Ch. 16 atlantic revolutions

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1
Ch. 16 Atlantic
Revolutions,
Global Echoes
1 7 5 0 - 1 9 1 4

2
Atlantic Revolutions in a
Global Context
2

3
A “world crisis?”
3
• From the mid-eighteenth
century to the mid-
nineteeth century, a series
of uprisings shook states
and empires from Russia
to China and from Persia
to West Africa. Some
historians see these as
part of a global crisis and
place the Atlantic
revolutions in this context,
arguing for a thesis of
“converging revolutions.”

4
Uniqueness of the Atlantic revolutions
4
• While the Atlantic revolutions did
not occur in a vacuum, there
were several aspects of the North
American, French, Haitian, and
Spanish American revolutions
that make them distinct and
clearly part of an identifiable
phenomenon in the Atlantic
Basin. Importantly, these
revolutions show how Europe,
the Americas, and Africa were
increasingly interconnected in the
post-Columbian world.

5
The Atlantic as a “world of ideas”
5
• The intellectual impact of the
Enlightenment created a trans-Atlantic
print culture, where ideas were
exchanged and debated. Importantly,
this culture argued that human affairs
and institutions could be improved,
rationalized, and perfected.
• John Locke (1632-1704) was an English
philosopher who wrote Two Treatises on
Government which served to justify the
overthrow of James II and the Glorious
Revolution. Locke believed that people were
reasonable beings with the natural ability to
govern themselves. He believed that people
could learn from their experiences and
improve themselves. Moreover, Locke
believed that all people were born free and
equal, endowed with 3 natural rights: life,
liberty and property. He believed that
government’s responsibility was to protect
these rights for its citizens. He felt that if a
government failed to do this, then the people
had the right to replace the government
according to a “social contract.”

6
Enlightenment thinkers and writers set the stage for revolution
6
• Voltaire was the pen name of Francois
Marie Arouet who published more than 70
pieces of work in which he would often use
satire against his opponents. He believed in
tolerance, reason and freedom of thought,
expression and religious belief. He fought
against prejudice and superstition.
• The Baron de Montesquieu was a French
aristocrat, writer and lawyer who devoted
himself to the study of political liberty. He
advocated the separation of powers in
government. He also believed that in order
to keep any individual or group from gaining
complete control of the government, a
system of checks and balances must be
established.
Francois Marie Arouet
aka Voltaire
The Baron de
Montesquieu

7 7
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born poor
and worked as an engraver, music teacher,
tutor and secretary before moving to Paris
and winning fame as a writer of essays.
Rousseau was deeply committed to
individual freedom. He viewed government
as an agreement among free individuals to
create a society guided by the “general will.”
Unlike other Enlightenment thinkers, he
believed that civilization corrupted people’s
natural goodness and destroyed freedom
and equality.
• Cesare Bonesana Beccaria was an Italian
philosophe who focused on criminal justice.
He believed that laws existed to preserve
social order and he advocated a criminal
justice system based on fairness and
reason. He argued that a person accused of
a crime should receive a speedy trial. He
also worked to abolish torture.
Cesare Bonesana
Beccaria 1738-1794

8 8
• Mary Wollstonecraft was self-taught and ran a
school with her sisters before joining a London
publisher and writing. She believed that women,
like men, need education to become virtuous and
useful. She argued for women’s rights to become
educated and to participate in politics. Her essay
called a Vindication of the Rights of Woman was
written in 1792 and disagreed with Rousseau’s
assertment that women’s education should be
secondary to men’s.
• Thomas Hobbes was an English thinker who
wrote Leviathan in 1651. Hobbes’s view, all
humans were naturally selfish and wicked and
would act in their own self-interest. It is because
of this selfishness that he believed that people
needed a social contract (or government) to keep
the order. He believed that the best form of
government would be an absolute monarchy that
could impose order and demand obedience.

