Learning Notes 6-7
commercial empires in Asia and
the images here on this 1st site are all European style churches that
are located and Asia you guessed it so here on the left is a church
in Manila which was controlled by Spain in the Philippines this is a
church that is in that Chinatown district. Of Manila this here is a Dutch church and
it was located in Jakarta Indonesia it is no longer an existence this
church he can see the palm trees. There giving it more of a tropical
feel and then here is a recent photo of the Basilica of Our Lady of good health
which is in southeastern India so all different parts of Asia with all different
European clear European influence. Ok so why East Asia and
why sea routes to get there because think about it before all of this there had
been the silk the Silk Road in trade for centuries millennia across the land so why suddenly the interest in sea routes
and why was East Asia so important. Down to spaces. 8 East Asia and Asia had spaces and
Europe wanted them. Not nag cinnamon cloves pepper over
the pepper key ingredients and pumpkin spice lattes So
all of these prices were really popular in Europe and
only available in East Asia so they're really lucrative to
get control of the spices and to train them want to make a lot
of money additionally Asia and China in particular had really
good like products like porcelaine silk things that were very advanced
that again the Europeans wanted and South Asia was certainly that the supplier
of a lot of what Europeans hoped for and Europeans were recovering from the Black
Death suddenly they have more money and ability to get to
get what they want so. Why do you go a sea route why
try to find their way around via water because obviously we could
have taken it upon the only and. A couple different reasons one of them
was that Venice which is in northern Italy Venice the merchants there had kind
of created monopoly of the spice trade and they charged have T.V.'s for
the use of their services so. European countries like Spain
sending out Columbus who went in America tried to find out the spice
space areas of East Asia and then Portugal who succeeds
in getting the for. Route around Africa to East Asia
getting your own venison getting around its monopoly seemed like
the best way to get the spices and make some money of your own bread and spending
it the other issue is that in 453. The Ottoman Empire had expanded and taking control of Constantinople again
such an important moment in history so. This meant that Europeans wanting to go
the land would have to cross the Muslim territory which could be but the interests
and expensive so wanted to avoid that and not have to pay the enemy
Muslim an empire for goods meant that finding a sea
route was the best solution so the Portuguese were the 1st
to do this with Vasco da Gama finally going around the to the bottom
of Africa to the Cape of Good Hope and making it into the South China Sea. The Indian Ocean but then the Spanish the French that direction
the British quickly followed suit. So the Portuguese set up the 1st to
arrive set up what became known as trading post empires and
the goal of these trading posts Empires was not to take over
territories or establish colonies or be in charge of the population instead
they wanted to simply control the commerce or to make a lot of money off of trade and
be the ones in charge of trade. How they did this was by force they
came into an area that r.d. had established commercial and trade networks
where people were doing their own thing of all different religions trading with each
other on the Muslim merchants were among the primary people and Christians
Hindus Buddhists all of the above for training the Portuguese showed up and
they didn't know how all these networks. But they did see that their ships
had better guns than most of the other ships and ports in the area so
they started to take over by force a lot of the trading
areas and trading routes. They didn't come in and try to undercut
economically and offer a better deal and said they simply outgunned those
who were their competition. They succeeded for about a 100
years they stablished bases it q. locations keep port
cities trading posts and they forced all merchants ships to
pay a certain amount taxes German duties to be able to go past
these ports or to use or refuel these ports the merchants had
to pay out between 6 to 10 percent of the value of their cargo so they thereby
established fair trade monopoly. Now not everyone like this obviously
this was not a pleasant thing for any of the people already living there so
when they rebelled or tried to rise up or resist the Portuguese intrusion
the Portuguese had the better grounds and they fought back so the Portuguese
killed those who resisted and the smaller weak states and thereby
the savage even more firmly their control. So they never got to control more
than about 50 percent of the trade on it it was kind of hidden mess so eventually they they switched their
strategies toward the carrying trade and started to become a kind of that
Amazon delivery drivers you could say of the East Asian trade networks and
so moving things transporting them and making money from that rather than
trying to monopolize the whole trade. And here is a Portuguese trade ship
a couple of them pictured here. So given any of the routes
the Portuguese routes. Are Different ones Here's their
turn outs that going back and forth but main thing is going around
Africa and the Cape of Good Hope. So there you go heading to India and. All around this region. So they controlled for
a little bit of time but then were forced out of the way one of
the groups that force him out of the way where the Spanish the Spanish also came
in and establish their own and fire. They focused on the Philippines
the Philippines. Where not very can seem serious very
lucrative the China Chinese and the Japanese were not
interested in these islands so there really was any competition for them
locally among the other expanding possible empires So the Spanish established
their own colonies their colonies said colonies are not a trading present
prior they set up actual colonies have. They and sending these small scale
military operations with advanced weapons on them and their marriage that quickly
take over the people who are living there. They also not just by force then
decided to make alliances with the local chiefs giving them guess
convincing them to join their side and so they used a little bit
more of like the bribery and the pleasantries technique rather than
simply going in and killing people. The result was a pretty nonviolent and
relatively easy takeover by the mid 1600 Sarah Spain established
their control the Philippines and then sent colonists their
transformation to happen as a result. The Spanish sent of missionaries. Lots of missionaries and
then turned Minoa the capital and then other cities in the Philippines
into Christian outposts so places where they were
converting the locals and then also bringing in more
missionaries to do work elsewhere. Economically the strategy was to
create large estates with taxes and unpaid labor serve a similar set
up in a way to the Hussey Enda approach in Spanish America they set up
the states and forced people to work on. Manila. Became the capital so its population group substantially
to about 40000 people by 1600.
part 2 of commercial and players in Asia. Ok So moving on from the Philippines which
were named after King Philip of Spain we now get to the East India Company
is the Dutch and the English. So the Portuguese were the ones
who started the year p. and spice trade in East Asia but
not long after that the Dutch and the English also showed up and
quickly over took the Portuguese. By 1600 both the Dutch and English had
established their own private companies their East India Company to help them
with this price trade why why were they motivated to start these companies
what were the benefits the 1st time having companies with a lot of investors meant
that they could raise money quickly and it cost a lot of money to try to move into
East Asia and control the space trading. Because these companies attracted
a lot of investors the risk was also shared among those investors so not not as
one person was left holding the back if something went wrong so the shared
risk and the shared capital were both really important reasons for
creating these companies. All sero they got a substantial
government support so the Dutch and the English governments granted
charters to both the East Indian companies giving them trade monopolies so
they were given complete control without competition of the spice
trade on behalf of England and behalf of the Netherlands this
is really important and further strengthened their pull on investors and
their ability to make a profit. Now not only were these companies given
monopolies which granted them charters charters would create
the monopolies sorry about that but they were also given authority. To make a war and
to govern the people that they conquered which meant they could effectively set
out their own miniature states they could in the name of England or
the Netherlands create their own and control their own little countries
basically their own mini states this was here as they were kind of given
the authority of the government itself. The result then like with the Portuguese
were trading post empires empires that meant were designed to not necessarily
set up colonies like Spain had done but to try to control trade so
the Dutch I'm focused on Indonesia. And those islands are collectively known
as the Spice Islands to their goal was to control the space trade and British
the British decided to focus on India. So you can see the European
settlements here in India many of them were English with this flag here
marjoram Swizz an important one. And Calcutta over here and
also Bombay all of these were critical port cities are critical
cities established for the British. Company also of the Dutch
the Danish The French located here too Portuguese as well but that the British
were the ones who really stuck it out and. Overall though looking seeming
out of the bigger picture of East Asian Commerce the European
economic role in it remains Maule the main players were still India and
China and Japan and they didn't see the Europeans as a threat which thinking
back to the Philippines is why China Japan kind of let Spain take over they didn't
see that the Philippines is important nor did they feel threatened by them so
this led them to like work with it or not resist that the incoming Europeans to
India and Indonesia and the Philippines. So the Dutch East India Company. What were they like what did they do well
when they showed up the areas that they focus time where I am and it's in Asia
is a set of archipelago of islands in the islands were not united there was
no entity known as nice at the time they were fragmented and politically weak they
were just a bunch of small societies so very local very localised This meant
that not only were they divided the Dutch didn't need to divide them in
order to conquer their already divided so all the Dutch had to do were come in and
do a violent takeover there would be no unified resistance as a result so
that is exactly what the Dutch that. They seized the islands of spices and
killed anyone who resisted they forced people to sell only to
the Dutch central Maine that kind of a an enforced monopoly so the Dutch
were the only ones allowed to trade or get the products to trade and
anyone here attempted to fight back or resistor to sell to other people
of a Celtic fan slaves and they also destroyed their crops so
multiple levels of cruelty and vengeance here one of the most. Disturbing examples of this were in
the Bandai islands which I pictured here. In the band islands the Dutch wiped out
about 50000 people both killed them and then also they had they died as a result
of the collapse of their society but 50000 people in the band Islands and
then replaced them with Dutch settlers and slaves time to make up that and
these news sites plantations. So really dark very very brutal
Dutch actions and the cities. The result was a complete Dutch
monopoly in the 600 psi on the main spices that everyone wanted
the cloves the cinnamon nutmeg and makes. And the band islands are particularly
important in this because they were up until a little after this
considered to be the only source of not mag in the world so
the Dutch would control. The islands like this the people doing the
growing in the selling are bring in there are people still right and then sound the
products the spices of 14 to 17 times or mark up to the Europeans to the middle
out of money off of the spice trade. Ok So that was the Dutch East India
Company what was then the case for the British East India Company. Whose coat of arms you can see here. Sounds In contrast the Dutch
the British were not very well financed they got some money but
not not as much as the Dutch So as a result they didn't feel the need to
try to compete with the Dutch they thought hey we'll just let them have the Spice
Islands will do our own thing they instead focused on India now India was
in a different position at this time compared to what becomes a Nisha
instead of being a bunch of different little islands with different local rulers
and divided societies India was under control of the mogul Empire moguls
remember Muslim was a Muslim empire set up by people who come over
from the Turkish Turk areas before so that the mobile Empire had united the
Indian subcontinent this is where India is really united politically for the 1st
time therefore the country was strong and it was United they couldn't go in and just
attack willy nilly divide and conquer like the Dutch they need to adopt a different
strategy so their strategy was to. Work with the authorities they got
permission from the move with already used to move and and to do some trade. They used bribes so the money they did
have they used to bribe their way into the Indian market to get a foothold
there and the established 3 main trading settlements so these include Bombay
which is modern day Mumbai Calcutta and madrassas So these are their 3 places
where they focus their energies. And again because the Dutch were. Taken over the spice trade be they British
decided to focus on something else mainly textiles so
by now the British have established some colonies had people living in
North America for example and textiles clothes so they had a market for it they decided to focus on that and
exporting textiles from India. This little foothold these 3 places
become the starting point for the British domination
in Kong zation of India this is where it all begins that
the Trojan horse as you will become and not seen as a threat and that eventually
will take over the entire subcontinent. And then there was Japan so
what was happening with Japan and how are they responding to all of
these changes in their region. Well the Portuguese the Spanish
the Dutch and English all of that and had shown up in Japan in
the mid 1500 traders and missionaries alike had washed up on
the shores and attempted to make inroads. And initially it seemed like they
would succeed because you cannot like the Spice Islands was pretty
split was split into different kind of feudal areas under these
lords known as dime you know. Who all had their own steam or
right or ears. So initially then Japan welcomed
the Europeans they saw that as useful and terms of military technology shipbuilding general knowledge they could get
something from the Europeans. As a result by 1600 so within about 50 years there were more
than 300000 Christians converted into pm stop huge inroads made by
these missionaries from Europe. But then things changed by
the early sixty's hundreds. Some military leaders know to shotguns
that had worked successfully to unify Japan they put down the dime you know and
established Japan as a unified country and they saw the Europeans particularly the
cultural changes or divisions that they created with Christianity as
a threat to their new unity so they decided to kick them out
they expelled the Europeans and the Christians and killed them and
many Christians the Christians and stayed behind were driven kind of into
fighting the known and hidden Christians in these communities lived underground and
were persecuted literally underground or persecuted and worshipped in secret for
the next couple of centuries. They closed off the country and for baby
Japanese people from traveling abroad and from being corrupted or are changed by
these European and external influences and they banned all European trade
the only ones who were allowed to stay were the Dutch because the Dutch were not
really interested apparently in converting people they didn't have the same of
Angeles tech or missionary mind set up and so the Dutch tried to stay but everyone
else had to go and as a result for the next 200 years from 1650 to 850
Japan is completely closed off with the exception of the Dutch but completely
closed off from Europe and the West. And this is an image of
a samurai one of the. Samurai warriors from Japan at the time.
