Part 4
Things only continue to get better for the European nations as they industrializefirst. This industrialization helps to increase the interregional network to a truly global trade network that continues to expand as the period progresses. Also with that industrialization, the European nations start a renewed program of colonization called imperialism. Most of the events from this period are the result of other people’s reaction to the West’s assertion of power through imperialism. But just when things were going so well for Europe, the idea of nationalism caught up with them and beginning with World War I, the European domination of the world ceased to be.
Chapter 19
In This Chapter
• The British Empire
• The American Revolution
• The French Revolution
• The rise and fall of Napoleon
• The Latin American revolutions
The ideas of the Enlightenment created a series of revolutions against monarchs and empires of Europe during the same period that the European powers were expanding their explorations and creating global empires.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain
England succeeded in colonizing North America and many other portions of the world, creating a united empire upon which “the sun never set.” Eventually parts of the empire broke from English rule as they established their own identities.
In 1707, England consolidated its rule over Scotland to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Soon afterward, in 1714, a new dynasty, the Hanoverians, sat on the throne after the death of the last Stuart, Queen Anne.
The Hanoverian Kings
The Hanoverian monarchs, being German in origin, did not understand the nature of British government and law. So George I (r. 1714-1727) and George II (r. 1727- 1760) handed the reins of government to their chief ministers and Parliament. Two ministers, George Walpole and William Pitt, the Elder, used their positions to strengthen Great Britain. Walpole was chief minister from 1721 to 1742 and pursued a peaceful foreign policy, favoring the expansion of trade throughout the British Empire. Pitt expanded the empire by acquiring territories in Canada and India duringthe Seven Years’ War.
All together, the British Empire consisted of territories in North America including the 13 American colonies, India, and Africa. The expansion of the empire increased the United Kingdom’s political and economic power in Europe and globally.
The British Colonies in North America
The colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America were populated with a diverse group of English settlers who came to America for a variety of reasons. Some sought religious freedom, some self-government, and others the acquisition of land and wealth. In general, the British left the colonies to themselves, governed loosely by the British Board of Trade, the Royal Council, and Parliament. Everything appeared to be in order, but the roots of revolt were there.
The American Revolution
There were several long- and short-term reasons the North American colonies revolted. In the long term, the colonies had a history of self-government that could not be ignored. The Pilgrims who came to America seeking religious freedom in 1620 created the Mayflower Compact, a charter of self-government. In Virginia, the colony of Jamestown created a representative government based on the English parliamentary model with the Virginia House of Burgesses. Other colonies followed their examples.
Also in the long term, the territory of America, with its open spaces and vast lands to the West, seemed to engender independent spirits. Couple this with the Enlightenmentideas that spread throughout the libraries of Europe and America, and freedom became an important ideal for the colonists.
In the short term, several events and policies pushed the colonists to seek independence.The Seven Years’ War in North America lasted from 1756 to 1763. This war pitted the British against the French and various Native American tribes on the westernborders of the colonies. The British were able to win out and as a result were able to acquire more territory west of the colonies. The colonists saw the new territories as new areas to settle, but the British did not see the same vision. They saw the territoriesas a buffer zone between the colonists and the Native American population, who came into conflict often. If the colonists settled these territories, the British would have to spend economic resources that they did not have to protect them—on top of their expenditures on the war itself.
Read Our Lips: No New Taxes!
To make tensions between the British government and the colonists worse, the British government began to pursue an economic policy of mercantilism. Then George III (r. 1760-1820) and Parliament levied new taxes on the colonists to pay for the debts of the French and Indian War. The colonists in America, used to self-government, were outraged by the heavy-handedness of the government in England.
The first tax that outraged the colonists was the Stamp Act of 1765, which placed a tax on all printed materials such as legal documents and newspapers. (The “stamp” on the document would show proof that the tax had been paid.) The colonists’ opposition,centered in the Boston area, was violent and spread through the colonies. Tax collectors were tarred and feathered. Shocked and aghast at the reaction, Parliament repealed the tax in 1766, but tried several more methods of collecting taxes from the colonists including the additionof more British soldiers to keep the peace.
Notable Quotable
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
—Patrick Henry to Virginia House of Burgesses
In due time the colonists united in protest in 1774 at the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia and wrote a strongly worded letter of protest to King George III. In April 1775, a colonist militia engaged British occupation forces at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, with mixed results. Finally the colonists had had enough of the British and on July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress declared independenceand established an army to be led by former British officer and colonist George Washington. The American Revolution was underway.