9
Democratic revolutions
9
• The Atlantic revolutions all shared a
strong democratic impulse and outcome.
While, with the exception of Haiti, all the
revolutions promoted the interests of
white men of property, they did greatly
expand political participation throughout
their societies.
• Global impact of the Atlantic
revolutions: While the immediate
events of the Atlantic revolutions were
local political acts and events, their
impact was truly global, setting the terms
and parameters of political debates well
into the twentieth century. French
revolutionary armies marched
throughout Europe and into North Africa.
Nationalism became the most potent
political ideology of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. The French
Revolution’s emphasis on human rights
impacted the formation of the United
Nations in 1948 and dissident Chinese
students in 1989.
Tennis Court Oath – French Revolution 1789

10
Comparing Atlantic Revolutions
10

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The North American Revolution, 1775–1787
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• Revolutionary?: There is legitimate
debate about how revolutionary the
American Revolution really was.
While it did establish a democracy
with an expanding electorate in the
coming decades, this was merely the
institutionalization of pre-existing
social relationships and political
patterns. There was no wholesale
social transformation.
• English in England and English in America: English
settlers in the Americas identified with England and
English culture but enjoyed the freedoms of life in a
land with no hereditary aristocracy, no single church,
and economic opportunities stemming from plentiful
land (thanks to the removal of the indigenous
population). While a wealthy elite dominated the
high politics and higher sectors of the economy,
there were various ways for poorer members of
society to both make wealth and participate in the
decision-making process. As such, a sense of
freedom was central to their identity. As England
initially ruled with a rather light hand, they developed
an increased sense and practice of autonomy, even
though the idea of separation from England was
very uncommon in the mid-century American
colonies.
Charles Willson Peale, “The Peale Family,” ca. 1771-1773, via New York Historical Society.

12
New taxes and ideas from the Enlightenment
12
Things changed when England,
dealing with war debts from its
various imperial conflicts, raised
taxes and established various
tariffs to generate revenue. The
Americans were equally
incensed by both the new taxes
and the notion that they were
being unjustly imposed by the
English government. They saw
England as violating their
popular sovereignty. Thus, tax
resistance and ideas from the
Enlightenment fused together in
an anti-English revolt.

13
A revolutionary society before the revolution
13
While the revolution
did lead to a process
where more and more
men got the vote,
political power
remained in the hands
of the white male elite.
There was no radical
transformation of
society.

14
United States after the Revolution
14

15
. The French Revolution, 1789–1815
15
• The American connection: ideas and war debt: There was a direct impact
of the American Revolution on the French Revolution. As thousands of
French soldiers had served in the American war, many of them
encountered the radical example of republicanism and wanted to reform
feudal France along those lines. As France was home to many
Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire, the American example spurred
the imagination of many French thinkers. In a more concrete way, the
French monarchy’s support for the American rebels created a massive
war debt. To pay off the debt, King Louis XVI called the Estates General
to raise taxes, thus providing the political opening for the French to start
raising their grievances with the taxes but also the entire socio-political
French system.

16
Resentment of privilege and increasing radicalism
16
• There was widespread resentment of not
just the absolute power of the monarch but
of the social divisions of The Old Regime
in France. The Old Regime was the
system of feudalism left over from the
Middle Ages and the people of France
were still divided into three large social
classes called estates.
• The three estates: the clergy, the nobility,
and everyone else (the vast majority of the
population). The first two estates enjoyed
various social and economic privileges
that ranged from dress to hunting rights to
exemption from certain taxes.

17
First Estate
•consisted of clergy from the Roman Catholic Church
and they made up less than 1% of the population, yet
owned about 10% of the land.

18
Second Estate
• consisted of the rich nobles who made up about 2% of the
population, yet owned about 20% of the land.

19
Third Estate
• consisted of 3 distinct groups:
the bourgeoisie (were merchants
and artisans), the workers
(cooks, servants etc…), and the
peasants (the largest group at
about 80% of the population.)
• The Third Estate was heavily
taxed and had little political
power or social standing. The
Third Estate was eager for
change.

20
Economic Woes
• Bad weather in the 1780’s caused widespread crop
failures and resulted in a severe shortage of grain. This
caused the price of bread to double in 1789 and many
people faced starvation.

21
• More economic troubles hit France when the government sank deeply
into debt. Extravagant spending by the king and queen (Marie
Antoinette became known as Madame Deficit), inherited debts from
past regimes and loans borrowed in order to help the American
revolutionaries caused unmanageable debts and France faced
bankruptcy.