The Slave Trade
slave trade so here on the 1st line I have several
different memorials to the slave trade. The 1st here to the left is
actually located in Paris. And here in the middle is in
the knee which is in Africa and this memorial is called The Gate of no
return for the door of no return and it commemorates the like final
point in Africa before many slaves were transported on the middle passage
to the Americas as was the last on the spot not the Morea obviously but
the spot was the last place that many Africans saw their their
home continent and then here is a memorial that
is in modern day martini and it was built in 1991 more e-mails around
the world to commemorate the slave trade. Ok so
a little bit of background on slavery and the slave trade and
Porton things to now so slavery it was not a new thing in the early modern
world the rise of African slavery it was not the start of slavery slavery has
been practiced in different ways and forms ever since that each time so
Greek Greece Rome all of those need to decide is had their own forms of
slavery they think of like the gladiators they were slaves that were forced to fight
in the Colosseum for example and around. So the site is for not just in
the ancient Greek and Roman world but all over in Africa and
the Indian Ocean and the Middle East and around the Mediterranean Sea slavery is
a very old thing however slavery in me American context is unique but it's unique
for a series of very critical reasons. First what makes slavery. And the American context
unique is the size and role that it played in
the American economy. In the North American South American
slavery played a substantial role a huge portion of the economy was only
possible because of slave labor so we're going to today how that
functioned and came about. Another important thing about
slavery in the Americas and and what becomes the United States also is
the fact that it was intergenerational that was the heritage and each and
societies oftentimes slavery had kind of an expiration date
attached to it so one might be. Enslaved to someone for a series and
for a period of time but then have the chance to get out of it that
was prisons commented ancient Israel or. One might become the slave because
they're a prisoner of war and then they serve of a particular family for
a length of time but if they have kids those kids are free they're not born
into slavery like their parent so it's very different the American
context on slavery continued for generations with the children of course
being slaves like their parents and then finally the racial component so
the fact that slavery was defined. By as people in and work or
this today the African race although natives and a lot of cases
in South America also were in slaved. This racial component this use of
a certain group of people exclusively for slavery is unique to the American
case this images of some slaves in Rome they are with the shackles arm or
the chains around their necks being led. By a overseer here. Ok so that's one of
the background on the slave trade. And slavery in general so how do we get
to it when you take slavery slavery going across the Atlantic Ocean which is
where a focus most of our attention today. Well it all goes back to the discovery
of sugar sugar that thing that we all crave we many of us have a sweet
tooth sugar hasn't been around forever as a commodity it before sugar
came to the European and then eventually the American societies
it was located sugar techniques were located in the Arab world it was the Arab
communities in the Middle East in the air Arabian Peninsula that had developed
the techniques for growing sugar and sugar is very labor intensive prior
to the Crusades the Crusades ran the Europeans Christian Europeans under
the direction or authority of the pope travel to the Holy Land to try to take
it back from the Arab Muslim people controlling it it was during those trips
that the Europeans became exposed to sugar prior to this Europeans only
sweetened their out food with honey and fruits and other natural non
cultivated source that so. Once the Europeans discovered
their sweet tooth and desire for sugar they started to bring over the u.s.
growing techniques and plantations to the Mediterranean
the best place climate wise and geography wise for growing sugar was in
the southern south of the Mediterranean and in West Africa on the coast now no Europeans were of Olen tearing
a local people or volunteering to work in the sugar industry because it's
really labor intensive and difficult so the people of that they brought to work on
these new sugar plantations were Slavic people suffered people come from
Eastern Europe and Southeast. Particularly in this case
the Black Sea region and so Slavic people were brought to work
as slaves Slavs slaves the word for slave comes from the word Slavic. Now this would have worked
out great except in 1453 the Ottomans the Turks
conquered Constantinople and Constantinople was right on the southern
part a part of the Black Sea which meant that the route now from
West Africa and the Mediterranean region to the Black Sea area where
the Slavs lived there had been cut off. So it's as a result of
the fall of Constantinople and the capital Byzantine Christianity
that African slaves start to be used in growing sugar based
is the root of the African slave trade in the Atlantic slave
trade very very big important moment. So why Africans why were
they the ones chosen for this enterprise purpose it's kind
of a process of elimination so before Constantinople fell the Pope
in that year before in $4052.00 had issued an edict that anyone who
wasn't Christian could be enslaved they were fair game so
the pope really was given permission to enslave Muslims because obviously the
Turks were considered a threat so Muslims were now seen as the perfect candidate for
being slaves they were not given the same rights as Christians so most of
Europe then was Christian at the time which meant that Europeans could not be
used to work in the sugar plantations. Also in the African case people coming
from different parts of Africa were already accustomed to the warmer climate
so it made more sense to get people from Africa rather than going out for
instance to England that was really cold. Also Christian so the warmer climate also made the African
people an attractive choice. So what did the slavery
look like in practice. Or to note that it was a matter of
European demand and African supplies so the Europeans were the ones who wanted
the sugar and the African people became a logical source of the work
needed to make back sugar. It was not though that the Europeans
were traveling into different parts of Africa to capture slaves instead
they were waiting at ports they were the merchant shuttling the people out
Werder or back to the plantations but it was African people who were actually
capturing the slaves themselves so the Europeans were feeling
it most certainly but they were not the ones going in and
catching people from their religious. And lastly the slaves were exchanged for things like textiles cowrie
shells which are little shells that were used as currency in a lot
of parts of Africa also metal goods and guns a kind of a bartering
system to take to exchange for these slaves so that's an overview of how
the Atlantic slavery processed started. So what then were the features
of the slave trade. Important Things to Know about it is that
it did not start really large actually start a really small and then expanded
substantially over time for instance in the 1500s when all of this began so right
after the fall of Constantinople only about 3000 people were transported every
year from Africa to work as slaves and sugar plantations most people were
transported in that century between 71805 that's when we see
a really big spike in slavery. Another important thing to know is
that geography played a big role geography was not it wasn't that people
were coming from all over Africa and being in slaves it was primarily from
west and south central Africa and I have a map a link to a map for you guys
to look at you can see a how this expanded over time and b. which areas were
the primary sources of slaves. This point is really really important so in terms of demography that is like the
social make up of the people being taken it wasn't people central to the community
people who it ended up being treated tended to be more marginal they were
on the the outskirts of the society so outsiders vulnerable people
people that did not that were not considered part of the broader community
in which they lived this is really key because this means that
people were not trading or selling their own people like
their family members for example it wasn't that someone
sold their uncle into slavery or their their cousin or nephew these
are people who were considered to be not part of their community so
they did not sell their own people and this is really really important to
understand because one of the arguments used to justify slavery oftentimes is
that well look the Africans are selling their own people they're so
corrupt Yes Slavery is a terrible thing however it was more complicated
than simply people selling off their best friend to make a buck so
this is a very very important point. And then another thing to know about
the destination so they came from southern south central western Africa many of
Phanor most of them ended up in Brazil. And the Caribbean this is where the vast
majority of African slaves landed only a handful relatively speaking and it up in North America in
the Spanish controlled areas or Europe and again on the map that you
can look at the time lapse map video you can see just how many go
to the Caribbean and Brazil. So here is a map that's not a time of
just a regular map you can see here so people are being taken from
these regions of Africa. And 5000000 go to Brazil 4 and
a half 1000000 to the west and east of us the Caribbean and
then as you can see point 5000000200000.5000000.3000000 really
small in comparison to 9 and a half 1000000 going to
the West Indies and Brazil.