Yankee Doodle Dandies
Washington and his rag-tag army spent most of its time in constant retreat. The British controlled most of the northern colonies during the revolution. The French, rivals of the British in Europe, saw the revolution as an opportunity to spite the British in America. They supplied the colonists with money and arms. The French also supplied officers to help Washington with his command, one of whom was the famous Marquis de Lafayette. Finally the Spanish and Dutch entered on the side of the French to provide naval support to the colonists, all to spite the British and their growing empire.
These combined efforts paid off and, in 1781, American forces led by Washington and helped by a French navy forced General Cornwallis and British forces to surrenderat Yorktown. At that point, the British had enough of the war and a treaty was drawn up in 1783. The Treaty of Paris recognized American independence and gave the former colonists all of the territories west to the Mississippi River.
Forming a New Nation
The Americans had a formidable job ahead in forming a new nation. Using a huge helping of Enlightenment political philosophy, the former colonists drafted the Articles of Confederation in 1781 to serve as a framework for their government. This decentralized government did not work well when confronted with domestic problems; so 55 delegates from the 13 states met in the summer 1787 to draft a new constitution.
The United States Constitution created a federal system of government that balanced power between the state and national governments. It also provided for a separation of powers between three branches of government: judicial, legislative, and executive. Finally, the U.S. Constitution based its powers on the sovereignty of the people.
Not all of the delegates were happy with the Constitution. Many complained that it lacked the explicit guarantee of certain rights. As a result, in 1789, 10 amendments were added to the Constitution and called the Bill of Rights. These amendments guaranteed the freedom of religion, press, speech, petition, and assembly. The amendments also gave Americans the right to bear arms; protection from unreasonablesearches, seizures, and arrests; the right to trial by jury and due process of law; and property rights. All of the Bill of Rights derived from the ideas of natural rights found in Enlightenment philosophy. Sadly at first, these rights did not include women and blacks but eventually they were extended to all Americans.
The French Revolution—Or Off With His Head!
Not to be outdone, and also influenced by Enlightenment philosophy, the French followed the Americans in revolution. But their revolution had some other distinct causes and more bloody twists and turns.
The Old Regime
One of the older and deeper causes involved the French social structure. During the eighteenth century this social structure was still dominated by the Old Regime, a rigid structure of the feudal past. The Old Regime had divided French society into three estates. The first estate was the Catholic clergy, which numbered roughly over one thousand and controlled 10 percent of the land in France. The second estate consisted of the nobility, which numbered over 300,000 and owned 30 percent of the land. Both of these estates were exempt from the government taille, or tax.
The third estate, made up of everyone else, included peasants and the growing middle class, or bourgeoisie. They shouldered the tax burden for France. Of course this social inequality did not hold much water with the spreading ideas of the Enlightenment, and as the bourgeois classes grew in numbers and economic power, many resented the tradition of the Old Regime.
Economic Problems
There were also other, more immediate causes of the French Revolution. The French government had spent a century spending more than it had on palaces and wars. The government was close to bankruptcy and the French economy was in bad shape. Additionally, French farmers experienced two very bad harvests in 1787 and 1789, which caused food prices to rise considerably. In contrast to this economic hardship, the French royal court continued to spend extravagantly at the Palace of Versailles, and Queen Marie Antoinette was not shy about publicizing her excess.
So in 1789 with the economy suffering and the government in need of money, King Louis XVI (r. 1774-1792) called a meeting of the Estates General, France’s legislative body, which had not met since 1614. He wanted the Estates General to rubber stamp his proposal to raise taxes. What Louis XVI got was something he did not want: revolution!
The Estates General, made up of representatives of each of the estates of the Old Regime, met at the Palace at Versailles on May 5, 1789. Almost immediately, the third estate wanted to abolish the tax exemptions of the other two estates and create a constitutional government. This type of measure could never be passed because each estate had one vote and the first two estates would always protect their interests. The third estate, sensing the inequity of the situation, called for each member to have a vote rather than the old system of one estate and one vote. At this point, Louis XVI ordered the old system of voting in the Estates General to remain. If the third estate was going to abolish the inequality of the system, they were going to have to do it themselves.
Gauls Gone Wild
On June 17, 1789, the third estate declared itself a National Assembly. Outraged, the other two estates locked the third estate out, so they assembled at a nearby indoor tennis court and wrote the French constitution. By this time Louis XVI had enough of the third estate’s little rebellion and threatened to use force to put them back in their place. It was then that Parisians, led by members of the third estate, responded by marching on the prison fortress of the Bastille on July 14. The fall of the Bastille put weapons in the hands of the Parisians, who were fearful that the king would send an army to take the city. Everyone was on a high state of alert.