22
The Estates-General
• (assembly of representatives from all
three estates) was called to meet on
May 5, 1789 at Versailles to discuss
the king’s attempt to increase taxes
on the nobility. The Third Estate (all
estates met in separate rooms) led by
Abbe Sieyes, wanting more power,
formed the National Assembly in
order to pass laws and reforms in the
name of the French people.

23
• The vote to form the National Assembly was passed by the Third Estate
on June 17, 1789. This proclaimed the end of absolute monarchy and
was seen as the first deliberate act of revolution. The Third Estate was
locked out of their meeting rooms 3 days later. They broke down the
doors to an indoor tennis court where they all pledged to stay until they
had created a new constitution. This pledge was known as the Tennis
Court Oath.

24
Too little, too late…
• Louis XVI ordered the nobles and clergy
to join the National Assembly in order to
make peace with the Third Estate.
Meanwhile, he ordered Swiss guards in
Paris because he no longer trusted the
French soldiers. This sparked a rumor
that the king had ordered foreign troops
to massacre French citizens. The
people began to take up arms and
eventually stormed the Bastille (Paris
prison) in efforts to seize gunpowder
believed to be stored there. The fall of
the Bastille on July 14, 1789 became a
great symbolic act of revolution and has
been a French national holiday ever
since.

25
The Great Fear
• In the summer of 1789, a
senseless panic and mob
violence spread from Paris into
the countryside. Peasants
fearful of rumored attacks
initiated by nobles took up arms
and broke into the manor
houses destroying many.
Nobles, known as emigres, fled
their manors for the safety of
Britain’s aristocracy friendly
shores.

26
Women Unite…
• October 1789- Parisian women rioted over the rising price of bread.
They marched for 6 hours from Paris to Versailles to voice their anger to
the king and queen. Armed with knives and axes they broke into the
palace, killed 2 guards and took the royal family back to Paris (never to
return again.)

27
From 1789 to 1791…
• …the National Assembly argued over a new
constitution for France. June 1791, Louis XVI
and the royal family attempt to escape France
in disguise but are discovered. Soldiers
escorted the royal family back to the Tuileries
in Paris. This proved to many that Louis XVI
was a traitor to the revolution. August 1791,
the king of Prussia and the emperor of Austria
issued the Declaration of Pilnitz which
threatened to intervene to protect the French
monarchy. September 1791, the National
Assembly completes a new constitution which
created a limited constitutional monarchy. This
gave the power to make laws to the new
governmental body, the Legislative Assembly.
Executive powers of enforcing laws remained
with the king and his ministers.
Frederick
William II
1744-1797
Leopold II
1790-1792

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The Legislative Assembly was soon split into 3 factions over
citizen’s cries for more liberty, more equality and more bread.
• Radicals – sat on the left side of the hall (left-wing) and they opposed
the monarchy and wanted changes in government which would give
full power to the common people. The sans-culottes was a radical
group who wanted a greater voice in government, lower food prices
and an end to food shortages.
• Moderates – sat in the center of the hall (centrists) and they wanted
some changes in government but not as many as the radicals.
• Conservatives – sat on the right side of the hall (right-wing) and
believed in the idea of a limited monarchy and wanted few changes in
government. The extreme right of this group were the émigrés. They
were nobles and others who fled France during the peasant uprisings
who wanted to restore the monarchy and the Old Regime.

29
War and Mob Rule
• April 1792- the Legislative Assembly declares war on Austria after
Austria and Prussia proposed that France put Louis XVI back on the
throne. Prussia soon joined Austria in the fight against the French. As
Prussian and Austrian forces approached Paris, they warned the
revolutionaries not harm any member of the royal family. August 10,
1792- 20,000 men invade the Tuileries and massacred the Swiss Guard
and imprisoned Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and their children in a stone
tower. The fighting between France and other European nations will
last on and off until 1815.
Tuileries Palace, French royal residence adjacent to
the Louvre in Paris before it was destroyed by arson in
1871.

30
• September of 1792 saw much
bloodshed between Frenchmen.
Fearing threats from angry mobs
and Parisian radicals, the
Legislative Assembly set aside the
Constitution of 1791, deposed the
king, dissolved the assembly and
called for the election of a new
governing body. The National
Convention was elected in
September of 1792 and quickly
made sweeping changes.
September 21, 1792 they abolished
the monarchy and declared France
a republic giving only adult male
citizens the right to vote.
The Examination of “Louis the Last”.