part 2 of the slave trade. So after African slaves were captured
sold to European ad merchants or ship captains they then faced the really
awful voyage known as the Middle Passage. And 14 percent of them
would die on route so huge number lost along the way and one of
the reasons why the mortality rate was so high is these are people claims and here. This is not even a full image
of the capacity this is only a handful relatively speaking of
people are shown that would have actually been here they were more Cranford
this diagram would suggest so make sense then why the mortality
rate was several high. Because the voyage was
absolutely miserable and the slaves were treated very poorly and
humanely on route about 10 percent of all of wages had
rebellions despite there being many per caution taken by the Steelers
the captains in charge. Of weapons for instance and
guns trained on the slaves to prevent them from
rebelling many of wages despite that experienced rebellions so
I'm not going to share this here but I am pleased for us but please go and
watch this video it's very short. And speeded up if you want but
it shows the routes taken and then the countries that were in charge of each
of the slave routes or number of ships. And the places that they came from and
where they went over a period time you can see that expansionary huge number
of voyages between 700005. All right. So resistance and
escape once the slaves arrived. They had to adjust to really
terrible circumstances and oftentimes many people tried to escape so
we're talking about rebellions later on people who simply escaped
if they were lucky home and got away got away with it they would
join up with other escaped slaves people kind of marginal on
the margins of society and form these places called Marine
societies not referring to a color but instead to the idea of being marooned
on an island or being separate set expression used to describe
sailors for example her shipwrecked. So they form these communities in remote
areas particularly in South America and the Caribbean to Brazil in the Caribbean
that's where most slaves went there were some elsewhere like this this
images from Jamaica 7 the Caribbean but sometimes in the in what becomes the
United States but obviously less common because fewer slaves were taken there the
most famous of these nerd societies was called race and it is in modern
day Purcell this one was huge and lasted until the late sixty's hundreds
when it was eventually disbanded. But more than $10000.00 people
lived there at its peak so these people included escape slaves mixed
race people who didn't have any status or anything going for them and
normal society some misty zose. Native Americans and whites that were
outsiders are excluded so all of these things all these groups of people ended
up living in this community together. Ok so I'm mentioned the African people in trading their people from
their communities that the outsiders but how did the slave trade function in
terms of African states or African. Communities broadly speaking so
the contrast here between 2 different places but mean and homey in this in
the right is the need that they were located right close to each
other here in the slave caste. So I've been in 1st. Originally been aimed wasn't involved in
the slave trade in fact I had outlawed it transporting any of
its people I slaves and selling them so I tried to resist set for
a while however. And diversified their exports
tried to make other things the way to make money and innovation and
you know tried all these different things to make it not necessary to make
money off of slaves however it didn't last by the early
seventy's hundreds that mean had changed its mind and often started
to make money on the slave trade and actually became one of the main exporters
of slaves from Africa and said on the 1st side of this tower point that gate or
door of no return is from beneath. Saddam and in contrast to a wholly
different approach didn't even try to keep slavery from happening instead
they opted for royal control of the slave trade and they would have
an annual raids of villages to collect slaves to then selling this
became a huge source of state revenue. So really important difference there
between been even in the home and. So I mentioned already that slavery slaves
or many slaves were taken to Brazil so what me Brazil so
reliant upon the slave trade. A couple of products several
different products for the reasons the 1st was gold and
6900 gold was discovered. In parts of Brazil and
this increased Portuguese migration to Brazil because Brazil is under Portuguese
control and increase the need for slaves to do the gold mining it was like many
other things a labor intensive process and you can maximize your profits if you are
not paying your way bursts of slaves were the natural choice in economic terms for
the parties here. By 86670 years later 4900000 slaves had been sent to Brazil this
was more than any other country just one let that sink in that the map
earlier showed you that only half a 1000000 went to the United States time
contracts 10 times more were sent to sell. So it wasn't just gold but it's also
the rise of coffee in the $830.00 s. the coffee is another really intense
agricultural products it's really difficult to grow or cars a lot of
manual labor that's backbreaking And so this also across the expansion
of the slave trade in Brazil. Brazil becomes the last
country to abolish slavery it's not until 88 that Brazil
does away with it slave trade and slavery and frees the people who've
been enslaved So here is a slave market in Brazil picture here you see the
Brazilian mountains very tropical looking. Yes in this images from the 830 s.
I believe. So the big picture impacts of the slave
trade and of slavery in general. Africa is like a city it's. Terrible absolutely awful for Africa and the long term economic stagnation so there is no need to innovate No
no pressure to innovate because. People who are the most
lucrative product from Africa so there wasn't Let's not something or let's develop this new agricultural
technique instead it was the people and the more people you take out the less
room for growth and innovation and you have its economic stagnation as a
result moral corruption so if people who. Started to run out of raids to do or
you know ran out of marginal people in your community
but you can make money off of slaves. Or prisoners for example selling into
slavery people who had committed crimes that would motivate judges and
law enforcement people in authority to judge unfairly and
to find people guilty even if they were in a sense because they could make money
off of them so this moral courage. Option leads to the further
breakdown of African society. Another problem is that. The majority of people sold in the slavery
were men and this Creative's the result a really major gender imbalance that
gender imbalance that number higher number of women than men results in increased
polygamy there are too many women and not enough men so
they end up marrying poor women and as a result none may be
treating them as well so this breaks down the family and
changes that families look like. Being a family the export
of mass numbers of people. Breaks that completely the networks
that are you there this results in catastrophic
social destruction. Particularly because in Africa it's
kinship societies that are the most important it's a less urbanized area and
it's more at the time agricultural and based around these tribes and
family networks and so when you have people being taken out of those networks
it breaks down those kinship structures. And the result then is fear and
insecurity people who are traumatized. Psychologically damaged because of the. Fear and the uncertainty that goes with. The slave trade and
losing loved ones and family members and neighbors to this horrible
horrible enterprise. This fits back of the economic stagnation
but there is no motivation to innovate or develop technology because
slavery it's the most. Lucrative and
profitable source of income and so this undercuts any kind of future
growth because there's no. Outside pressure for it to fact the
opposite is true that the pressure to keep the African African people down and
more easy to enslave. Human toll is that 1500
when this began to 18 or 6. Approximately 12 and
a half 1000000 people were transported. About 1800000 of them died along
the way and then untold numbers died. As a result of the social disruption and
fall out in Africa and then later on and
through abuse and mistreatment and after arriving at their destinations so
absolutely horrific the in the level and scale of the injustices
involved in the slave trade. This does have important cultural
impacts that we still see that a. The term for
this global spread of African people that results from slaves being
brought all around North and South America is is
the African Diaspora Diaspora is from the Greek word that just means
dispersed or spread out and so this means that African culture and
its people spread all over the world that is a positive impact as the global
spread and influence of Africa but still not worth the absolutely
horrific negative impacts. And then Brazil because
Brazil had such a substantial portion of the slaves arriving marrying
the 5000000 as mentioned before a unique Afro Brazilian culture forms. This is a culture that mixes African
elements with the Portuguese to create what is known as a hybridization
Sika hybrid kind of like the hyphen here an afro Brazilian hybrid kind
of identity one that is mixed with elements of African culture but
also Portuguese so there are fewer to go to Brazil today you would
see many instances of that playing out.
Silver Trade
the silver trade. And on this opening
slide, I have for you different views
of the same type of coin. This type of coin is
known as a piece of eight. It was a Spanish
coin that ended up circulating all around the world
thanks to the silver trade. It was internationally
accepted and used in virtually every country
that traded with currency. So on the one to
the right, you have a coin minted in Mexico City. It bears the image
of King Charles-- I think IV. It's hard to tell. It's a little bit cut off. But that is one example
of a piece of eight. And then here to the left,
you have the same type of coin, also a
piece of eight, but with these interesting
symbols on them. They're Chinese characters. And these are known
as chop marks. Chop marks were used
by Chinese merchants to verify that the coin
was actually silver. So unfortunately, the more
often that a coin was verified, the less valuable it became. So you can see the
circulation here in China thanks to these chop marks. One last thing is that the
origin of the dollar sign is thought to have come from
here on the piece of eight. So there are some fun facts
for you to start the day. Now, this silver trade-- the silver trade is really
important for the development of world history
because it kicks off global or
worldwide commerce. So in the mid-1500s, large
amounts of silver were discovered relatively
simultaneously-- first in Bolivia, which
was under Spanish control, and then also in Japan. So 85% of the silver produced
in the world for a good chunk of time came through Spain. Most of it was in
this Silver Mountain, as it came to be known
here, in Potosi, Bolivia. It is still active today,
although not mining silver, necessarily. So what fueled the
desire for silver? It wasn't just that suddenly
people wanted shiny things or thought, hey, it might be
easier to trade with money than with bartering. It was actually the Chinese that
caused the huge need for silver all of a sudden. In the 1570s, the Ming Dynasty,
the government of China, decided to go through
a currency reform. They got rid of the many
different types of currencies, including paper currencies, that
were available in the country, and opted or change instead
to a silver currency. And then they also changed
their policies on taxes, consolidating the
taxes so that everyone had to pay just one tax,
not the hodgepodge of taxes, not paying with a
different set of ways. Instead, they would pay
their taxes using silver. So this created a brand-new
demand for silver. China has a really
large population. If everyone was paying
their taxes in silver, a lot of silver was
then clearly needed. So this process led to the rise
of currency-- that is, coins-- to pay for goods and
services rather than simply bartering or trading goods. So the Europeans-- Spanish in particular,
but others also involved-- ended up paying the Chinese for
different Chinese goods using these silver pieces
of eight from Spain as the universal currency. They were known as
trade dollars, so used around the world,
not just in Spain or Spanish-controlled areas. The result of this
was the combination of China needing a lot
of silver for people to pay their taxes
and also the fact that China had a lot of
goods that Europeans wanted and not the other way around. There was a trade imbalance. This all led to a
silver drain to China. The silver went in and
then really had no reason to come back out for a while. So this process of silver
coming from Bolivia via Spain and then eventually
to China is the start of the fully global economy--
a really big change, very significant. And this image here is a
drawing of that mine in Bolivia. So to give you an idea
of just the global scale of this silver trade,
I've got a map for you here that marks--
this is the blue, the Portuguese silver routes. The Portuguese were
also involved, though, to a much lesser degree
than the Spanish. And then the Spanish silver
trade routes are in white. So the Spanish didn't
go around Africa. Instead, they went
via the Pacific Ocean. And they had holdings,
which we'll talk about-- or we've talked about
in a different lesson. They had colonial
holdings or trade posts in Manila, the Philippines. So that was the main
place where they first went to then get
the silver to China. So the silver trade in Bolivia-- what was its impact? Why did it matter? Well, Potrosi has the world's--
or had the world's largest silver mine. The vast majority of the silver
in the world came from the mine that you're looking
at here on this slide. By 1800, more than
150,000 tons of silver were produced by this mine,
so massive, massive amounts. This had a very large impact
on the local population and economy. So pretty much very
quickly, you could say-- not necessarily overnight,
but really fast-- the population of
this small town boomed as people trying to
come in and make their fortune arrived, just like with the
Gold Rush in California, a similar process
here in Bolivia. The population of
this once-small town spiked to 160,000 people. The impacts of this silver
trade and population boom were varied. So on the one hand,
workers did not fare well. Working in a mine in the
1500s through the 1800s was not the safest profession in
the world, as you might guess. So a lot of workers
died in the mine shafts. There were also problems
with mercury poisoning. Mercury was part of the silver
refining process, a process that was perfected-- or
discovered and then refined by a Spaniard in the 1500s
that involved mercury. If you've read or seen
Alice in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter is mad
or crazy because he's had mercury poisoning. That is a side
effect of mercury, which is used in making hats
as well as in silver refining. So workers-- many, many
workers died in the shafts. It was said that if 20
workers went in on Monday, were drafted to go into the
mines on Monday, half of them would be dead by Saturday. So very high death
rate to the point that workers didn't
choose to go. They were natives who were
enslaved and forced to go. But if workers were drafted,
if their names came up to go to the mine, their
families and friends held automatic funeral
services for them, because it was assumed they
probably wouldn't make it out, or not in one piece. This level of mining was not
great for the environment. So one important thing to
know about making a mine is that you're
going underground, and you need to have
reinforced walls to make sure that it
doesn't collapse on you. There's a lot above
you that could fall. So to make the mine shafts,
the area was deforested. All the trees were cut
down to then create these mineshaft reinforcements. The result, then,
is deforestation, which causes flooding and
erosion, and generally, the degradation of the soil. It makes it harder to
really produce anything. So it has long-lasting,
widespread effects. Interestingly, women had
kind of positive impacts of the silver trade in Bolivia. Many of them became the
owners of boarding houses, of bakeries, and of
other service industries to make money off of the men-- all the men coming
into work at the mine. So if you need a place
to stay, boarding house-- making food, making
meals, et cetera. So women, in a kind of
unexpected way, you could say, ended up doing a little
bit better in some cases as a result of silver. This is a modern-day view
of the Silver Mountain, as it is known. It is still an active mine. I think they've now
shifted to, like, tin and a couple other medals. But in 2011, part
of it collapsed. So I think they did manage
to fill the big hole, but there is a very
large hole in the side of the mountain with a
couple-hundred-foot drop. OK. So Bolivia was under
the control of Spain, which meant that Spain should
have gotten super-duper wealthy from the silver trade. The impacts, though, were
a little more complicated than that. So how did silver impact Spain? Well, first, it did create
wealth for the monarchy. Remember, the colonies were
under the Spanish crown. So technically, the silver mine
belonged to the Spanish King. So while this increased the
wealth for the monarchy, it didn't really have long-term
impacts on the Spanish economy. You'd think that Spain would
be really wealthy today because of all the
silver back in the day, but that's not what
actually happened. So why not? First, the Spanish
government didn't have very helpful policies
to promote business and entrepreneurship, so
this money wasn't really invested back into the economy
in any significant way. Instead, there were heavy
regulations of industry and of the economy, so
monopolies, so one company given control over a particular
trade or type of work, regulations, these
things that kind of stifled any would-be
creativity or growth. One of the reasons
that this was part of the Spanish economic setup
is based in Spanish culture. Spain was an aristocracy. There was nobility. There were the courts. There were the king
and queen, and people were really concerned
about status and having a place, then, in
the Spanish social hierarchy. As a result, the aristocracy-- the people, the nobility
who might have made it good or made it big in business
were more concerned about their status than
at being entrepreneurs. The other issue is that when
you have that much silver going into one country's economy, it
actually depreciates the value. You have inflation. So Spain experienced
quite a lot of inflation as a result of its role in
the silver trade, which, again, wasn't good for its
economy in the long term. This image is of the palace,
the Royal Palace in Madrid, which was one of the
many buildings that was built with some of the
profits from the silver trade. Now, in contrast
to Spain is Japan. The silver trade had a very
different impact in Japan.
