American and French Revolutions Flashcards

American Revolution, 1775

• British forces marched to Concord, Massachusetts, on April 19, 1775, intending to destroy a stockpile of arms accumulated by rebellious colonists.
• At Concord Bridge, the British were surprised by the size and discipline of the colonial forces.
• Militiamen fired at British officers, killing four, leading to a British retreat to Boston under colonial fire.
• This event marked the beginning of the American Revolution.
• The Declaration of Independence (1776) justified the rebellion and is an influential political document.
• The Constitution of the United States of America (1787) provided an example of limited yet effective government based on Enlightenment principles.
• The nation-building process involved compromises, particularly on slavery, undermining universal liberty and equality.

American War of Independence, 1763–1791

• A key turning point was the British victory in the French and Indian War, opening new possibilities for western expansion.
• Colonists were excited about economic opportunities in the Ohio River Valley, but British leaders were cautious.
• The Proclamation of 1763 established a fixed westward limit to colonial expansion, angering colonists.
• The British aimed to have colonists bear the cost of their own defense, leading to resentment of new taxes like the Stamp Act of 1765.
• Attempts to restrict colonial trade with the West Indies threatened a profitable sector of the North American economy.
• The British government granted the East India Company a monopoly on tea supply, leading to resistance, including the Boston Tea Party.
• Colonists lacked representation in Parliament, leading to the rallying cry of "No taxation without representation!"
• Settlers believed their rights as British subjects were being violated, and British repression increased the shift in self-identity from "British" to "American."
• The final straw was suspending the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1775, disbanding the colonial legislature, and imposing a British governor.
• Colonists formed militias for self-defense, leading to the confrontation at Concord.
• Rebellious colonists took over government and judicial affairs, necessitating larger-scale coordination.
• A Continental Congress was held in 1775, bringing together representatives from the thirteen colonies.
• George Washington (1732–1799) was appointed commander of the army.
• On July 4, 1776, Congress approved Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence.
• The Declaration included a list of grievances against the king and an announcement of universal political values.
• The Declaration stated: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
• The phrase “consent of the governed” built on John Locke’s theory of government as based on a contract.
• Jefferson emphasized popular sovereignty: government legitimacy derives directly from the “consent of the governed."
• Rebellion was justified when legitimacy was lacking: "When a long train of abuses and usurpations . . . evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government and to provide new Guards for their future security."
• The British had advantages, including well-equipped and trained soldiers, and a navy to blockade American ports.
• Many Loyalists in the colonies argued for compromise rather than confrontation.
• Benjamin Franklin's son William, the royally appointed governor of New Jersey, remained loyal to the British throne.
• While a few African Americans participated in the rebellion, the Loyalist party included many free blacks aware that slavery had been eliminated in England.
• Since prominent leaders of the rebellion included slave owners like Washington and Jefferson, black Loyalists associated Britain, rather than the Continental Congress, with “liberty.”
• The Mohawk nation under Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea) (1742–1807) also allied with the British.
• In 1777, the rebellious colonists defeated a British force at Saratoga, convincing the French government that the American rebellion had a real chance of success.
• In 1778, a Franco-American treaty was signed, with France supplying weapons and threatening the British fleet.
• The rebellious colonists had the support of the rural population for supplies and information, and women played a notable role as spies and producers.
• General Washington maintained morale through the winter at Valley Forge (1777–1778) and outmaneuvered British forces at Yorktown in 1781.
• French ships cut off the British route of retreat, leading to the British surrender at Yorktown.
• With the Treaty of Paris (1783), Britain acknowledged the independence of the United States of America.