31
• Since Louis XVI was now only a commoner and a prisoner, he
was charged and tried for treason and was found guilty. January
21, 1793- Louis XVI is executed by guillotine.

32
The Reign of Terror
• This period of rule under
Maximilien Robespierre was from July
1793 to July 1794. His rule was an
effort to contain and control the
enemies of the radical Jacobins from
within France: peasants who were
horrified by the beheading of the king,
priests who would not accept
government control and rival leaders
who were stirring up rebellion in the
provinces.

33
• Robespierre became the leader of the
Committee of Public Safety which was
responsible for deciding who was an
enemy of the republic, trying and
executing the guilty. As head of this
committee, Robespierre took on the
role of dictator of France and executed
for treason some 40,000 people total.
About 85% were peasants, the urban
poor or middle class. Fellow
revolutionaries who challenged
Robespierre were also victims of his
authority and suffered the same fate as
the most famous victim of the Reign of
Terror, Marie Antoinette.

34
Jean Paul Marat…
34
The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David (1793)
Radical publisher, physician,
philosopher and political theorist,
Jean Paul Marat was a supporter of
the Sans-culottes and the
revolution. He suffered from a
painful skin disease which required
him to spend many hours soaking
in the bathtub. It was here that he
was assassinated by Charlotte
Corday, a member of rival radical
faction, the Girondin in 1793.

35
• July 1794- The National Convention
realize that they are not safe from
Robespierre and turn on him. He is
arrested on July 27, 1794 and executed
by guillotine on July 28, 1794 thus ending
the Reign of Terror. The National
Convention then has the task of drafting a
new plan for government. This new
government gave power to the upper
middle class and called for a two-house
legislature and an executive body of five
men known as the Directory. Under the
leadership of the corrupt moderate
Directory, a period of peace and order
falls on France.

36
Women’s participation and then repression
36
• In 1791, Olympe de Gouges, a journalist,
demanded equal rights in her Declaration of the
Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen. She
proclaimed that women should be equally
eligible for all public offices, positions and jobs.
• In many of revolutionary disturbances in
Paris, women played a prominent role in
the famous mobs that attacked the
Bastille and Versailles. There are also
many examples of educated women,
such as Olympe de Gouges, publishing
political pamphlets and forming political
clubs. However, there was a male
backlash that limited women’s rights,
banned their political clubs, and curtailed
other forms of political participation.
Nonetheless, the revolution served as a
symbol for later generations of feminists.

37
Birth of the nation
• The French Revolution gave
birth to the modern concept
of nationalism and
citizenship. People saw
themselves not as members
of a village or region or the
subject of a king, but as
equal citizens in the larger
body of the nation-state.
This new nation looked very
different from the old.

38
Inventing a new, rational world
38
• The French Revolution was a
much more complete
revolutionary movement than the
American example. The French
revolutionaries sought to create
an entirely new world based on a
rational ordering of things, seen
in the new calendar and a new,
more uniform administrative
system for the country. In many
ways this was a complete
application of the ideas of the
Enlightenment.

39
Calendar of the Republic
• The new calendar was adopted by
the National Convention in October,
1793. The year began on
September 22 of the old calendar,
and was divided into twelve months
of thirty days each, leaving five
days (six in leap years) over at the
end of the last month. These five or
six days were to be known as
the Sans-culottides, and were to be
a series of national holidays. Each
month was divided into three
weeks, called décades, the last day
of each décade being set aside as
a day of rest corresponding to the
old Sunday.
• The months were grouped into four sets
of three, by seasons, and given "natural"
names, some of which are rather
attractive--vendémiaire, brumaire,
frimaire (autumn); nivôse,
pluviôse,ventôse (winter); germinal,
floréal,prairial (spring);messidor,
thermidor, fructidor (summer). The days
of the décade were named arithmetically-
-primidi, duodi, on to décadi. In place of
the old saints' days, each day was
dedicated to a suitable fruit, vegetable,
animal, agricultural implement.

