In this video we’ll be discussing the period in world history known as the Atlantic Revolutions.
We spent quite a bit of time in this course discussing the creation of the Atlantic world,
and the Atlantic world is a term given to the economic; cultural; social demographic
and political connections that existed between Europe; Africa; and the Americas after the
Age of Conquest, after the age of colony building.
So the period from 1492 up to 1775 was a period in which Europe established a number of colonies
within North and South America.
You see the emergence of New Spain, New France; England builds colonies along the Atlantic
Seaboard; there are colonies throughout Latin America and the Caribbean; and Europe benefitted
from this colonial model.
They benefitted from the colonial model because the Atlantic world became the center, or the
most important global trading network.
There was a balance of power, shift in the balance of power that took place in this Age
of Conquest, in this age of colony building.
Traditionally, Europe had been dependent on trade with China, and China really kind of
had the upper hand; they benefitted the most from those trading networks along the Silk
Road.
But after the European conquest of the so-called New World, after they established colonies
in North and South America, the resulting exchange – economic exchange, which is sometimes
called the Columbian Exchange, moved to the forefront of the global economy; it quickly
became the most significant trading network in the global economy shifting the power from
China to Europe.
The Columbian Exchange introduced new food; it introduced new agricultural products; it
also introduced diseases.
Diseases were shared between the Old World and the New.
It brought new ideas and new traditions.
Religions were brought from Europe to the New World and enforced somewhat violently
at times.
It also resulted in the Atlantic world, the Columbian Exchange also resulted in the fundamental
transformation of three – well four distinct continents.
So Europe would benefit from a shift in the balance of power based on global trade.
The Americas would grow in terms of agricultural production; they would grow as markets; they
would grow as a source of production; and Africa would be devastated by what’s become
known as the transatlantic slave trade.
The Transatlantic slave trade fundamentally changed the histories of North America, South
America, and Africa, and set the stage for a number of conflicts that will structure,
or shape the modern world.
So there are a lot of changes taking place between 1492 and 1775.
From 1775 to 1821, the Atlantic world moves into a new stage and that’s a stage that’s
marked by the end of empire.
Oftentimes this end of empire is referred to as the Age of Atlantic Revolutions because
there are a number of revolutions that took place across, or within these worlds connected
by Atlantic trade.
First up you have the American Revolution.
The American Revolution, which is roughly dated from 1775 to 1781 – although those
dates can be debated, you know - Do you start it with the first violence?
Do you start it with the Declaration of Independence?
Do you end it with the cessation of violence or do you end it with the Treaty of Paris?
But those are the rough dates for the American Revolution and it was driven by some long-term
problems within the colonial structure – long-term problems within England’s hold on its American
colonies.
This conflict came from a number of different areas.
It came from protectionist economics, from the fact that England tended to see its colonies
as a resource to exploit – and so they used things like the Navigation Acts to require
the colonies trade only with England.
Resentment came in the form of various attempts on the part of England to tighten control
over their American colonies.
These would be things like James II dissolving the New England colonies and creating a great
dominion of New England that he could control more tightly.
What this all kind of lead to was this sense among colonists that maybe England doesn’t
actually know the best way to govern us from an entire ocean away – this is what the
colonists were saying.
They were also influenced – the American revolutionaries were also influence by new
ideas from the Enlightenment and the Enlightenment is just the name given to a period in the
middle of the 18th century in which old ideas were challenged and new ideas emerged.
Different ideas came out of the Enlightenment, you know, much like thinkers today thinkers
in the 18th century didn’t agree on what the right answer was, but what they did share
in common was this idea that you didn’t need to just accept the status quo – the
way things were – merely because that’s the way things were; instead you should think
rationally, you should apply the laws of reason to religion or to the economy or to society
or to government, and decide what would be best, and if it’s not the old way of doing
things then change the way that you do things.
So the Enlightenment thinkers encouraged change, and this idea that the world could be made
better through the application of reason.
Another long-term cause of the American Revolution would be the Seven Years War, more commonly
known as the French and Indian War in American history, which created a tremendous debt burden
on England and changed the dynamic in North America by removing the French from their
position in New France in North America.
By removing France as a threat, the colonists needed less protection from England.
So at the same time that England is raising taxes to pay off their debt burden, the colonists
believe that they don’t really need England as much, English protection much – and so
that ended up snowballing with a series of taxes and tariffs, and increasing resistance
to protectionist economic policies and a lack of representation, and by 1775 this resentment
had snowballed into war, into what Americans call the American Revolution or their war
for independence.