The third estate was not idle during this time. On August 4, they abolished the specialrights of the first and second estates. More important, on August 26, the third estate drafted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, inspired by the United States’ Declaration of Independence and Constitution and the English Bill of Rights.
In the document, the basic liberties of French citizens were spelled out. Freedoms and equal rights for all men were assured. No longer would there be tax exemptions for the first and second estate. All male citizens had a right to take part in the law-makingprocess and all public offices were open to men of talent. Oddly, with all of these rights, nothing was guaranteed for French women. It was Olympe de Gouges who wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, which was promptly ignored by the male population.
During this time King Louis XVI remained at the Palace of Versailles and refused to accept any of the pronouncementsof the National Assembly. Finally, a group of women had had enough of his sandbagging. On October 5, a mob of women tired of the lack of bread in Paris marched on Versailles. They forced the king to accept the decrees of the National Assembly and also made the king and his family return to Paris as prisoners of the French people.
What in the World
Bread was the major componentof the diet of an average Parisian in 1789. Typically, each person ate four pounds of bread a day. So supplying the city of Paris with a populationof 600,000 was a huge production.
The National Assembly was not finished. They wanted to reform the Church in France, which was seen as a pillar of the old order. As a result, the National Assembly seized and sold all of the lands of the Church. They also enacted the Civil Constitutionof the Clergy, which made provisions for bishops and priests to be elected by the people and paid by the state. Additionally, any Catholic who did not accept this new state of affairs was considered an enemy of the Revolution.
The final act of the National Assembly was to write the Constitution of 1791. With this document the National Assembly dissolved itself and created a constitutional monarchy with legislative assembly of 745 members having the majority of the politicalpower. Males continued to have same rights and additionally only men over 25 who paid taxes could vote. Many opposed this new constitutional monarchy including Catholics, priests, nobles, the lower classes, and radicals. To make matters worse, war loomed on the horizon.
War
Austria and Prussia were not happy with the state of affairs. They wanted the French monarchy restored to its proper place. Most of the monarchies of Europe were interrelatedthrough various marriages and desired to have a conservative and stable Europe. So not wanting to wait for Austria and Prussia to strike first, the Legislative Assembly declared war on Austria in the spring of 1792. But the war did not go well for the French and the Revolution seemed to lose its shine as economic hardship gripped the entire country.
To some degree the economic hardship made the Revolution go radical. The hardship led to the rise of the radical communes in Paris. These radical groups, dissatisfied with the direction of the Legislative Assembly and the Revolution attacked the royal palace and the Legislative Assembly in Paris. They took the king captive and called for a National Convention to be chosen based on universal male suffrage.
The National Convention Meets
In September 1792, the National Convention met. Once it met, the convention acted as a ruling body and abolished the monarchy completely and established the French Republic. Some refused to accept its decisions. The Paris Commune favored radical change, while some provinces did not acknowledge its existence. The National Convention also decided the fate of King Louis XVI. A group called the Girondins feared mob retaliation and wanted to keep the king alive. A group of Paris radicals called the Mountain wanted the king dead. In the end, the Mountain won and in 1793 the National Convention ordered the king put to death by a new method called the guillotine.
Notable Quotable
"The tree of liberty does not flourish unless moistened with the blood of kings. I vote for death.”
—Bertrand Barère in the National Convention on the fate of Louis XVI
Reign of Terror, Republic of Virtue
The death of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette by the guillotine sent shockwaves throughout Europe. The monarchs of Europe were nervous about the implications and probably collectively rubbed their necks. As a result, an informal coalition was assembledto put an end to the Revolution. Spain, Portugal, Britain, the Dutch Republic, and Russia armed for war against France and were ready to invade by 1793.
The informal coalition of nations scared the French people and the National Convention. As a result the Convention gave special powers to a committee of 12 men known as the Committee of Public Safety. This committee was dominated by George Danton and Maximilien Robespierre. From 1793 to 1794, a period known as the Reign of Terror, they ordered the execution (most by guillotine) of over 40,000 people supposedly in defense of the Revolution and France. Most were people who openly questioned the Convention. Paranoia was rampant. The Revolution had been radicalized.
It was also during this time that the Convention instituted the Republic of Virtue. The main thrust of this movement was the de-Christianization of public life. All referencesto saints were removed from the public. Churches were closed. A new calendar was adopted that incorporated terms of the Revolution with the first year of the Republic as the first year. Church holidays and Sundays were eliminated and people were told to worship at the altar of reason at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Most of these efforts failed to work on the French people, but it did demonstrate the zealotry of the radicals of the Revolution.