40
Life in the Revolution=Change
• Daily life of the French changed
drastically with the Revolution.
• Liberating thoughts and rhetoric
inspired great shifts in politics,
economics, industry, religion,
and society. These new
ideologies and shifts had their
effect on fashions.
This caricature contrasts 1778 (at right) and 1793 (at left)
styles for both men and women, showing the large changes
in just 15 years

41
In Paris on 18 Brumaire, year VIII (November 9, 1799)…
• …there was a coup d’état that
overthrew the system of
government under
the Directory in France. The
government was moved to the
safety of Chateau St. Cloud in
fear of a fake Jacobin plot. Once
there, 3 of the 5 members of the
Directory resigned. Napoleon
fumbled through a speech to the
legislators (Council of 500) who
responded with anger. Napoleon
would then take more drastic
steps.

42
Napoleon!
42
• Corsican born of minor Italian nobility,
Napoleon was sent to school in France
where he finished military school early.
• He joined the army of the Revolution when
the war broke out and quickly gained fame
when he defended the National Convention
from an attack on the Tuileries in 1795.
• In 1796, he is tasked by the corrupt
Directory and Paul Baras to fight in Italy. His
successful campaign will lead to Napoleon’s
disastrous invasion of Egypt in 1798-1799
(he was thwarted by his arch nemesis, Lord
Admiral Horatio Nelson in a sea battle.)
Napoleon Crossing the Alps by
Jacques-Louis David

43
Napoleon and his grenadiers driving the Council of Five
Hundred from the Orangerie.

44
The Corsican Crocodile Dissolving the Council of Frogs,
9th November 1799

45
The Constitution of the Year
VIII created an executive
consisting of three consuls, but
the First Consul, Napoleon
Bonaparte, wielded all real power,
while the other two, Emmanuel-
Joseph Sieyès and Pierre-Roger
Ducos, were figureheads.
Napoleon legitimized his rule with
plebiscites.

46
Napoleon’s French revolutionary paradox
46
• When General Napoleon
Bonaparte came to power in 1799,
he preserved some elements of the
revolution but did away with others.
Essentially, he kept the equality but
got rid of the liberty, especially after
he became emperor in 1804.
Napoleon, a military genius, also
spread the influence of the French
Revolution as his armies
conquered most of Europe. While
he ended feudalism, created a
secular law code, proclaimed
religious tolerance, and rationalized
the administrative system wherever
he went, his military occupation
ironically led to nationalist
resentment of the French presence.
December 2, 1804- Napoleon crowns his wife
Josephine empress of France shortly after seizing
the crown from the archbishop and crowning
himself emperor.

47
By 1812, only Britain, Portugal,
Sweden and the Ottoman
Empire were free from
Napoleon’s control.
His empire will remain at it’s
height from 1807-1812 before
his actions (the disatrous
invasion of Russia) would
bring on his exile to the island
of Elba and destruction of his
empire.
Napoleon will return from exile
in 1813 to rule for his “100
days”, at the end of which was
a final defeat on the battlefield
of Waterloo at the hands of the
Duke of Wellington.
He will die in exile on the
island of St. Helena.

48
The Haitian Revolution, 1791–1804
48
• Saint Domingue, the richest colony
in the world: With 8,000 slave
plantations producing 40 percent of
the world’s sugar and perhaps 50
percent of its coffee, this French
colony was arguably the richest in
the world.
• African slaves, white colonists, and
gens de couleur: The colony was
home to 500,000 slaves from Africa,
40,000 whites divided between rich
grands blancs and poor petit blancs,
and 30,000 free mixed race. Each
group interpreted the French
Revolution in a different manner, and
each group was suspicious of the
others.

49
Slave revolt, civil war, and foreign invasion:
49
• The majority of the population was
enslaved Africans who worked the
plantations. August 14th, 1791, an African
voodoo priest named Dutty Boukman
performed a sacrificial ceremony and
called for revolution. On August 22nd,
1791 ,more than 100,000 slaves rose up
in Saint Dominigue killing all whites they
met and setting plantations on fire.
• As France lost control of the colony, the
various groups formed armies and militias
and fought for years in a series of bloody
engagements. Seeking to take advantage
of the situation to gain some advantage in
their imperial struggles with France,
Britain and Spain invaded.
The French quickly captured Boukman, and beheaded
him. Boukman inspired the slaves with the belief that
he was invincible, so the French displayed his head on
a spike to convince them he was really dead

