  • Shared power with the local planter aristocracy (creoles), so the economy prospered, while slavery expanded
  • In 1821, the king returned to Portugal but left his son Pedro in charge in Rio de Janeiro
  • In 1822, Pedro declared Brazil independent with a constitutional monarchy
  • Pedro was supported by Brazilian elites (creoles), who wanted to avoid slave insurrections or regional insurrections
  • By the 1840s, Brazil had achieved political stability unmatched in Americas

Consequences in Haiti & Latin America

• Haiti, after revolution, found creating a sustainable republic difficult
• Countries in Latin America were politically independent yet:
  • Most of the population lived in the same impoverished conditions as under the Spaniards;
  • Inequality was not overcome;
  • Criollos benefitted most from independence
  • Africans, Amerindians, and those of mixed descent were not rewarded with power or privilege
  • Latin America remained economically dependent on Western capital (British and later American)

Chapter Timeline

• South America and the Caribbean:
  • Lifetime of Tupac Amaru II: 1741 to 1781 CE
  • Lifetime of Toussaint L'Ouverture: 1744 to 1803 CE
  • Lifetime of Simon Bolivar: 1783 to 1830 CE
  • Haitian independence: 1804
  • "Grito de Dolores": 1810
  • Congress of Angostura: 1819
  • Battle of Ayacucho: 1824
• Europe:
  • Lifetime of Napoleon Bonaparte: 1769 to 1821 CE
  • National Assembly: 1789
  • Reign of Terror: 1793 to 1795
  • Congress of Vienna: 1814 to 1815
  • Revolution of 1848 in Europe: 1848
• North America:
  • Declaration of Independence: 1776
  • U.S. Constitution adopted by Constitutional Convention: 1787
• For Comparison:
  • Seven Years' War: 1756 to 1763 CE
  • Joseph Banks president of the Royal Society: 1778 to 1820
  • Macartney mission to China: 1792 to 1793
  • Abolition of the British slave trade: 1807