North American Revolution

• After the American Revolution, followed the Haitian Revolution, the first successful
slave revolt in history
○ later by the Latin American revolutions in which Spanish and Portuguese colonial
rule was ended and the modern states of Latin America emerged.
• American Revolution: expressed tensions of colonial relationship with distant imperial
power
• American revolutionary leader Thomas Jefferson was the US ambassador to France on
the eve of the French Revolution
• Struggle for independence from British oppressive rule
• Launched with the Declaration of Independence in 1776, resulted in an unlikely military
victory by 1781
• Created a federal constitution in 1787 joining thirteen colonies into a new nation
○ US Constitutional Convention in 1787
• The American Revolution marked an important political change
– In some ways it was a conservative movement, originated trying to
preserve existing liberties of the colonies rather than to create new
liberties
• British colonies of North America enjoyed independence while the British government
was concerned in its own internal conflicts and wars
• Local elected assemblies in N. America achieved something like self government
• Until mid eighteenth century, almost no one in the colonies thought to break away from
England’s control, because participating in it gave many advantage (protection in war,
access to British markets, and confirmation of their identity as “Englishmen”
• Developed colonies described as “the most radical in the contemporary Western world”
• Social life far more open than in Europe (absence of titled nobility and single estab.
church)
• No legal distinctions differentiated clergy, as they did in France
• The society that had already emerged within the colonies was revolutionary
• Revolution accelerated established democratic tendencies of colonial societies
• Initiated the political dismantling of Europe’s New World empires
• “right to revolution” inspired revolutionaries and nationalists
• US Constitution, Bill of Rights, checks and balances, separation of church and state, and
federalism

French Revolution

• 1789 1815
• Essential to Europe’s history
• After American Revolution, closely connected to it
• Centerpiece of a more extensive revolutionary process that unfolded all around the
Atlantic world in the century after 1775
 – Armies of revolutionary France brought ideals that changed. (Abolish
slavery, vote, greater equality for women)
– American revolutionary leader Thomas Jefferson was the US ambassador
to France on the eve of the French Revolution**** (the Atlantic
revolutions were influenced for one another)
○ He provided advice and encouragement to the French reformers and
revolutionaries.
○ He said that France “has been awakened by our revolution”
• French government aided the Americans to undermine British rivals
○ The government was on the brink of bankruptcy and had sought reforms that
would modernize tax system
• French king Louis XVI called into session the Estates General (consisting of three
estates)
○ Body convened in 1789 – National Assembly makes laws for the country
○ Drew up Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen which says that “men are
born and remain free and equal in rights”
○ These actions were unprecedented and illegal in the Old Regime and launched the
French Revolution and radicalized many in the National Assembly*
• French revolution: driven by sharp conflicts within French society
• Members of the titled nobility resented the monarchy trying to subject them to new taxes
• Declined income, taxes, exclusion from aristocracy, rising price of bread and
unemployment, obligations to the Church, requirement to work without pay on public
roads (some of the problems for various peoples)
• Enlightenment ideas penetrated French society (Rousseau)
• Social conflicts are what made the French Revolution much more violent and radical than
the American Revolution*
• Social upheaval more comparable to the revolutions of Russia/China in the twentieth
century