50
This image shows black men
hanging a large number of French
soldiers, identifiable by their
uniforms and colors. The victims of
these executions include regular
soldiers but also officers, as the
head of the hanging victim in the
top left corner suggests. The
number of gallows leading up the
hill gives this scene the appearance
of a vast act of retaliation. In fact,
the engraving is titled Revenge
Taken by the Black Army.
50

51
The French negotiated a peace with him in May of 1802 but later accused him of
planning another uprising and arrested him. He was sent to a prison in the
French Alps where he died within 10 months in April, 1803.
Toussaint L'Ouverture was the
son of an educated slave who
witnessed the ineptitude of the
rebel leaders of Boukman’s
revolt. Collecting an army of his
own, L'Ouverture trained his
followers in guerrilla warfare.
He took the lead in the
revolution and by 1801, moved
his troops into Spanish Santo
Domingo and freed the slaves.

52
Haitian Republic and Haitian Emperor
• This was a truly radical revolution as the slaves
emerged victorious and established a republic in
which they were the majority of citizens. Haitian
leaders spoke openly of avenging the era of
colonial slavery. The revolution served as a symbol
of hope for other slaves in the region but as a
serious warning to slave owners in the region.
• Sadly Haiti was forced to pay a massive
amount of money to France and political
stability remained elusive. The war, the
destruction of the plantations, and the end of
significant trade with France weakened the
new nation.
• Born around 1758, in Africa, Jean-Jacques
Dessalines was enslaved in the French colony of
Saint-Domingue. He served as a lieutenant under
Toussaint L'Ouverture after the 1791 slave revolt
and later helped eliminated French rule. On
January 1, 1804, he declared the colony an
independent country, named it Haiti and declared
himself emperor.
Despised for his brutality, yet honored as one of Haiti’s
founding fathers, he was killed in a revolt on October
17, 1806, in Pont Rouge, near Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

53
Spanish American
Revolutions
1810–1825
53

54
Latin America circa 1800

55
Division of Latin American society:
• Peninsulares – men who were born in Spain. They were the only
ones who could hold high office positions in the government.
• Creoles – Spanish people who were born in Latin America. They
could rise as officers in the Spanish colonial armies.
• Mestizos – people of mixed European and Indian ancestry.
• Mulattos – people of mixed European and African ancestry.
• Africans – enslaved and free
• Indians – natives to the land, they had little economic value and
were severely oppressed.

56
Creole resentment of Spanish rule and taxes
56
• Creoles, the native-born elite, who
normally self-identified as white
Spaniards or Portuguese, disliked
authoritarian rule from Europe (viewed as
foreigners) and resented taxation by the
crown. However, they did not form a
united force to fight for independence in
the eighteenth century.
• In 1808, Napoleon invaded the Iberian
Peninsula, deposing the Spanish king and
forcing the Portuguese king to flee to
colonial Brazil. Napoleon created a
political power vacuum that ultimately led
to the colonies demanding their formal
independence.

57
Racial, class, and ideological divisions
57
• As the Creole elite were very nervous
about lower-class, Indian, and slave
rebellions, it was difficult for the Latin
American revolutionaries to build a mass
movement. However, the events of the
Haitian Revolution injected a deep
caution and social conservatism in the
elites who eventually led their countries
to independence.
• Simón Bolívar was able to create a
nativist ideology that united the various
class and racial groups against the
Spanish (a similar phenomenon
happened in Portuguese Brazil).

58
Bolivar was president of Gran Colombia (1819–30)
and dictator of Peru (1823–26).
The Liberator - Simón
Bolívar was a wealthy
Venezuelan creole
born July 24, 1783 in
Caracas, New Granada.
He was a soldier and
statesman who led
revolutions against
Spanish rule. He
declared Venezuela free
from Spain in 1811. He
fought for 10 more years
against the Spanish to
free Venezuela and win
independence in 1821.

