Chapter 17: Chapter Outline
The following
annotated chapter outline will help you review the major topics covered in this
chapter.
Instructions: Review the outline to
recall events and their relationships as presented in the chapter. Return to
skim any sections that seem unfamiliar.
I. | Opening Vignette |
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A. | In 1989, celebration of the bicentennial of the French Revolution coincided with the Chinese government’s crackdown on demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. |
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1. | The French Revolution was the centerpiece of a revolutionary process all around the Atlantic world between 1775 and 1875 |
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2. | Atlantic revolutions had an impact far beyond the Atlantic world |
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a. | French invasions of Egypt, Poland, and Russia |
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b. | inspired efforts to abolish slavery, give women greater rights, and extend the franchise in many countries |
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c. | nationalism was shaped by revolutions |
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d. | principles of equality eventually gave birth to socialism and communism |
II. | Comparing Atlantic Revolutions |
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A. | The revolutions of North America, Europe, Haiti, and Latin America influenced each other. |
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1. |
they also shared a set of common ideas | ||||
2. |
grew out of the European Enlightenment | ||||
a. | notion that it is possible to engineer, and improve, political and social life |
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b. | traditional ways of thinking were no longer sacrosanct | ||||
3. | the core political idea was “popular sovereignty”—that the authority to govern comes from the people, not from God or tradition | ||||
4. | except in Haiti, the main beneficiaries of the Atlantic revolutions were middle-class white males | ||||
a. | but in the long term, the revolutions gave ammunition to groups without political rights | ||||
b. | their goal was to extend political rights further than ever before, thus they can be called “democratic revolutions” | ||||
5. | considerable differences between the Atlantic revolutions | ||||
B. | The North American Revolution, 1775–1787 | ||||
1. | basic facts of the American Revolution are well known | ||||
2. | a bigger question is what it changed | ||||
3. | American Revolution was a conservative political movement | ||||
a. | aimed to preserve colonial liberties, rather than gain new ones | ||||
b. | for most of seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the British North American colonies had much local autonomy | ||||
c. | colonists regarded autonomy as their birthright | ||||
d. | few thought of breaking away from Britain before 1750 | ||||
4. | colonial society | ||||
a. | was far more egalitarian than in Europe | ||||
b. | in manners, they were republican well before the revolution | ||||
5. | Britain made a new drive to control the colonies and get more revenue from them in the 1760s | ||||
a. | Britain needed money for its global war with France | ||||
b. | imposed a number of new taxes and tariffs on the colonies | ||||
c. | colonists were not represented in the British parliament | ||||
d. | appeared to deny the colonists’ identity as true Englishmen | ||||
e. | challenged colonial economic interests | ||||
f. | attacked established traditions of local autonomy | ||||
6. | British North America was revolutionary for the society that had already emerged, not for the revolution itself | ||||
a. | no significant social transformation came with independence from Britain | ||||
b. | accelerated democratic tendencies that were already established | ||||
c. | political power remained in the hands of existing elites | ||||
7. | Many Americans thought they were creating a new world order | ||||
a. | overseas supporters acclaimed the United States as “the hope and model of the human race” | ||||
b. | declaration of the “right to revolution” inspired other colonies around the world | ||||
c. | the U.S. Constitution was one of the first lasting efforts to put Enlightenment political ideas into practice | ||||
C. | The French Revolution, 1789–1815 |
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1. | thousands of French soldiers had fought for the American revolutionaries |
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2. | French government was facing bankruptcy | ||||
a. | had long attempted to modernize the tax system and make it fairer, but was opposed by the privileged classes | ||||
b. | King Louis XVI called the Estates General into session in a new effort to raise taxes | ||||
c. | first two estates (clergy and nobility) were about 2 percent of population; third estate included everybody else | ||||
3. | when the Estates General convened in 1789, third estate representatives broke loose and declared themselves the National Assembly | ||||