The National Convention mobilized the entire French nation for war on August 23, 1793. The mobilization produced an army of over a million men. By its sheer size, this army was able to push the invading informal alliance out of France and even conquer the Austrian Netherlands. The People’s Army had prevailed, the Revolution was saved, and there was no longer a need for the Committee of Public Safety. Robespierre had made many enemies, and on July 28, 1794, the National Convention ordered his execution by guillotine. (Poetic justice!)
Revolution in Moderation
At this point in the Revolution, moderates took over the National Convention. They allowed churches to reopen and created a new constitution in August 1795. The new constitution created a National Legislative Assembly made of two houses. The lower house, called the Council of 500, initiated legislation. The upper house, called the Council of Elders, accepted or rejected the laws and also elected five directors who served as an executive committee. Finally universal male suffrage was too radical for the moderates, so this new legislative body was elected by only owners of property.
The executive committee known as the Directory ruled from 1795 to 1799. During this time, corruption spread throughout the National Legislative Assembly. France’s economic problems again started to escalate while an end to the Directory was plottedby a tide of royalists who supported the return of the monarchy and radicals who wanted a return to the radical Revolution. The Directory needed strong leadership and it got more than it needed.
The Rise of Napoleon
Napoleon Bonaparte was an unlikely candidate to end up ruler of France and for a time master of Europe. He was born on the island of Corsica to an Italian family in 1769. Napoleon was ambitious enough to receive a scholarship to study at military school in France. In 1785, he was commissioned as a lieutenant of artillery in the French army. Napoleon rose quickly in the ranks to brigadier general by the age of 25. In 1796 as commander of the French armies in Italy, he defeated the Italian states and forced them into signing a peace treaty with France. These victories made him a hero and resulted in a cult following. As a result, Napoleon was given command of an army to invade Britain. Rather than invade the island nation, he struck at Britain’s territorial possessions in Egypt. This strategy failed miserably, due in part to the fact that the British Admiral Nelson controlled the Mediterranean Sea. So Napoleon abandoned his army to die in the sands of Egypt and returned to France. Strangely, he was welcomed as a returning hero.
The Take Over
With his hero status intact, Napoleon took part in a coup d’état that overthrew the Directory. A new government led by three men including Napoleon was created called the Consulate. Eventually, Napoleon, as first consul, took control of the entire French government,appointing members of the bureaucracy, controlling the army, conducting foreign affairs, and influencing the legislature. In 1802, he was made consul for life and finally in 1804 with all pretenses of democratic rule set aside, Napoleon crowned himselfEmperor Napoleon Bonaparte I. The French Revolution had come full circle.
def·i·ni·tiðn
A coup d’état is a French term used to designate a sudden, violent, and forcible overthrow of a government by a small group of people with military or political authority.
As political leader of France, Napoleon recognized that several changes were needed to gain stability. In 1801, he established peace with the pope and the Roman Catholic Church by recognizing Catholicism as the religion of France. In return, the pope agreed not to seek the restoration of Church lands in France. Napoleon also consolidatedFrance’s hundreds of legal systems into seven simplified legal systems. The most progressive of those legal systems was the Napoleonic Code. It codified the laws of equality, religious toleration, abolition of serfdom and feudalism,and property rights. Sadly, the Napoleonic Code took the right of property from women and treated them as minors in the legal system. Napoleon also established a new French bureaucracy in which promotionwas based on merit and ability. As a result, the French bureaucracy started to be populated by a middle class majority that supported Napoleon’s policies.
What in the World
Napoleon exported the Napoleonic Code to Europe and even France’s colonies in North America. Today, Louisiana, once part of the French Empire in North America, still has laws based on the Napoleonic Code.
Questions nagged the people of France when Napoleon became emperor. Was the Revolution over? Was the Revolution going to continue? Napoleon’s Civil Code and his new bureaucracy suggested that the Revolution was still alive. But the liberties given to the French were provided by a despot, not the people. Government police routinely opened private mail and stopped publications that printed materials against Napoleon.
The Grand Empire
Regardless of the question at home, Napoleon saw himself as an extension of the Revolution, and he wanted to take it on the road. In order to spread the Revolution he needed peace and time to regroup. So in 1802, Napoleon negotiated a peace treaty with Russia, Great Britain, and Austria, with whom France had been at war off and on since 1799. He prepared his armies and by 1803 was back at war with Great Britain, Austria, Russia, and Prussia. This time Napoleon and the French armies were ready. They were able to defeat and force all of the nations of Europe except for Great Britain into submission by 1807. Napoleon had created the Grand Empire.