Creating a Nation, 1783–1791

• The founders of the new United States of America adopted the motto Novus Ordo Seclorum: “A New Order of the Ages.”
• They saw their nation-building enterprise as a historical event initiating a new phase of human existence.
• Separation from the British did not bring about immediate revolutionary changes in people’s lives.
• Each of the thirteen colonies had developed a distinct political culture under British rule.
• Despite the motto E Pluribus Unum, representatives of the individual states proved reluctant to sacrifice local sovereignty to create a more unified nation.
• The first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, required that the federal government request funds from the individual states and lacked its own tax-raising power and no army.
• Shays’s Rebellion (1786–1787) led to negotiations for a more centralized federal constitution.
• Rural Massachusetts war veterans, led by Daniel Shays, rebelled over taxation and representation issues due to states being responsible for debts remaining from the war, and they used taxes to meet those obligations.
• Poorer farmers lost land and voting rights due to inability to pay taxes. Shay was incensed that land speculators were benefiting at the expense of overtaxed veterans.
• The Massachusetts state militia suppressed the uprising, but those who argued for a stronger federal government with powers of taxation used Shays’s Rebellion to make their point.
• Compromise was the hallmark of the new Constitution of the United States of America (1787), enhancing powers of the federal government in taxation, judicial oversight, banking, diplomacy, and warfare.
• Specific powers, such as determining the voting franchise, were left to the states.
• A system of checks and balances ensured the separation of executive, legislative, and judicial authority.
• A balance was struck between interests of large and small states with a two-house legislature: a House of Representatives based on population and a Senate with equal representation.
• The Constitutional Convention balanced the power of majorities and the rights of minorities.
• Congress amended the Constitution in 1791 with a Bill of Rights to ensure specific civil liberties.
• The Bill of Rights made the establishment of a state church impossible, protecting religious minorities, and guaranteed freedom of the press, assembly, and the right to bear arms.
• The original document was not very democratic, restricting the vote to property owners and excluding women, Native Americans, slaves, and most free blacks.
• George Washington was unanimously elected as president in 1789.
• He served two terms and then retired, following the example of the Roman general Cincinnatus.
• The Constitutional Convention failed to resolve the dichotomy between liberty and slavery.
• The vested interests of plantation owners prevailed, despite the growing abolitionist movement.
• The Constitution defined each slave as three-fifths of a person for calculating congressional delegations but allowed states to define slaves as nonpersons for other legal purposes.
• The new United States, like other post-revolutionary societies, did not start with a blank slate, and changing deeply entrenched traditions would be difficult.

French Revolution, 1789–1815

• Resistance to the French Revolution came from the monarchy, aristocracy, Catholic Church, and other European leaders.
• Compromise between France’s various social and political interest groups would prove impossible.
• The Revolution moved through three stages: constitutional monarchy, radical republicanism under the Jacobins, and the Napoleonic era.

Louis XVI and the Early Revolution, 1789–1792

• Louis XVI (r. 1774–1793) ruled over twenty-four million subjects.
• The treasury was empty and public debt was out of control, and the loss of the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) had cost the French territory while leaving behind a pile of debt
• The French government had received no economic benefit from backing the American rebels. The common people were crushed by taxes, while the nobility paid none.
• In 1789, Louis convened an Estates-General in Paris, where each of the three Orders of French society would send representatives.
• The First Estate consisted of the Catholic Church, the Second Estate consisted of the nobility, and the Third Estate comprised everyone else.
• No French king had called a meeting of the Estates-General since 1614.
• Elections were held for delegates from the Third Estate, many of whom were lawyers and merchants.
• These delegates demanded fundamental reforms, such as the creation of a representative legislative body.
• Louis was confident that he could control the Estates-General, but delegates from the Third Estate declared themselves to be a National Assembly.
• They took an oath not to disband until a constitutional monarchy had been established.
• Louis XVI summoned eighteen thousand troops to defend his palace at Versailles.
• A group of Parisians stormed the Bastille, freeing prisoners, arming themselves, and killing the mayor of Paris.
• Louis recognized the National Assembly, which declared equality before the law, eliminated the special prerogatives of the nobility, and abolished serfdom.
• In the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen,” the National Assembly declared that “men are born and remain free and equal in rights,” and established freedom of thought and religion.
• In spite of this radical agenda, in other areas the National Assembly was quite conservative, denying right's to women.
• In the fall of 1789, twenty thousand Parisians marched to Versailles in the “March of the Women,” forcing the king to return to Paris.
• The National Assembly organized a Legislative Assembly to draft a new set of basic laws.
• In the summer of 1791, Louis tried to escape from France but was captured.
• By the summer of 1792 French forces had fared badly in armed conflict with Habsburg regiments in the Netherlands, and there were fears of an Austrian invasion.
• The people of Paris staged demonstrations and then attacked the royal palace.
• Some members of the Legislative Assembly were disappointed that the king and his followers refused to play by the new rules of constitutional monarchy, but others were just as happy that the experiment did not work. They were republicans, who believed that any form of monarchy undermined liberty.