a. | drew up the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen | ||||
b. | launched the French Revolution | ||||
4. | unlike the American Revolution, the French rising was driven by pronounced social conflicts | ||||
a. | titled nobility resisted monarchic efforts to tax them | ||||
b. | middle class resented aristocratic privileges | ||||
c. | urban poor suffered from inflation and unemployment | ||||
d. | the peasants were oppressed | ||||
5. | Enlightenment ideas gave people a language to articulate grievances | ||||
6. | French Revolution was more violent, far-reaching, and radical than American Revolution | ||||
a. | ended hereditary privilege | ||||
b. | even abolished slavery (for a time) | ||||
c. | the Church was subjected to government authority | ||||
d. | king and queen were executed (1793) | ||||
e. | the Terror (1793–1794) killed tens of thousands of people regarded as enemies of the revolution | ||||
7. | effort to create a wholly new society | ||||
a. | 1792 became Year I of a new calendar | ||||
b. | briefly passed a law for universal male suffrage | ||||
c. | France was divided into 83 territorial departments | ||||
d. | created a massive army (some 800,000 men) to fight threatening neighbors | ||||
e. | spurt of nationalism, with revolutionary state at the center | ||||
f. | radicals especially pushed the idea of new beginnings | ||||
8. | influence of French Revolution spread through conquest | ||||
a. | Napoleon Bonaparte (r. 1799–1814) seized power in 1799 | ||||
b. | preserved many moderate elements of the revolution | ||||
c. | kept social equality, but got rid of liberty | ||||
d. | subdued most of Europe | ||||
e. | imposed revolutionary practices on conquered regions | ||||
f. | resentment of French domination stimulated national consciousness throughout Europe | ||||
D. | The Haitian Revolution, 1791–1804 | ||||
1. | Saint Domingue (later called Haiti) was a French Caribbean colony | ||||
a. | regarded as the richest colony in the world | ||||
b. | vast majority of population were slaves | ||||
2. | example of the French Revolution sparked a spiral of violence | ||||
a. | but revolution meant different things to different people | ||||
b. | massive slave revolt began in 1791 | ||||
c. | became a war between a number of factions | ||||
d. | power gradually shifted to the slaves, who were led by former slave Toussaint Louverture | ||||
3. | the result was a unique revolution—the only completely successful slave revolt in world history | ||||
a. | renamed the country Haiti (“mountainous” or “rugged” in Taino) | ||||
b. | identified themselves with the original native inhabitants | ||||
c. | declared equality for all races | ||||
d. | divided up plantations among small farmers | ||||
4. | Haiti’s success generated great hope and great fear | ||||
a. | created new “insolence” among slaves elsewhere, inspired other slave rebellions | ||||
b. | caused horror among whites, led to social conservatism | ||||
c. | increased slavery elsewhere, as plantations claimed Haiti’s market share | ||||
d. | Napoleon’s defeat in Haiti convinced him to sell Louisiana Territory to the United States | ||||
E. | Spanish American Revolutions, 1810–1825 | ||||
1. | Latin American revolutions were inspired by earlier revolutionary movements | ||||
2. | native-born elites (creoles) in Spanish colonies of Latin America were offended at the Spanish monarchy’s efforts to control them in the eighteenth century | ||||
3. | reasons why Latin American independence movements were limited at first | ||||
a. | little tradition of local self-government | ||||
b. | society was more authoritarian, with stricter class divisions | ||||
c. | whites were vastly outnumbered | ||||
4. | creole elites had revolution thrust upon them by events in Europe | ||||
a. | 1808: Napoleon invaded Spain and Portugal, put royal authority in disarray | ||||
b. | Latin Americans were forced to take action | ||||
c. | most of Latin America was independent by 1826 | ||||
5. | longer process than in North America | ||||
a. | Latin American societies were torn by class, race, and regional divisions | ||||
b. | fear of social rebellion from below shaped the whole independence movement | ||||
6. | leaders of independence movements appealed to the lower classes in terms of nativism: all free people born in the Americas were Americanos |
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a. | many whites and mestizos regarded themselves as Spanish | ||||
b. | but many leaders were liberals, influenced by the ideals of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution | ||||
c. | in reality, lower classes, Native Americans, and slaves got little benefit from independence | ||||
7. | it proved impossible to unite the various Spanish colonies, unlike the United States | ||||
a. | distances were greater` | ||||
b. | colonial experiences were different | ||||
c. | stronger regional identities` | ||||
8. | after Latin America gained independence, its traditional relationship with North America was gradually reversed | ||||