59
South American Libertadores
• Jose de San Martin was a liberator who was
born in Argentina but spent much of his time in
Spain as a military officer. 1817, San Martin
led his Argentine army across the Andes into
Chile and joined the forces of Bernardo
O’Higgins (son of the former viceroy of Peru)
and freed Chile. 1821, San Martin took his
troops by sea to Lima, Peru and was
outnumbered by the Spanish troops found
there. He waited almost a year until the
Spanish fled the city to the mountains and San
Martin entered Lima. He declared Peru’s
independence on July 28, 1821 and assumed
title of protector. Fighting against the Spanish
would continue for Peru. San Martin privately
met with Bolivar in Ecuador in 1822 which
resulted in San Martin giving up his
protectorship of Peru. Bolivar took over the job
of fully liberating Peru with the combined forces
and went on to defeat the Spanish at the Battle
of Ayacucho (Peru) on December 9, 1824. Bernardo O’Higgins

60
• 1808- Napoleon’s troops
invaded the Iberian
Peninsula and the Prince
Regent John VI (Regent for
Queen Maria I of Portugal)
and his family along with his
court and royal treasury
boarded ships and escaped
to Brazil. They lived there
in exile for 14 years.
The royal family preparing to move to Brazil by Henry
L'Evêque.
Brazil’s Royalty

61
Bloodless Revolution
• After Napoleon’s defeat and prompted
by economic and political problems, the
Portuguese royals returned home in
1821 and expected Brazil to resume
being a colony. However, the creoles
demanded Brazilian independence in
1822.
• 8,000 Brazilians signed a petition
asking Dom Pedro, King John’s son, to
become the ruler and he agreed.
September 7, 1822, Brazil achieved
independence through a bloodless
revolution.
Emperor Pedro I of Brazil in 1834, aged 35.

62
Mexican Independence
62
O'Gorman, Juan: Retablo de la independencia. This is a mural by Juan
O'Gorman depicting the Grito de Dolores (Father Hidalgo’s announcement of
revolution on September 16, 1810) painted 1960-1961.

63
Independence without
social revolution or unity
63
While Spanish rule was over in
most of the Americas by the
mid-1820s, there was no social
revolution, and most of the
systems of economic
exploitation and social inequality
remained intact. With the Creole
elites dominating these new
nations, there was little in the
way of meaningful democracy
until the twentieth century.
Map of Latin
American
Independence

6464
The Abolition of Slavery

65
Abolitionist
65
• Protestant and Quaker activists
began the abolitionist movement out
of a pious moral opposition to
slavery. They publicized the evils of
slavery and published memoirs by
former slaves.
• Olaudah Equiano, known in his
lifetime as Gustavus Vassa, was a
writer and abolitionist from,
according to his memoir; the Eboe
region of the Kingdom of Benin.
Enslaved as a child, he was taken to
the Caribbean and sold as a slave to
a Royal Navy officer. He was sold
twice more but purchased his
freedom in 1766.

66
New economic and leadership…
• Industrialization and the new capitalist
systems of production increasingly
emphasized the use of free labor for
wages set in a labor market, making the
unfree labor of slavery look backwards
and inefficient.
• The example of Haiti’s successful
revolution inspired other rebellions in the
Atlantic Basin, making the continued
maintenance of plantations more difficult.
• Thanks to moral, religious, economic,
and political opposition to slavery, the
British led the way in dismantling the
institution by abolishing the slave trade in
1807 and emancipating the slaves in
1834.
In 1787 the abolitionists recruited William Wilberforce
(1759-1833), a brilliant young MP for Yorkshire, as their
principal advocate in the House of Commons. A man of
strong religious beliefs and a powerful speaker, he worked
to push the Abolition Bill through parliament.
Nevertheless, it was not until 1807, at the 14th attempt,
that the Bill was passed, making participation in the slave
trade illegal for British subjects.

67
Emancipation
67
• Resistance to abolition was widespread in
the slave-trading and owning societies,
none more so that the southern states of
the United States. The United States
stands out as the only nation that had to
fight a brutal and destructive civil war, from
1861–1865, to end slavery.
• With the exception of Haiti and a brief moment
of radical reconstruction in the United States,
there were no major social, economic, or
political changes with emancipation. Land was
not redistributed and African-descended freed
slaves had few political rights. The United
States saw the widespread use of restrictive
voting laws and popular violence by whites as a
way to keep a terrorized back population in
check. As many former slaves refused to return
to plantations labor, large numbers of
indentured servants were imported from India
and China to various mines and plantations
where they worked in slave-like conditions. New
forms of dependent labor like sharecropping
emerged. In Russia, the fear of rebellion,
economic inefficiency and moral concerns
persuaded the Russian tsar to free the serfs in
1861. The emancipation of the serfs did see
land redistribution but the impoverished
peasants had to pay for the land, ensuring their
continued poverty.