The Jacobins and the Reign of Terror, 1793–1795

• The Legislative Assembly declared a republic and instituted universal manhood suffrage.
• The National Assembly dissolved itself in favor of a National Convention, which declared the end of the monarchy.
• The Jacobins, led by Maximilien Robespierre, imposed a harsh dictatorship.
• Robespierre had been influenced by Rousseau and the ideas of a "Republic of Virtue."
• The government confiscated lands belonging to the church and to the nobility, and slavery in the French Empire was abolished.
• The absolute equality of the French was demonstrated by their new salutation: everyone, rich and poor, expected to be addressed as “citizen.”
• This new beginning of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” was symbolized by the creation of a new calendar, counting from 1793 a Year One.
• Devout Catholics deeply resented Jacobin attacks on the church, and the bourgeoisie were shocked by the Jacobins’ seizure of property.
• Prussia and Austria declared war on France, determined to end the revolution and restore the monarchy.
• A dictatorial Committee of Public Safety replaced democratic institutions.
• The committee quashed its enemies with a Reign of Terror, killing forty thousand people with the guillotine.
• The Jacobins secured the republic against Austrian and Prussian invaders through mass conscription.
• Military success emboldened the Jacobins’ enemies. People in the provinces were angry at the radicalism they associated with Paris, and many members of the middle class favored a more moderate republic.

The Age of Napoleon, 1795–1815

• The National Convention reasserted power and created a new constitution.
• From 1795 to 1799, the country remained sharply divided with conspiracies both by the Jacobins and by monarchists.
• French armies continued to gain victories as Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) took northern Italy from the Austrians.
• In 1799, Napoleon launched a coup d’état and formed a new government.
• In 1804, Napoleon crowned himself Emperor Napoleon I and secured approval through a national referendum.
• Napoleon compromised with the pope, created the Bank of France, and established the Napoleonic Code.
• He neutralized political opposition and cultivated patriotism, promising not liberty but glory.
• Napoleon's conquests stimulated nationalism across Europe.
• The emperor’s planned invasion of England was stymied in 1805.
• When he realized that personal ambition and the quest for French glory were the emperor’s true motivations, German composer Ludwig von Beethoven scratched that dedication from the title page for his "Heroic" symphony.
• French armies swept through Iberia and Italy and asserted control over the Netherlands, Poland, and the western half of Germany
• In 1812, Napoleon mounted an attack on Russia, but the French army was decimated during the harsh winter retreat.
• Napoleon was forced to abdicate in 1814 and was exiled, but he escaped and reformed his army
• In 1815, Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo, and he died in exile.

The Haitian Revolution, 1791–1804

• Saint-Domingue (Haiti) was France’s richest overseas possession.
• The colony’s prosperity was based on the misery of half a million African slaves.
• An elite of white planters stood over this vast African population, inspired by the call to liberty but not equality.
• The central conflict was between white planters and gens de couleur (free men and women of mixed race).
• Revolution from below came in the form of a vast slave uprising organized by Boukman, a Voudun priest, where Voudun religious beliefs and rituals derived from West and Central Africa.
• Boukman secretly organized a slave and maroon army to attack the planters’ estates and the city of Le Cap.
• In 1792, the French government sent an army to restore order, but then a new commander emerged: Toussaint L’Ouverture (1744–1803).
• Toussaint supported the creation of a new constitution that granted equality to all and that declared him governor-general for life.
• Napoleon sent an expedition to crush Toussaint’s new state in 1802. Toussaint was arrested and sent to France.
• Haitian military leaders kept up the fight with Napoleon’s soldiers, which were susceptible to tropical diseases, and in 1804 the independent nation of Haiti was born.
• Slave owners in the United States were terrified by the Haitian example, and the U.S. government ostracized Haiti by refusing to grant it diplomatic recognition.