part
2 of the silver trade. So silver had a very
different impact on Japan, the other location of
the most important silver mines at the time in the 1500s. So around the same
time that silver was discovered in
Bolivia, silver was also discovered in Japan. And the most
important silver mine was located right about here. This silver mine was active
for a very long time, for almost 400 years
from 1526 to 1923. Now, the reasons that Japan
had such a different response to silver had to do with
the country's structure. During the time, around
this time in the 1500s, Japan was not unified. But some military
leaders, known as shoguns, decided to change that. They unified the
country, forcing down the feudal lords,
the people that were in control
from before, kind of also bringing the emperor
under their control as well, and brought Japan together
into one more cohesive unit. They then controlled Japan for
the next few hundred years. They established
then what's called a shogunate, which is
a military government under the rule of a shogun. It makes sense. These shoguns then
allied with merchants to create a
market-based economy. Now, merchants is
interesting because merchants were considered one of
the lowest possible people in the social status of Japan. They were at the bottom
of the social totem pole. And so by allying
with the merchants, the shoguns increased
their status, kind of flipped
things upside down, but created a stronger
economy in the long term. They also then invested
a lot of the money that they gained
from the silver trade into agriculture
and into industry. So these things
laid the foundation for the future of Japan and the
Industrial Revolution, which took place in the 1800s
during the 19th century. So these environmental
protections prevented, for instance,
the deforestation that had happened in Bolivia
and set up Japan to succeed much
better in the future. There's an image of
one of the mine shafts, the entrance to one of
the mine shafts in Japan. So how did the silver
trade impact China? Well, this is important,
because after all, China was the reason for the boom in
the silver trade to begin with. So the influx of silver,
and then the need to use it for taxes,
made it their currency, made their country
reliant on one currency. This created what's known
as the commercialization of the economy, so
based on commerce-- creating a new economy that
is not on bartering, not on trading, but instead,
exchanging for silver to pay one's taxes. So this greatly changes
the way that Chinese people thought about money and
thought about their own work and livelihoods. This then led different
areas to specialize in particular types of
crops that would make them the most money which
they could then use to increase their
wealth and pay their taxes. These cash crops then became
the source of their wealth. So for instance, one region
specialized in the trees that silkworms liked,
so then the silk trade became their main
source of income. Other regions
specialized in rice, so creating rice terraces like
you see here in China today. This process, particularly
that regional specialization, meant that certain
areas of China ended up being deforested
to plant the crops that would make the most money. So it had a large environmental
impact on the country. And then lastly,
big picture, this meant that China became
a major source of goods for the rest of the world. The global trade then
focused around the world-- Europe, et cetera, everyone
was importing Chinese goods. The made in China
label was now a thing. And the Europeans then became
the middlemen for this, because obviously,
they were trading. They needed to pay in silver
to get the goods they wanted. So this fueled further
the need for silver and the silver trade. And looking further
out, zooming out, what are the big-picture
impacts of the silver trade? Well, this process
made China absolutely certain they're central to the
early modern world economy. How? They were the ones who were
fueling the global trade with their tax
reform in the 1570s and then other specialization
in goods, products. They were the ones that
everyone wanted to trade with. This increased the quality
of goods exchanged, so there became competition
more so for goods. And because different places
were specializing, what they produced was better in the end. China's tax reform led
to the rise of currency around the world, and with
that, the commercialization of economies, so
people trading-- or purchasing with money
rather than trading or exchanging goods. The Europeans were
then the middlemen. They brought the silver, and
they purchased the things from the Asian markets. They were all trying to then
monopolize these markets, as we've talked about already. And finally, this
is really important. So in the early
modern era, there was a trade
imbalance with Asia-- Asian countries, especially
China, but also Japan, to an extent, on the top. They were better
or higher quality than Europe in
terms of the quality and the quantity of their goods. So this will shift eventually,
but not for a while still. So this is the
moment when China is in control of the global
economy, the Early Modern World.
The Atlantic Revolutions
Atlantic revolutions. The image here on
this opening slide is of the storming
of the Bastille, which I'll talk about when we
get to the French Revolution. But note that the
Bastille is a prison and it is being attacked. There you go. All right, so the
Atlantic revolutions, including the
American Revolution, the French Revolution,
Haitian Revolution, and then the series of Spanish
American revolutions all took place within a
global context of upheaval. So a lot was
changing really fast. These changes covered
a wide range of causes. So included wars that had
been really expensive, states that had gotten
weaker over time and lost a lot of authority, monarchs,
and then major changes socially through commercialization. So the process of changing to
a more commerce or trade driven society had caused
destabilization, and also weakened states-- ones that were trying to figure
out new ways to get money from their people as a
result, and raises in taxes become one the
causes of revolution. So all these things
are happening and these changes taking
place create the conditions for the revolutions that we see. All four revolutions were
also connected through people. Their connections were partially
based upon geography, so the places that we're
going to be talking about-- America, North America,
South America, Haiti, and the French area
all were connected by the Atlantic Ocean, right. That's why they're called
the Atlantic revolution. So geographically, sharing
a similar space, and also the people in them are
moving back and forth across this space. So for example, Benjamin
Franklin spent a lot of time in Paris. Thomas Jefferson was
actually the ambassador to France at one point after
the American Revolution. Simon Bolivar, who led the
Spanish American revolutions, spent a lot of time
in Haiti and was inspired by the
Haitian Revolution and actually received some
aid from Haiti as well. So connections through people
were one of the reasons that these revolutions
get clumped together. One led to the other,
led to the other. All of them tied back to
ideas from the Enlightenment. So the Enlightenment,
just a reminder, was a continuation of
the scientific revolution and the idea of
inquiry and logic. And decisions based
upon evidence. So with the Enlightenment,
kind of motto was dare to know. Use your mind and
reason to figure out kind of how the world works
and who you are in it. So not just relying
upon tradition anymore. Not relying on tradition is
kind of a revolutionary idea. Also the Enlightenment
said that society could be constantly
improved through this reason and scientific
method or thinking. That idea of
constant improvement is progress, which is a
recurring theme in this course. So the Enlightenment questioned
a lot of these old ideas that just kind of were. The because I said
to, sort of, ideas. Like the divine right of kings. So the idea that kings have
their authority directly from God and that
they're born into it. The aristocracy. Again, people being born
into a position of privilege and having particular
rights and not having to pay taxes because of
the title they were born into, and stuff like this. So questioning those old ideas
and authority structures. And then supporting and
putting forth instead ideas like popular sovereignty. Popular sovereignty
is the notion that the authority to govern,
so whether a King is in control or not or a parliament,
for instance. That authority over a
state, that government power is authority that
comes from the people. The people, the
popular, the group, they get to decide
or give ascent to whoever is in control. And so it's not God then. So there's the divine
right of kings, no longer the case,
or just tradition that says how a
government should be or who should be in authority. So kind of creates
a relationship in which the people
have to, sort of, sign off on whoever
is in charge, hence popular sovereignty. It goes into how American
elections work, for instance. That is how the Atlantic
revolutions kind of fit all together in a big picture. The American Revolution is the
one that kicks this all off. So it started in 1776, July 4th,
although the actual revolution probably started a
couple days earlier. There are some questions
on the timeline. But 1776, and the war
lasted until 1781. In 1787, the Constitution
was ratified. So this is a process of
breaking away from England and then creating a
separate states as we know. This images of the
signing of the Declaration of Independence. So what are the reasons that
the colonists and North America rebelled? Well kind of varied. So the one that you've probably
heard a lot about is taxation. That expression, no taxation
without representation. Why though were
there suddenly taxes? Because if there had just
been taxes all along, clearly people wouldn't
have been upset enough to cause or start a rebellion. And so the change ties back
into the French and Indian War, which is another word
for the Seven Years War. It was happening in Europe
at the time as well. So this war, which
you probably learned about in American
history class, basically it was part of
the British trying to protect their colonial
outposts from French attacks, invasions, and vise versa. So trying to protect
the colonists, at least that's how the
British saw this war. So this war was
really extensive. And as a result, Great Britain
was in quite a bit of debt. And so the taxes that they
raised, including that stamp taxes, taxes on tea and all
kinds of goods requiring them to get a certain stamp
to be able to be sold, just making things a little
more expensive-- this really upset the American colonists. They thought that they
should have the right to decide whether
they were taxed or not, so that was one of
the causes of the war-- taxes. But the issue of taxes
kind of hit on some pride. The American colonists had-- since they had arrived
almost a couple years prior, had a history of
self-government, of kind of controlling things
and doing what they wanted. So they saw themselves as being
in charge of their own areas and didn't like the
British intrusion, such as in having to quarter
or, you know, provide housing for British soldiers,
for instance. They felt like that was
overstepping their rights. And this ties into how they
saw themselves, their identity. They believed that they
were true englishmen, so not colonial subjects. Not ones who should be
pushed around, but that they should have certain rights. That they were proper
englishmen and as such, they shouldn't be
told what to do. And so this was a pride
issue also at the core. Reasons for this pride and
this sense of, you know, we can do what we want
ties back into how the English had governed or
not governed their colonies. Ever since they had
started in the early 1600, these colonies had had a great
measure of freedom and leeway, you could say, in how
they govern themselves. How they set up their state
or their institutions, and kind of having their
laws, what they did. They were given a
really long leash and free reign in a lot of
ways to do as they pleased. Another thing that made their
sense of equality even stronger was the fact that
there was so much land. Because there was so much
land in North America and New England compared to
in England proper, this had created a more
egalitarian society. There were fewer
class hierarchies. Really anyone, most anyone
could become a farmer on an independent piece
of land, and so that was a great equalizer in many ways. And then along those lines
too, the American colonies didn't recognize any legal
distinctions between classes. So there were no
lords and ladies as there had been in
England, for example. So the American
Revolution famously kicks off with the dumping
of tea in the Boston harbor, as you can see pictured here. Now this revolution