68
Emancipation and colonialism in Africa and the Islamic world
68
• With the collapse of the slave-
exporting market in West and East
Africa, the price of slaves dropped,
and they became more commonly
used to produce crops for export.
When Europeans came to colonize
the continent, conquest was
frequently rationalized as fighting the
slave trade, a moral obligation for
Europeans (despite the centuries-
long history of these Europeans
taking slaves from Africa). Slavery
lasted in the Islamic world well into
the twentieth century. Lacking a
grassroots opposition to the practice,
it took international pressure to end
slavery.
Political cartoon illustrating the western belief of
“white man’s burden” or “noblesse oblige” as
justifications for imperialism.

69
Nations and Nationalism
69
The concept of individuals belonging to a
nation rather than a village or a religion is
relatively new in human history. It was the
direct product of the ideas of the
Enlightenment, the North and South
American independence movements, the
political examples of the United States and
revolutionary France, and resentment of
Napoleon’s occupation of most of Europe.
Specifically, the idea of popular sovereignty
(that political power rests in the hands of
the people and not in the hands of kings)
encouraged the thinking of the nation (a
like-minded, cultural-linguistic group) as a
state. Popular nationalism made the normal
rivalry among European states even more
acute and fueled a highly competitive drive
for colonies in Asia and Africa.
Nations of Europe 1880

70
Nationalism at work
70
• Nationalism could work to unify
disunited people in fragmented political
systems such as Germany and Italy, but
nationalism could also inspire groups
such as the Greeks or the Poles to
break away from rule by a multi-ethnic
empire.
• Popular nationalism could push states
towards increasingly violent conflict as
international disputes were now
arguments between nations (entire
populations) and not just between kings.
The bloody conflict of the First World
War was a product of this phenomenon.
• Nationalism required defining who was a part
of a nation and who was outside of a nation.
This became a political act as groups might be
forced to become part of a new cultural
identity (seen in the Russian Empire, when
Finns and Ukrainians were forced to use
Russian) or excluded and thus made
vulnerable (as seen in the anti-Semitic politics
of Germany). Importantly, nationalism was
used to build movements to fight imperialism
as in India and China.

71
Feminist
Beginnings
Modern feminism has its roots in the Enlightenment
attacks on tradition and the promotion of liberty
and rationality in social arrangements. It thus
stemmed from the same source as the political
revolutions and the secular attacks on slavery.
71

72
Feminist movements
72
Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication
of the Rights of Women
Seneca Falls, 1848
• Her work shows the direct inspiration of
the French Revolution's attempts to
rebuild social arrangements. Her work
was one of the early statements of an
explicit feminism.
• The first convention for women's rights in the
United States was held in Seneca Falls, New
York, from July 19-20, 1848. More than 300
people attended this meeting devoted
exclusively to addressing the status of American
women who, according to organizer Elizabeth
Cady Stanton (1815-1902), 'do feel themselves
aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived
of their most sacred rights.' Stanton and Lucretia
Mott (1793-1880) were the main organizers of
the convention. Stanton was primarily
responsible for the writing and presentation of
the Declaration of Sentiments.
• The Declaration of Sentiments was a list of
resolutions and grievances which included
demands for a woman's right to education,
property, a profession, and the vote. At the close
of the convention, 100 individuals (68 women
and 32 men) signed the Declaration of
Sentiments, including abolitionist Frederick
Douglass.

73
Suffrage and professional opportunities and opposition
73
• Women’s organizations formed for a variety
of social issues, but the campaign to get the
right to vote came to dominate by the late
nineteenth century. Yet women scored many
advances as they entered new professions
and expanded their property
• There was bitter reaction to various
women’s rights campaigns from both the left
and the right. However, if socialists remained
divided about the issues, conservatives
almost uniformly viewed feminism as an
almost alien threat.
• The movement was strongest in Western
Europe and the United States, but various
activists and intellectuals began to take on
the cause around the world.

Ch. 16 atlantic revolutions

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