The Grand Empire lasted from 1807 to 1812. It consisted of several different groupingsof nations and territories. The first was the French Empire, which included the territory of France to the Rhine River and northern half of Italy. The Dependent states included Spain, Holland, Italy, the Swiss Republic, the Grand Duchy of Warsaw and all of the German states except Prussia and Austria. A majority of these states were ruled by relatives of Napoleon. Finally, the last part of the Grand Empire was the Allied states, Prussia, Austria, Russia, and Sweden, all of which promised supportto Napoleon.
To some degree, Napoleon’s Grand Empire did spread the Revolution. He force fed the conquered states the Napoleonic Code, which provided for legal equality, religioustoleration, and economic freedom. Napoleon also abolished the privileges of the nobility and clergy in the European states. For a while, these measures made Napoleon a popular ruler with the people of Europe.
The Thorn in the Lion’s Paw
The lion that was the Grand Empire did have a thorn in its paw. Napoleon could not get Great Britain to submit. Although Napoleon controlled the European continent, the British controlled the seas around it, a point punctuated when the British soundly destroyed the combined French and Spanish naval fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.
Napoleon retaliated by creating a policy called the Continental System. The policy banned all import of British goods to Europe. Napoleon hoped to weaken the British economy, but the Allied states cheated and imported British goods anyway. In the end British exports were at an all-time high and so was the British economy.
Napoleon’s Big Mistake
As the British thumbed their collective noses at Napoleon, a new movement called nationalism spread throughout Europe, indirectly influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment and the Revolution. Nationalism was the belief that each nation should be based on the cultural identity of its people, including their language, religion,ethnicity, and national symbols. The different nationalist movements looked to France as a model of nationalism, but it was love/hate relationship. Nationalist movementshated foreign oppressors, and the French were oppressing most of Europe.
Nations began to resist the directives of Napoleon and the Grand Empire. In 1812, the Russians refused to be part of the Continental System. In retaliation, Napoleon invaded Russia in June 1812 with the Grand Army, which numbered over 600,000 men. He was hoping for a quick and decisive battle, but the Russians, knowing that Napoleon would need supplies for his army to continue, refused to fight and retreated eastward, burning the countryside as they did. By the time Napoleon reached Moscow on September 15, 1812, it was empty and on fire, providing the French armies no supplies or haven from the harsh Russian winter. Napoleon was forced to retreat; much like in Egypt, he deserted his army to return to Paris. Only 40,000 men of the Grand Army made it back to France.
With Napoleon’s Grand Army in shambles, the nations of Europe rose up against France. Their combined armies captured Paris in March of 1814. Napoleon was sent into exile to the island of Elba in the Mediterranean Sea. The Bourbon monarchy was restored and Louis XVIII (r. 1814-1825), the brother of Louis XVI, was placed on the throne. The nations of Europe breathed a collective sigh of relief. The Revolution was over.
Waterloo
Just as everyone let their guard down, Napoleon slipped back into France. The King of France, who had little support, sent troops to capture Napoleon. They promptly welcomed the Emperor and joined him in his march to Paris. Napoleon entered Paris on March 20, 1815, and raised an army to attack the nearest allied forces in Belgium.
On June 18, 1815, the French engaged a combined force of British and Prussians under the command of the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo. The Battle of Waterloo remained close most of the day, but in the end Napoleon and his forces were defeated. This time the European nations sent Napoleon into exile even farther away, to a small island in the South Atlantic Ocean called St. Helena, where he died in 1821. Again the European nations hoped it was the end of revolutions, but it was just the beginning.
The Revolutions Never Seem to End
The Spanish territories in Central and South America also followed the Americans and the French with revolutions.
The first took place in the French Colony of Saint Domingue on the island of Cuba. Over 100,000 slaves led by Toussaint-Louverture took control of the western portion of the island. On January 1, 1804, they declared their freedom and became Haiti, the first independent state of Latin America.
Mexico followed in 1821 by declaring its independence from Spain. By the end of 1824, Peru, Uruguay, Paraguay, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile had all gained independence from Spain. In 1822, Brazil had gained independence from Portugal. The Central American states gained freedom in 1823 and by 1839 had emerged as Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua.
Most of these countries wrote constitutions similar to that of the United States and European democracies. However, large landowners, becoming very prosperous growingexport crops such as coffee, limited voting rights to keep political and economic power. Not until the twentieth century did freedoms and liberties truly give power to the entire population of these countries.
The Least You Need to Know
• The British Empire became the most powerful economic power during the eighteenth century.
• The American Revolution was a revolution inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenmentagainst British rule and taxes.
• The French Revolution was the result of poor economic conditions in France and poor judgments of the French monarchy.
• Napoleon rose to rule France and brought the ideals of the French Revolution to the rest of Europe.
• The American and French Revolutions inspired the revolutions of the Latin American nations as they cast off the European rule.