is a revolution, of course, that's
what we call it, but it was also conservative. It didn't necessarily
have revolutionary ideas in some way. So this odd combination of
revolutionary conservative, how is that possible? Well on the
revolutionary side, they wanted to break
with Great Britain so that was clearly
going against the grain. The mother country,
they were the colony, and they said we want
to be a colony anymore. So that, obviously
revolutionary. But the reason that they
wanted to break away from Great Britain was to
keep what they had had before. They didn't like the changes
that Britain was making, and so trying to preserve
their existing way of life, their existing self-government
was their reason for rebelling. So their revolution
was revolutionary, but their motivation to make
things go back to the status quo was conservative. See, they go together. Before this, Britain
hadn't been very involved. The impacts then of this
revolution, they managed-- we the Americans managed to
create a whole new country, a democratic society. And did this without
major social upheaval. Yes, the loyalists, the people
who support were kind of exiled and had to leave. But overall, things
did return in many ways to a version, a new version
of that older status quo, i.e. Self-government. And a lot of people, though
people died in the war, there wasn't this huge,
huge problem or bloodbath that we see in France with
the French Revolution. The result, the
government result of this is called a
representative republic, so it's different from
a direct democracy. A democracy, in the
most pure sense, is what ancient Greece had. In a democracy, everyone votes. Every decision is made
with everyone's assent, and so that is the way that
direct democracies work. In the United
States, in contrast, we elect people who then
represent us and vote on things on our behalf or
make decisions on our behalf. So it's one step
removed from the people. So that's the difference
between democracy representative republic. So it's still a system in
which every citizen's interests are represented in government,
at least theoretically. We elect people who then we
choose the people who represent us, and then they decide for us
how the government should work. Interesting fact, Switzerland
is a direct democracy, so they all vote on everything,
which probably slows things down a little bit,
but interesting stuff. Other impacts of the
American Revolution are future revolutions. That's right, we are the ones
who kickstart this Atlantic revolution process.
Part 2 of the Atlantic Revolutions. And just a reminder,
here is the Storming of the Bastille, which I'll
get to in just a second. So we left off with the
American Revolution, moving on to the
French Revolution. Also, like the
American Revolution, the Enlightenment
had a large impact on the French Revolution. Not only had its questioned
old authority structures, but it had provided words,
a language, really, or ideas for expressing one's
frustrations or concerns with the old system. Now, just like with the
American Revolution, money had a lot to do with
starting the French Revolution, particularly taxes. So France was in a lot
of debt, a lot of debt from previous monarchs
and their wars. Wars are expensive. Louis XIV, that really
extravagantly clad monarch, had spent a lot of money
building the palaces at Versailles, so
things were expensive. But then, during that
the years leading up to the French
Revolution, two more wars had created a lot of problems. The first was the War of
Austrian Succession, which is the same war as the
French and Indian War that happened in North America. So this war had been
really, really costly, and it caused France to
lose some of its territories in the Caribbean and elsewhere. Then the American Revolution. So the French helped
very significantly with the American Revolution,
so providing troops and money, munitions, et cetera. General Lafayette, for
instance, Marquis de La Fayette was a French soldier
and military leader who came and helped during
the American Revolution. So the French wanted to
frustrate the British, hence, joining the side of the
American revolutionaries. These were expensive,
though, and had put France into a lot more debt. So after the American
Revolution was over, remember, the war
ended in 1781, 1789, France is trying to
bring back the budget and make the country
not so much in the red. So the king, Louis XVI,
calls the Estates General-- the Estates General was
kind of like parliament-- and calls it into meeting for
the first time since 1614, until then, or since
then, French kings had simply been rolling
without calling the parliament. They didn't have to call
it, and so therefore, they didn't, and they had
more absolute control than if the French parliament
or the Estates General was involved. So he had attempted
to raise the taxes. The nobility were
pretty upset about this, and in an effort
to appease them, he said, fine, I'll call
the parliament together and at least let
you talk about it. So he calls the Estates
General to meet. It's called the Estates General
because there were three classes in French society. The First Estate was the clergy,
so the bishops, the priests, et cetera. The Second Estate were the
nobility, so the aristocracy, ie, the ones who
were complaining a lot about these taxes. The Third Estate was
the everybody else. So all three estates would--
representatives from all three estates would have been coming
to meet at the Estates General. But there was a
misunderstanding on the day that the first meeting
was going to happen. The representatives
of the Third Estate showed up to the wrong building. It's really unclear, but
wherever they showed up was locked. It was closed because of
repairs, so the story goes, and because of this, they
thought that they were being kind of kept out
of the negotiations and decided to take the
matters into their own hands. So members or representative
of the Third Estate left, went down the street,
and they found a tennis court. A tennis court offered
an indoor wide open space where they could all fit. They went inside and
they took an oath, which you can see them swearing here. They're on a tennis court. They are swearing an oath. And in this oath, they
clear that they are not going to disband. They're going to continue
assembling, coming back together, until France
has a new constitution and a new government. Within this, they also
declare themselves the new representatives of
France, the National Assembly. They're like, goodbye,
Estates General, we are now the
National Assembly. They call for the end of
the privilege systems. The privileges system was part
of that First and Second Estate setup. Basically, it meant that
bishops and priests and nobility didn't really have
to pay much taxes, that they got out of a lot of
the financial responsibility for the state. So they declare this
new parliament, kind of, that they're in charge
of, and then they say, yeah, no more privileges for
those bishops and nobility. And in addition to
this, they put forth a new document called
the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and Citizen, and this document calls
for equality for everyone, except women, which
we'll get to soon, but this document
becomes the basis then for the new French constitution. So there are taxes, there's a
meeting, they get locked out, and then they completely change
everything from a tennis court. OK, so then the French
Revolution kicks off. It doesn't stay peaceful
or located in tennis court for long. So during this time-- so meanwhile, the
common people are not at this tennis court meeting,
although theoretically, their representatives
in the Third Estate are. During this time, there
were problems with-- pardon me-- food
shortages in Paris. So these food shortages made
people, common people who are hungry, think that there
was hoarding happening, and that they were not
going to have enough to eat, and that this hoarding
was done somehow by the king and the royal
family or the nobility. So on July 14, 1789,
a massive group of common people,
a huge, huge mob go to the Bastille
prison, picture at the beginning
of this PowerPoint. And this prison is on the
outskirts of the city in Paris. It's seen as a symbol of
royal despotism or tyranny, because people
there traditionally were held without a trial. Now, in the past, there had
been a lot of prisoners, but on the day that they
showed up on that July 14, there were only seven people
who were being held there, and they weren't exactly people
you should be concerned about. One was a nobleman who'd
been committed there by his family who thought
he was better off there. Another was a renegade priest,
and then a third person was a crazy dude who
thought he was Joan of Arc. So not exactly symbols of
tyranny happening here. Still, they stormed
the Bastille prison, and this mob kills
the guard in charge. He is the first beheading
of the French Revolution, and they carry his
head around on a spike. Really gross. About 200 people die during this
storming and the battle that ensues, and this is
considered the real beginning of the French Revolution. During the next few
years, there were attempts to try to calm
things down and to compromise. So and king and the queen, King
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette are still around, and they
still have some sort of control, but they're trying
to find a way forward with the revolutionaries
over the next few years. They, however, get
a little scared, and in 1793, they try to flee,
particularly, to Austria. They're trying to get away
to some of Marie Antoinette's family and the other
monarchs in Europe who might be able
to keep them safe. However, they are caught. They were disguised
fleeing, and someone in a small town
in eastern France recognizes them because he
had seen Louis XIV's image on a postage stamp or a coin. So the royal family is caught
and they are brought back as prisoners to Paris and
they are accused of treason, especially after some letters to
the family in Austria surface. So they are accused of
treason, and then they are guillotined in 1793. And once you have guillotined
your king and queen, there's no turning back. You have to keep going forward. So this is when the revolution
really starts to escalate, escalate into chaos. So shortly after this,
Maximilian Robespierre, one of the revolutionaries,
gets appointed to or establishes the
Committee of Public Safety with a goal of
rooting out people who are enemies of the
revolution, who are trying to end the revolution. And basically, anybody
could be denounced as someone who was trying
to ruin the revolution, even people who had been
leaders of it at the beginning. So it becomes this
bloodbath of beheadings. The guillotine is
used here frequently as part of the execution
of all of these enemies of the revolution. So really violent, violent time. This is known as The Terror
under Maximilian Robespierre. During this time,
11,000 to 18,000 people die, including Olympe de Gouge,
whom you will have read, she she wrote the Declaration
of the Rights of Women. So really key figure in the
French Revolution, and she and many others are
killed during this time. OK, so you've got this chaos. You have beheadings
happening all over the place. France is a very
violent, chaotic place, and it is into this moment that
Napoleon Bonaparte comes in. He's actually invited
in in 1799 or right before that by some people who
were not happy with how things were going with the revolution. By the way, I should
mention that Robespierre was also beheaded, so he
got was coming to him. But Bonaparte had been leading
the French armies elsewhere, and then he is
brought back and asked to kind of take control and
end all of this chaos in 1799, which he does. He ends up bringing
peace to France, and then proceeds to
conquer most of Europe all the way down
to Egypt, creating the largest empire in Europe
since the Roman times. So he fixes what's
going on in France, and then manages to unite the
entire continent, for the most part. He brings with him aspects
of the revolution to Europe. So not all things get kept, but
the good stuff, so to speak, stays. For example, the
Napoleonic Code, which is a legal system
that he established, but it was kind of
based out of the changes in the French Revolution. So he establishes a
new civil or civic law system in continental
Europe, and basically, brings peace to Europe. However, people
are not very happy, because they are not French,
so they begin to resist, and resistance in
conquered areas leads to nationalism,
which there will be more about in another PowerPoint. But this resistance
or frustration with the French control
is a huge, huge cause for future change in Europe. One last thing is
that this stance was a very popular one at the time. It showed one's status
to stand like that. It's not because
there's anything wrong with his right hand.