Latin American Wars of Independence, 1800–1824

• Venezuela was directly influenced by the Haitian revolution.
• Leaders like Simón Bolívar looked to the ideals of the Enlightenment and the examples of the United States, France, and Haiti.
• Coalitions and conflicts between criollos and people of African, Amerindian, or mixed descent conditioned the course of revolution in many areas.
• In 1808, Napoleon had put his own brother on the Spanish throne.
• In the Spanish-speaking Americas, local elites created juntas (ruling groups) to assert local rule, forming a division of opinion between Loyalists and Republicans
• In most parts of the continent, building a popular base of support for independence required going beyond the white elite to appeal to Indians, Africans, mestizos, and other people of mixed descent.
• Spanish American Junta chose well-traveled Bolívar to represent them on diplomatic missions to London and Washington in 1810, betraying them when he lobbied the British to support his plan for independence.
• On July 3, 1811, the first Congress of Venezuela became the first such body in Latin America to declare independence from Spain.
• racial, ethnic, and regional division meant that there was no deep sense of “Venezuelan” identity, with the 1811 constitution restricting voting rights to a small minority of overwhelmingly white property owners and did nothing to abolish slavery
• A huge earthquake in the spring of 1812 added to the instability of the new Venezuelan republic, and Bolívar went on the military path that for the next twelve years, proclaiming a “war to the death” with the Spanish
• Bolívar sought out the cooperation of the leader of the llaneros, pledging himself to the abolition of slavery.
• In 1815, Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo meant the Madrid government sent a fleet to restore imperial authority in South America as Bolivar fl ed to Jamaica
• Returning to Venezuela and offering slaves freedom he was quickly recognized to be the supreme commander by 1817
• Bolívar and his troops suffered greatly on their campaign into the frigid Andean mountains and enlisted local recruits including from the area’s Indian population after initial Spanish demoralization under competent new generals
• Bolívar's South American troops victory at the Battle of Ayachuco fully removed Spanish rule

Mexico and Brazil, 1810–1831

• In Mexico, the deposition of the Spanish king led to a popular uprising of mestizos and Indians.
• A parish priest named Miguel de Hidalgo y Costilla rallied the poor not just for Mexican independence but also in the name of justice for the oppressed by shocking Spanish elites and Mexican's criollo elite alike that flocked to the royalist banner and executed Hidalgo
• Independence came in 1821, not from a renewal of popular insurgency but from a backlash by Mexican conservatives against changes in Madrid.
• Brazil followed an entirely different path, where the Portuguese royal family sought refuge in Brazil in 1808 from Napoleon.
• In 1824, Pedro I (r. 1824–1831) became the constitutional monarch of an independent Brazil.

Revolutionary Outcomes and Comparisons, to 1830

• By 1830 there were twenty-four states in the Union as high wages and cheap land were attracting European immigrants
• Colonists pursued their “manifest destiny” to settle the lands between the original thirteen colonies and the Pacific.
• The Lewis and Clark Expedition pointed the way west, and the vast Louisiana Purchase gave the new republic space to grow.
• As settlers improved in military and transportation technologies, the western frontier of the United States became marked by blood and violence and tensions to solve whether new states would be slave or free.
• In France and central Europe, conservative elites used the defeat of Napoleon to suppress reform at the Congress of Vienna (1815).
• Change was not easily repressed, however, winning nationalism and the association of that idea with progressive reform
• In Haiti, most people were slaves before the revolution where a massive decline in plantation production was found that robbed the new government of its tax base.
• In Latin America, Bolivar’s vision of a state of Gran Colombia was not achieved as limited traditions of local civic governance of centralized Spanish rule was found by a small number of wealthy landowners.

Qing China Confronts the Industrial World, 1800-1850

• After Qianlong Emperor dismissed an English diplomatic mission the British returned with firepower and after Qing officials were faced with Europe’s industrial and technological progress they were forced to agree to a series of unequal treaties.
• Some officials and scholars were willing to consider change after their lack of prestige
• Reforms were outmaneuvered by conservatives who were against European political, educational, and economic models
• China’s role in East Asia had been usurped by Japan
• The British, with no goods that were of much value in Chinese markets, sponsored large poppy plantations and smuggled opium
• While Victorian reformers worked to eliminate opium the East India Company pursued opium-for-tea
• Officials believed that opium made the user lethargic
• Opium flouting undermined traditional Chinese economy and silver.
• Quing refused European diplomatic presence
• After the East India Company lost authority the British lobbied
• According to free-trade always best, and Chinese could be forced to go for these markets if you don't understand

The Taiping Rebellion, 1850-1864

• Quing weakness exposed and Mandate of Heaven
• Peasant majority was suffering
• Population had grown
• Farmers brought the marginal lands into production
• Villages devastated by the floods of Huang He River
• The taiping lead by Hong Siuquan saw himself as the Jesus Christ younger and claimed himself on earth to set kingdom of peace
• Longhair rebels refused to wear pony tail of subservience