Speaking about the broad path of the Revolution, it did not go particularly well for Americans
at first, and then at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777 French involvement helped to turn
the tide, and in Yorktown in 1781 you have a final victory.
American independence was recognized in the Treaty of Paris of 1783, and then these newly
independent Americans needed to decide what to do next.
How do you formulate a government now that you can make any kind of government that you
want?
So the consequences of the American Revolution were profound; it resulted in American independence
and/or curtailing of practices of mercantilism.
Britain suffered a large loss of their colonial possessions.
They didn’t lose everything, but they did lose those 13 colonies, and it would inspire
other revolutions – some very profound ramifications or consequences of the American Revolution.
One of the other revolutions that the American Revolution would, at least in part, help to
inspire happened on the other side of the Atlantic, and it was the French Revolution.
The French Revolution, again the dates are debatable, but it’s roughly dated from about
1789 to 1804.
It was caused by a number of factors increasing a debt crisis – you know, France was pretty
much bankrupt and in tremendous debt with no way of paying it, no real way of collecting
taxes.
Society had kind of devolved – if you will – into a situation where the elite had almost
all of the power even though they made up a minor percentage of the population, and
there was a growing middle class – what historians call bourgeoisie – that didn’t
really fit into the traditional structure.
They didn’t really have a say in government.
So it all kind of snowballs when Louis the XVI is trying to raise taxes to pay for some
of these debts to get France out of bankruptcy, and there’s enough political pressure put
on him that he has to call the French representative body called the Estates General – and that’s
a group that has not met in 175 years; so it convenes in 1789 and prior to that date
it had not met in 175 years.
So this is a revolutionary act and it sparks a political crisis – it sparks the French
Revolution.
Now the French Revolution is a complicated period in history and it’s the subject of
individual classes in many colleges across the country.
So what we’re going to do is just kind of look at some of the broad patterns and consequences
of the French Revolution.
One way of thinking about the French Revolution is to see it as a pendulum swing.
France started – as you can see here in this image – France started with an absolute
monarchy, and in an absolute monarchy the king can do whatever he wants, can make any
decisions, and those decisions are unbounded by law, by a representative institution; he’s
not constrained.
So the revolution, the French Revolution starts as a protest against that kind of power.
The earliest phase of the revolution is often referred to as the ‘liberal phase’ and
the liberal phase results in the creation of a constitutional monarchy – that means
that France, in 1791, still has a monarchy but it has to work in conjunction with representative
bodies, at this point the National Assembly, and is constrained by the rule of law.
In 1792 that dynamic, that sort of liberal dynamic of representative government, changes
when France goes to war with most of the rest of Europe to defend itself.
War has a tendency to radicalize politics – creating an ‘us versus them’ mentality,
and it quickly devolved in France into this situation where you’re either for us or
you’re against us, and so that resulted in the 1793 to 1794 reign of terror in which
so-called enemies of the revolution were executed by guillotine.
In a roughly 10-month period more than 13,000 so-called enemies of the revolution were executed
by guillotine, and by 1794 people were tired of that.
So what you see is a reaction; it’s called the Thermidorian Reaction, but it’s a reaction
to this reign of terror, and France starts its swing back.
So this radical government that existed in 1793 starts to move back towards a more conventional
form of government, or a more conservative form of government.
The National Convention gives way to a five-person directory, the five-person directory gives
way to a three-person consulate, and then the consulate gives way to a single consulate
called Napoleon, Napoleon Bonaparte, who then declares himself consul for life, and in 1804
declares himself emperor.
And if you think about it, an emperor is not that different from an absolute monarch, so
France underwent this pendulum swing from highly conservatively absolute monarchy in
which power rests with a single individual to a radical form of government in which the
working class had all the power, and then back to a conservative monarchy or a conservative
empire here.
So what was revolutionary about the French Revolution?
It didn’t change anything or didn’t change that much in terms of the actual structures
of government in France, but what it did change was worldview.
While France would move through empire and then return to monarchy in what’s known
as the Bourbon Restoration.
They would never again tolerate full absolute monarchy.
There would still be constraints, whether legal or kind of public-relations type constraints
on these monarchs.
They also introduced a new form of discourse, a new way of talking and thinking about the
world summarized in the slogan of the French Revolution which was – Liberty, fraternity,
and equality – and then as questions emerged about how these ideas of liberty, fraternity,
and equality applied.
They spread across the Atlantic back to the French colonies and eventually to the Spanish
colonies in the New World, which will be our discussion for the second part of this video.
Thank you.