part 3
of the Atlantic Revolutions. A little bit more on
Napoleon Bonaparte. He obviously did
not reign forever. He was defeated at the
Battle of Waterloo. He actually was defeated
and exiled and came back and fought again and then
was defeated for a final time and then exiled. But anyway, after
he was finally gone, the French monarchy
was restored. If you like the band Coldplay,
the song "Viva La Vida" is actually, apparently,
about Napoleon. So give that a listen. Or if music isn't your
thing, take a minute and watch this video
from biography.com about Napoleon as a
military leader and emperor. It's some really good stuff,
with expert facts or commentary by some actual
military authorities. So it's pretty good. Bye, Napoleon. So the next Atlantic
Revolution in the lineup is the Haitian Revolution,
which was long, as you can see the dates here. It took place from 1791
to 1804, overlapping, you might notice, with
the French Revolution, which had started in 1789. In case you're not sure
where Haiti is, here I have it for you on a map. So this is Florida, the Gulf of
Mexico, Cuba, and here's Haiti. It shares an island with
the Dominican Republic. Before its independence,
Haiti was Saint-Domingue, a French sugar colony. So it was a really productive
French sugar colony. Produced or 40% sugar
and 50% of the coffee in the world at the
time, able to do this because there were 8,000
plantations on that itty bitty island. On those plantations,
total, lived about half a million slaves
and about 40,000 whites. So really big difference in
terms of racial demographics. Huge ratio imbalance. So the overlap that I
mentioned about the date is important, because
the Haitian Revolution was sparked by ideas from
the French Revolution. News of the Revolution
had spread to Haiti. And the ideas really caught
on quickly, particularly ideas from the Declaration of the
Rights of Men and Citizen, which, among other
things, declared all men to be free and equal. However, as you might guess,
it was unclear about which men that applied to. And different groups
had different ideas about this question. Where did women and slaves
and colonists, in particular, fit into this? So these rights, the way that
people thought about them, depended. White landowners,
for instance, thought that the rights
that they deserved, these rights that are mentioned,
should apply to them in terms of future trade restrictions. They wanted more
freedom to trade freely and to make more money. So white landowners thought that
they should have more rights. Petit Blancs, so
the petty farmers, the smaller landowners, not
the major plantation owners, thought that they
deserved equality, that they should get to be
equal to their major land-owning neighbors. So they thought that they
too should get more rights based on the French Revolution. There were some
free blacks living in Haiti or Saint-Domingue. And they wanted equal
treatment, obviously. They didn't want
to be considered to be lower class people. So that's what they
were calling for. And then, the vast majority
of the population was slaves. And it's not
surprising that they wanted freedom, the
actual existence of rights and equality and citizenship. So all these different
groups had varying ideas. And the way that these
ideas play out factors into how the Haitian
Revolution unfolds. Now, because there were so many
slaves, half a million slaves to be precise,
living in Haiti, it's no surprise that
they're the ones who actually have the most force
as these ideas begin to spread. A gentleman, pictured
here, Toussaint Louverture, was a freed slave, or had
been born a free black. It's kind of unclear
in his history. But he ended up leading
the Slave Rebellion. Very successfully, he
defeated the whites, the white landowners
and the French who were sent to help
put down the rebellion. So he led a slave
army, in effect. This was the French colonists',
the white colonists' worst nightmare. They were very aware that this
could happen because of all the imbalance from before. They were outnumbered, but
also the major exploitation that they had done to the
slaves in their vicinity. So Toussaint Louverture
defeated the French. And Haiti became independent,
which is incredible. However, a few years later,
the French turned up with ships and said that they would
blockade Haiti, unless Haiti paid a massive debt. This debt, called the
Independence Debt, was supposed to cover
the loss of territory, the lands, and the property,
the slaves themselves. Haiti was still weak
and poor at the time when this blockade took place. They also didn't really have
any help from anyone else. No one was really itching
to get on their side or clamoring to support them. They're kind of alone. It was either agree to this
and have some hope of trading or be stuck and kind of besieged
and snuffed out eventually. So they really had no
choice but to pay back their former colonizers
and enslavers. So this Independent Debt
kept Haiti in poverty for the next 150 years,
and arguably longer. It's not until 1947 that,
finally, the last payment was complete. Other problems or
unfortunate results of the Haitian Revolution,
despite its success, making it kind of
a pyrrhic victory, a victory that was
also kind of a loss, was that the successful
rebellion by slaves in Haiti led to fears of slave
rebellions elsewhere. So there were more
crackdowns then on slaves living in other sugar
colonies in the Caribbean, for example. And it led to an increase
in slavery in other islands. So for example,
slavery slave trade and shipments to Jamaica, for
example, under British control increased after the
Haitian Revolution. So the idea being or the goal
being that Jamaica would help make up that lost spot in the
sugar and coffee industry. And so that led to more and
more oppression, unfortunately. So it cannot be overstated
how important it is, hence the two stars
by this point, that this was the only slave
uprising that led to a free state that was ruled by the
people who had been controlled or enslaved, ruled by
nonwhites and former captives. This really is
incredible and needs to be noted and remembered. So that is the
Haitian Revolution.
part
four of the Atlantic revolutions. So, here is a map
contrasting Latin America, South America in 1749. And then later the revolutions and
independence have happened. So here in 1794, there are large areas
here in red controlled by Spain. Spain controlled actually, as you can see, the vast majority of South America and
a good chunk of North America. Portugal was the other main colonizing
power in South America and here is Brazil. So, this is,
at the beginning of the 1800's. This is what things look like. Now, looking at the, if you look at
the green areas and the blue areas, all these regions gained
their independence by 1830. So, almost all of North and
South America were completely free of colonial rule by 1830. So huge, huge change. How do these changes come about? Okay, so, the Latin American Revolutions were led by a man named Simone Bulevar. He's right here and he was a Creole. Now if you think back to
the Empires New Americas lesson, you'll remember that Creoles were part of
the social structure of Spanish America. So at the top where the Spanish,
the people born in Spain and then sent over to roll, and control,
and the bureaucracy, and other offices. Below them though were the Creoles. Creoles were of Spanish descent,
so, children of Spanish people, but they were born in the new world. They were this native born
elites as I have it here. Now, Creoles,
including people like Simone Bulevar, were angry about taxes and about tariffs. They wanted more independence and control, especially financially,
it shouldn't be surprising. Most revolutions at this
time have to do with taxes, have to do with money and tariffs. Of course, our regulations or
fees paid for importing and exporting. So basically they want to be able to
trade more freely and not have to pay so much to do so. Now, the revolutions play out very
differently from how they do in North America in the case
of the American Revolution. So some some key differences going into
the revolution include the government structure, in Spanish America, the
government was much more authoritarian, the king sent over people to be in
control of Governors, Representatives, but the government and society were
pretty heavily ruled and regulated. There wasn't this sense of self
government and we'll do whatever we want, like happened in New England,
much more authoritarian. Unlike in North America or
things were very egalitarian, where you could buy lands and kind of work your way out, society in
Spanish America was divided by class. So it's classes that I just mentioned
before with the Spanish on top, the Creole Second,
the mixed race mestizos, and then the native or indigenous people. These were very,
very clear and very divided. Within this, whites were the minority,
so the Spanish people and then the Creoles were
really the only rights. So, this created some challenges then,
some sense of inequality, and a sense of frustration,
moving into what could be a revolution but what it sparks the revolution that
the necessary ingredients are there, but the thing that causes the catalyst for
change is Napoleon. In 1808, during his conquest of Europe,
making that massive Empire, Napoleon deposed or
kicked off the throne, the leaders and monarchs of Spain and Portugal. This change caused the disruption
necessary for revolutions to break out and for people like Simón Bolívar to come
in and take control or take charge. So, he leads the revolutions but
he is faced with a clear problem because society is obviously very
divided, particularly in terms of class. So how will he get the majority of
people who are not Spanish born or white to follow him. As he leads this rebellion in
South America, well he tries to push an Americanos identity, now,
Americanos identity means that status, one status or position in society is
defined by birth in the colonies. Not one's ranking,
like if you're born in Spain. If you're born in Spain, you can't belong. So, in this framework then,
everyone is now supposedly equal. Or at least, it's more important to be
born in the colonies in the new world than in Spain. This idea, this attempt to
unite everybody behind hey, we're all born here way of
thinking is known as nativism. Nativism is this notion
that what defines person, defines their belonging is their place
of birth, rather than their heritage. So, the revolutions happen. Those countries, the map changes, there's
widespread independence that results. What though are like the actual
big picture results for the people living there? Well, there's really no rights given to
women or the people in the lower classes, this nativism,
Americanos identity only goes so far in creating any kind of equality. The governments that
Simon Bolivar set up all over, quickly devolve or
descend into dictatorships. So, authoritarian government,
authoritarian rule under Spanish colonies really just gets out for
new dictatorships. So not really the the freedom or equality
that they were apparently striving for. And then, even though Bolivar is the one
who helps lead all these charges and supposedly unites everyone
behind this nativist ideal, you can't really overcome
the major divisions that exist. For instance, South America has
vastly different geography, you can't unite everyone
into a single country. There are power struggles at
various levels of government, and then regional identities that prove
much stronger in the long term than this broader attempt to make everyone
part of the same Americanos group. This image is the battle, it's the last battle against the Spanish
before their ships retreated, I'm pretty sure it's in 1824 or 1825.
Revolutionary Echoes
Revolutionary Echoes. And here on the first slide, I
have three different depictions of the nation. So these different statues
show different nations personified as women. So here on the left, you
might notice right here, this is the Union Jack flag,
which represents Great Britain. So this one right
here is Britannia. This is the female
personification of the British nation, and
it dates back to the 1500s. So one of the first
times that it was used was during the reign of
Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth I. So not the current
one, but think like, the time of Shakespeare. So it makes sense
that they would have a female personification
of the nation, because the queen was the
leader of Britain or England. So that is Britannia. Think of the
encyclopedia, like that. Over here, we have the
German nation personified that is cleverly named
Germania, or Germania. And the German nation
here came to be symbolized as a woman in the mid-1800s,
so 1848 during what is called the springtime
of the nations. And I'll talk about that
in the lecture today. But she's usually portrayed as
a pretty robust, strong, strong woman with
reddish-blondish hair. You can't tell, of
course, this, because it is a greenish-colored statue. And this image is from the
Niederwalddenkmal monument that was erected in the
Rhine River Valley on a hill there in 1883. So Britannia, Germania,
and then right here, this is the
representative of France. Female representations
of France go back to the French Revolution,
which we just talked about. So that was in 1789. Shortly after that,
it was decided by the French leaders,
the national assembly, that France would be-- or the sign of liberty-- pardon me-- would be
a woman with a cap. She doesn't have a cap here,
but the idea is still the same. This is the
representation of France. So Britannia, Germania, and
Marianne, because why not? So that is the beginning of our
Revolutionary Echoes lecture here. Moving along, so thinking
back to why-- why am I calling it Revolutionary Echoes? Well, if you remember, we just
talked about a whole bunch of revolutions
erupting across Europe and then the Atlantic world, so
into North and South America. So what happened after
these revolutions? And how do we get the echoes
we're discussing today. Well, after Napoleon was stopped
in 1815 for the second time, he was exiled,
permanent exile in 1815, the general mood in Europe was
to return to the status quo. The old leaders wanted
their power back, monarchs were restored,
boundaries were put back in place, because remember,
Napoleon had conquered everywhere to make the
French empire really large, so everyone wanted to just
go back to how things were. They decided this at an
1815 meeting in Vienna. It was called the
Congress of Vienna. So in this meeting, they
restored the royal families, as I just mentioned,
and the goal overall was to get back to the
balance of power in Europe. No one country was
supposed to be more powerful than anybody else. Looking at you, France. So not wanting
anyone like France to come in and take
all of the power and control the whole
continent, so trying to get back to how things were. But it's kind of hard to kill
an idea, as the expression goes. The influences from
the revolution, those ideas of
liberty and equality could not so simply be stopped. There wasn't really a status
quo anymore to go back to. The cat was let out of the bag. So for instance, in his
expanding of the French empire, Napoleon got all the way over
to the Ottoman empire and Egypt. That's right, the
French controlled Egypt for a little while, and
brought with him the Napoleonic Code that is the
legal setup or system from the French Revolution and
modified by Napoleon, and also some modernizing and
Western influences, so education reform,
those sorts of things. So these ideas and
attempts at modernization could not be stopped there. They've kind of taken root and
are going to continue to grow. And as a result of
the French Revolution, it wasn't just the
French Revolution and the following
Atlantic Revolutions, there were more that
continued after that. So smaller revolutions
across Europe, in France, in particular,
but elsewhere too. 1830, another set of
revolutions in France, smaller than the original French
Revolution of 1789, and not using the
guillotine anymore, which was a good thing,
but revolutions in 1830 across Paris. If you've seen that movie
or musical performance Les Miserable, it's 1830. It's during that revolution
that that story takes place, not in the French Revolution. In 1848, so I mentioned
in the beginning slide that springtime of
nations when we first see the Germania, the German
female personification happening. Well, that was just
one example of a bunch of different countries,
nations, or not yet countries, clamoring for
freedom, for liberty, for democratic governments,
for their own states spread across all of central
Europe in 1848. This is known as the
springtime of nations, kind of the beginning
or birth of nations. And then another set
of revolutions in 1870, again, back in Paris. There you go. 1848 was the
springtime of nations. Other ways that
these revolutionizing influences spread
was through ideas revolving around constitutions. So remember, the French kind
of put in place a constitution, and in their national
assembly, they wanted the Declaration of the
Rights of Man and Citizen, so everyone being
equal before the law, and then setting up a
government that reflected that, so people being represented
in their government. These ideas, which came
from the Enlightenment, and then took root
in the American and the French Revolutions,
spread well beyond those two countries, across to Poland. Poland begins to kind of
clamor for a democratic rule, a constitutional government. Russia, which is one of the
more backward, you could say, or less likely to be
revolutionary at this point, all the way to China and to
India as well these ideas continue to spread. And then what will go into
the rest of this lecture are the ideologies and
the social movements that find their roots in
the Atlantic Revolutions, but spread far beyond any
one individual country. And this is a political cartoon
of different leaders in Europe trying to kind of get
back to how things were, the Congress of Vienna.
part two of
Revolutionary Echoes. OK, so the first ideological
or social movement that shifted that I'm
going to talk about here is slavery, the
abolition of slavery. So a little bit of
the background to it. What were some of the
ideas that changed to make the abolition
of slavery possible? Well, first it goes back
to the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was really
the main original cause for questioning slavery. So during the Enlightenment,
Enlightenment thinkers began to think in terms of
natural rights of people being able to think for
themselves, of them being free, being able to reason
to use their own minds. And so this was a great
equalizer, in a way, that everyone has a brain
and that they can use it. Now, of course, the
Enlightenment thinkers were not necessarily
espousing or promoting the end of slavery,
just like they weren't necessarily promoting
female equality, for example. But this idea of natural rights
through the Enlightenment is kind of the seed that's
the basis of the abolitionist movement and that
continues to grow. The American and
French revolutions saw the first major change
in terms of natural rights. And so the American and
the French revolutions kind of took those
enlightenment ideas of people being equal
and then brought them into fruition by
rebelling, obviously, and then by creating new
governments that more so in the American
case, successfully. The French, of course, had
a little bit of trouble. But both revolutions promoted
the ideas of liberties and freedom and equality. So these also showed that
slavery doesn't really mix with that. Are slaves equal? Can they be equal,
can they be free? This is kind of
another place where the crack starts to put a
crack in the slavery structure, so to speak. OK, so then also
I mentioned when talking about the Enlightenment
that religious groups kind of underwent a shift. So the Quakers, they were one
of the enlightened religions that I mentioned. So they were ones who really
promoted equality and pacifism. They're the ones who have
meetings rather than church services. Their meetings,
anyone can share. If we're sitting in a
circle, for example, there's not just one leader or pastor. And Quakers, very
pacifist and very keen on and like non-violence
and equality. So, again, slavery doesn't
fit with their thinking. And then, I also mentioned
that after the Enlightenment, there was a resurgence of
religious evangelical religious thought and activity. So there were these
great awakenings or spiritual, religious
revivals across England and across the United
States, or right before it became the
United States, for example, in Georgia. Both of these groups, the
Quakers and the evangelicals, began to argue that
slavery was morally wrong. What a concept. So the ideas, then, with natural
rights and liberty and then also this moral
component of slavery not being a good thing,
morally speaking, start to both really take root. And then along these
lines, at the same time, there's a shift in labor in
England and in New England. So part of why slavery
was so significant and why it grew so
much in the new world and why it lasted
for such a long time is that it was considered to
be economically essential. People thought that the
economies, particularly in plantations, are sugar,
coffee, even mining, like I mentioned, that they
could not exist without slavery as an underpinning. Then, the Industrial
Revolution happened. So it starts in England
and then continues around the world, in New
England, in particular. And [SNEEZES] pardon me. The Industrial Revolution shows
that free labor is actually an economically
viable option, that it can have-- one can have huge
economic growth and health, economic health of a
region or country based on free labor that is
not on slave labor. This begins to contradict
that broader economic argument for slavery. So together, the economic
change along with the moral and the ideological component
with natural rights, makes slavery no
longer make sense. And this is an image-- if you've heard of Josiah
Wedgwood or Wedgwood China-- you might have heard of it. It was a very large, still
is a very large porcelain or China company. One of the founders, Josiah
Wedgwood, so the original name, designed these
abolitionist, I guess, like promotional materials, but
they were made of porcelain, so people could buy
them, like a plate, for example, to show their
support for abolition or their being against slavery. And so this kind of
tags onto the ideas from the natural rights,
liberty, and then the moral component, saying that
am I not a man and a brother, am I not equal to you? Looks like he's praying,
almost, to let him free. So this is an image,
kind of not propaganda, but a promotional image for
the abolitionist movement. OK, so slavery, how do
we get, then, to the end? Well, first of all,
define abolitionism. Abolitionism started
in Great Britain, and it was a group of the
evangelicals and Quakers, so from that previous
slide, who put pressure on the British government
to end slavery. The campaign started in 1787
and then continued until 1807, when slavery was abolished. It was led by a man in
parliament-- led by a man named William Wilberforce. There's actually a really
good movie about him. If you want to check it out,
it's called Amazing Grace. So this abolitionist movement
and the abolitionists, the people involved,
put pressure, then, on the British government
to end slavery. Now, during that time, that 20
year span from 1787 to 1807, there was opinion shift
that these abolitionists helped bring about. So they kind of got public
opinion on their side through a series of boycotts,
boycotting companies that used slave labor, for
instance, boycotting sugar, for example. Petitions, so circulating,
getting signatures, and sending them to parliament to show
that people didn't want slavery anymore and then bringing in
testimony from former slaves, like Mr. Equiano,
here, who wrote a lot about his
experiences in Africa and then being kidnapped
and taken as a slave, his time on the
Middle Passage, which you've watched a video about,
and his experiences as a slave. So bringing in that
firsthand testimony, all these things helped
shape public opinion away from slavery, away from
thinking that it was just a way or part of the
way the world worked and how things had to
be into being something wrong that needed to be stopped. So key moments in this
abolitionist cycle. 1807 slavery is abolished. Now, why did it take so
long from 1787 to 1807? Part of it has to do with
the need for shifting public opinion. All of these things
took a lot of time. The other big thing,
if you think back to a previous lesson, is the
French Revolution happened. So 1787 was the first speech
that William Wilberforce gave in parliament. And then two years later,
everything exploded in France. And England, in particular,
along with the rest of Europe, were running on offense and
defense trying to keep France from taking everything over. So it's not then until 1807
that the slave trade officially is abolished. So although the slave trade is
abolished, the slavery itself-- so people were still
enslaved, they just weren't being
transported anymore. That continues to exist. The shift for that, though,
takes place in 1831 and 1832 with the Great
Jamaica Slave Revolt. It's during the slave revolt
that 60,000 slaves rebelled against slavery, against
their oppression. They do not succeed. They are brutally put down. Their movement is
crushed very violently. News about this slave revolt
reaches Great Britain. And because of the opinion
shift that had already been happening over
the last 40 years, the British public, the
ordinary people, freak out. There is public outcry
against slavery. This revolt finally kills
the idea or the narrative that slaves were actually just
content and that they're fine, they're better off slaves. And says, actually, no,
they're clearly not happy. Look at them rebelling. And they are being
very violently treated once they rebelled. So this is a big
moment in shifting, finally the public opinion
to the end against slavery, itself, and not just
the slave trade. So then it's an
1833, a year later, that slavery in the
British Empire, very large British Empire, is ended. There are no more slaves. People are freed. Other countries follow
suit, some pretty quickly. Britain can kind of
put pressure on them, since they have the
biggest navy and a really large important
empire at this point, so kind of that peer pressure. And Brazil is the last
sort of straggler, last to abolish slavery in 1888. So impacts of the
end of slavery, what are the practical
effects of this? So in some places, land
gets redistributed. You think about Haiti,
the Atlantic revolution, we discussed there. The former slaves
rebel, they win, and they get their
land distributed. So people who were formerly
working on the land but didn't have ownership
of it, get it now. Same with Jamaica, there's
land redistribution. But in other places,
this isn't the case. For instance, in
the United States, we think about them abolishing
slavery in the 1860s, the result is sharecropping. So people working on
the land continued to work on the land and
kind of being beholden to it or stuck there, despite
technically being free. So not every place experienced
it or people experienced freedom and economic equality. Another interesting or kind
of odd unintended consequence is a rise in
indentured servitude, particularly from Asia. People from China
and from India start moving around the world, because
there's now labor needing or work still needing to be
done and slaves no longer being forced to do it. And so these people
start migrating to work around the world. Big picture that we're
thinking long-term, although slavery ended in 1833
and kind of the domino effect thereafter, the result
is not equality. There's still economic
dependence rather than equality. So people are not suddenly
or magically brought into an equal spot.
Part
3 of Revolutionary Echoes. OK, so nationalism
was another result, another ideological assault
of the Atlantic Revolutions. Part of why this
was the case ties into the reasons for the
revolutions in the first place. If you think in particular
about the American Revolution, the United States rebelled
against Great Britain on behalf of creating
a new nation. That is the United
States of America, that Americans, in other words,
were different from the British and wanted to be separate. Similarly, in the
Spanish-American case, Simon Bolivar also
rebelled on behalf of the people living in
the Spanish colonies, so different from the Spanish. And he promoted a new type
of identity, the Americanos identity, so meaning that those
who were born in the new world were better than or
different from those born in the old world. So these new nations were part
of the underpinning reason for the rebellions
in the first place. Then add to that Napoleon. So as Napoleon
conquered much of Europe and elsewhere, he
brought with him the French nation, the
French way of thinking, created a French empire. Well, not everyone
really liked that. They did not want to be
French, and so nationalism arose partially as people
were presenting themselves as different or
rebelling against, creating unity against a
French foreign invader. So nationalism also
arises as a result of the Napoleonic conquests. This coincided with
shifts in ways of being, ways of thinking,
ways of doing life that created a decline
in older identities and senses of loyalty. So as people started,
for instance, moving more to cities as
a result of the Industrial Revolution, their
sense of place, their connection to their
old village, for example, or to their position, like
their position as a craftsman, those ideas or identities had
started to be on the decline. And so as those
declined, nationalism was a convenient thing
to take their place. So also, at the same
time, literacy was rising. People started to
learn how to read. And as people
began reading more, this resulted in a more
standardized version of languages. So in the German
case, for example, it was the Bible printed
by Martin Luther that brought about kind of
the standardized German as we know it, but
similar processes were happening across
Europe as well. So as people began to
speak the same languages, they started to see
themselves more broadly as part of the same community. This is a big part of how
national identities take root. Key thing to note here, then,
is that nationalism and the idea of the nation developed. It was invented, pretty much,
during the 19th century, the 1800s. It was not awakened. So a lot of times, if people
talk about nationalism, or even the nationalists
who are trying to promote these national
identities in the mid 1800s, they acted like or talked
like they were just awakening these old German, or
French, or Hungarian, or Polish identities,
but in reality, the idea of the nation,
of a group of people who live in the same territory or
speak the same language being the same, was invented. It was not something
that just was awakened. It was part of this process,
this historical development as people began
to see themselves as part of a larger group. So this is critical. Note that it was
invented, not awakened. The rise of new states
also contributed then to the beginning of or the
continuation of nationalism. So Italy, for example,
even though Italy has been around forever,
thinking about the Roman Empire, for instance,
Italy didn't become a country, a unified
country until 1870, and it was nationalism, the idea
that Italians are all the same and belong in the
same country, that was used to promote this
sense of unity or uniting into one country. So also Germany,
Germany has not exist as a country for very long. It began in 1871. Although Germany has obviously
been around for a long time, people have spoken
German, but it wasn't united in
a single country until the rise of
nationalism in the 1800s. Nationalism is the
driving force, then, in uniting and creating
these late states, as they often are called. Wars were fought based
on nationalist ideas. This crystallizes or
strengthens the idea of nations being different. For example, the Mexican-US war
in the mid 1840s, late 1840s, and then later, World
War I and World War II were fought because of
nationalist rhetoric, or underpinned by
nationalist ideas. So these strengthen the ideas
of the nation or of nationalism, even though it's not an idea
that's been around forever. And then other things, ways
that nationalism plays out is in ethnic minority rebellions. So for example, the
Greeks and the Serbians rebelled against the Ottoman
Empire, and the Czechs the Hungarians rebelled
against the Austrian empire, and both of these
sets of rebellions were rooted in the idea
that Greeks and Serbs are different ethnicities, different
nations, than the Ottomans, this multinational
empire with a whole bunch of little ethnicities in it. So wanting their
own separate country to represent them,
that they did not want to belong in or stay
under the Ottoman empire. So nationalism plays a big
role then in these rebellions, continuing on through the 1900s. And then finally, the big
shift is one of rhetoric or of government. So the government
began to-- governments of different countries
began to describe themselves as working on behalf
of the nation. So this kind of general
idea of all the people who are united in
this one country or this one nation,
that governments are sort of their
agent in the world. And they're different,
these nations are different from the
neighboring nations, so they need a government
to act on their behalf. So this image here is from
Austria, Graz, Austria, which is the second
largest city in Austria, although it's much
smaller than Vienna. And it was attacked by Napoleon
in these Napoleonic conquests. So here's an example
of nationalism. So during the conquest, Napoleon
was not able to take Graz. There is a large fortress
or was a large fortress on the mountain or
hill in the middle of the city, which you can see
we're looking from above here. Now, because he wasn't able
to take that the city of Graz, he was annoyed, so later,
when the Austrian empire surrendered, he had written
into the peace treaty that the people of Graz or
that the fortress in Graz had to be destroyed. The people of Graz then did
not want this to happen, so they raise money to pay for
this clock tower to be saved. So this clock tower is still the
main symbol of the city of Graz if you go there today. It's at the top of the hill,
and it's really pretty. You can't miss it. But this is-- saving it
against the French invaders is an example, then, of
nationalism in action. OK, so big picture
talking about nationalism. I mentioned, clearly, that it
was invented and not awakened, but nationalism is
not just monolithic. There's more than one
type of nationalism. So first, there's
civic nationalism, the idea that the nation is
defined by particular territory or land. In civic nationalism, people
can assimilate, that is, become part of the
dominant culture. So if they adapt to the culture,
they learn the language, if they accept the
values, they can become a part of that nation. It's a lot more
fluid in that regard. So an example of this is in the
United States, our citizenship process. You can become American by
following the citizenship procedure. So living here a
certain amount of time, I think it's seven
years, and then taking an exam, the
citizenship test, and then kind of being sworn in. That's how one becomes
an American citizen. So it doesn't matter
where you're from, you can become a
part of this nation. So it's defined by
territory and by values. Ethnic nationalism,
on the other hand, says the nations are defined
by a shared heritage, same background. So it usually includes a common
language, a common faith, sometimes, or religion, and
a common ethnic ancestry, so ethnic being part of
one's biological heritage. So you are either born in
that particular ethnicity or you are not. It tends to be more
than exclusionary. You cannot then become
a part of the nation. You're either born to
it or you missed out. So an example of this
ethnic nationalism, an extreme example, is in Nazi
Germany, which defined Jews as a different race. So Jewish people, even
if they assimilated, that is, became a part of the
dominant culture in Germany by speaking German, by
converting to Catholicism, or the Lutheran
faith, they still could not become German
because their ethnic ancestry was missing. So that's a key
difference between civic and ethnic nationalism. However, nationalism
itself is really flexible. It can be used to
support any ideology. So that is kind of an
overview of nationalism and its different facets. We're going to come
back to nationalism a lot during this
course, so I want to make sure you
fully understand the terms and the key
differences between them. And finally, feminism. So feminism is
the last ideology, a revolutionary echo that we're
going to talk about today. So similarly with abolitionism,
its beginnings kind of trace back to shifts in
ways of thinking about rights, natural rights and
equality, in particular, the Enlightenment and
the French Revolution started to question patriarchy. Patriarchy, as you'll remember,
is a gender inequality that says that men are
better than women or hold a higher position,
should hold higher position. One of the ways that the
Enlightenment and French Revolution kind of
shifted this thinking had to do with the rise
of more of a middle class. So as women began to have more
opportunities for education and less housework
to do, they were able to become more involved
in conversations and in what becomes a feminist movement. So key person here, this
is Olympe de Gouges. She was one of the
first feminist thinkers. She was a butcher's
daughter in France who spoke out against patriarchy
during the French Revolution. So that declaration of the
rights of man and citizen, she wrote kind of a answer
to or a companion piece to call the Declaration
of Rights of Women, because the French
revolutionaries, the men didn't include
women in their thinking, so she said no, if
France is actually going to be equal and a place
of liberty and equality, it needs to have room for
the women also having rights. So she called for
women's inclusion in the French
revolution's rights. Things did not end well for her. She ended up being guillotined
during the more radical phase of the revolution. But her ideas continued
on long after her passing. So fast forwarding, 1848
was a really big year. As I mentioned
before, the springtime of nations and the
nationalist rebellions around central Europe. Also, 1848 was the date of
the first women's rights convention, which took place
in Seneca Falls, New York. It was led by this lady
here, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. And I have a link to a
video on the next slide so you can watch a
little bit about her. From the very beginning,
the women's rights movement, in particular, the calls for
suffrage, so women's voting, was Trans-Atlantic. It was linked by books, by
associations, by conferences, by female speakers
traveling back and forth and sharing their ideas. So from the beginning,
it wasn't just an American or a European thing,
but they were linked together and rooted in many ways
in the ideas put forth by Olympe de Gouges. By 1900, working class
women began to join, and it became a mass movement. So although women's
suffrage wasn't achieved, women couldn't vote until after
World War I, the push for it was already there
starting in the mid 1800s, and really escalating at
the turn of the 18th-- or the 19th, the 20th century's. So here is a link to a video
about Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I really recommend you watch it. It gives some good background
on how her ideas came to be, and also the roots
of the women's rights movement and its connection to
abolitionism in Great Britain.