a. | the United States grew wealthier and more democratic, became stable | ||||
b. | Latin American countries became increasingly underdeveloped, impoverished, undemocratic, and unstable |
III. | Echoes of Revolution | ||||
A. | Smaller revolutions occurred in Europe in 1830, 1848, and 1870. |
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1. | led to greater social equality and liberation from foreign rule |
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2. | enlarged voting rights: by 1914, major states of Western Europe, the United States, and Argentina had universal male suffrage |
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3. | even in Russia, there was a constitutional movement in 1825 |
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4. | abolitionist, nationalist, and feminist movements arose to question other patterns of exclusion and oppression |
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B. | The Abolition of Slavery |
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1. | slavery was largely ended around the world between 1780 and 1890 | ||||
2. | Enlightenment thinkers were increasingly critical of slavery | ||||
a. | American and French revolutions focused attention on slaves’ lack of liberty and equality | ||||
b. | religious groups, especially Quakers and Protestant evangelicals, became increasingly vocal in opposition to slavery | ||||
c. | growing belief that slavery wasn’t necessary for economic progress | ||||
3. | three major slave rebellions in the British West Indies showed that slaves were discontent; brutality of suppression appalled people | ||||
4. | abolitionist movements were most powerful in Britain | ||||
a. | 1807: Britain forbade the sale of slaves within its empire | ||||
b. | 1834: Britain emancipated all slaves | ||||
c. | other nations followed suit, under growing international pressure | ||||
d. | most Latin American countries abolished slavery by 1850s | ||||
e. | emancipation of the Russian serfs (1861) | ||||
5. | resistance to abolition was vehement among interested parties | ||||
6. | abolition often didn’t lead to the expected results | ||||
a. | usually there was little improvement in the economic lives of former slaves | ||||
b. | unwillingness of former slaves to work on plantations led to a new wave of global migration, especially from India and China |
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c. | few of the newly freed gained anything like political equality | ||||
d. | most former Russian serfs remained impoverished | ||||
e. | more slaves were used within Africa to produce export crops | ||||
C. | Nations and Nationalism | ||||
1. | revolutionary movements gave new prominence to more recent kind of human community—the nation | ||||
a. | idea that humans are divided into separate nations, each with a distinct culture and territory and deserving an independent political life | ||||
b. | before the nineteenth century, foreign rule in itself wasn’t regarded as heinous | ||||
c. | most important loyalties were to clan, village, or region | ||||
2. | independence movements acted in the name of new nations | ||||
3. | erosion of older identities and loyalties | ||||
a. | science weakened the hold of religion |
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b. | migration to cities or abroad weakened local allegiances | ||||
c. | printing standardized languages | ||||
4. | nationalism was often presented as a reawakening of older cultural identities | ||||
5. | nationalism was enormously powerful in the nineteenth century | ||||
a. | inspired political unification of Germany and Italy | ||||
b. | inspired separatist movements by Greeks, Serbs, Czechs, Hungarians, Poles, Ukrainians, the Irish, and Jews | ||||
c. | fueled preexisting rivalry among European states | ||||
6. | nationalism took on a variety of political ideologies | ||||
a. | “civic nationalism” identified the “nation” with a particular territory, encouraged assimilation | ||||
b. | some defined the nation in racial terms (e.g., Germany) | ||||
7. | nationalism was not limited to Europe | ||||
D. | Feminist Beginnings | ||||
1. | a feminist movement developed in the nineteenth century, especially in Europe and North America | ||||
2. | European Enlightenment thinkers sometimes challenged the idea that women were innately inferior | ||||
a. | during the French Revolution, some women argued that liberty and equality must include women | ||||
b. | more educational opportunities and less household drudgery for middle-class women | ||||
c. | women increasingly joined temperance movements, charities, abolitionist movements, missionary work, etc. | ||||
d. | maternal feminism: argued women’s distinctive role as mothers | ||||
3. | first organized expression of feminism: women’s rights conference in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848 | ||||
4. | feminist movement was transatlantic from the beginning | ||||
5. | by the 1870s, movements focused above all on suffrage | ||||
a. | became a middle-class, not just elite, movement | ||||
b. | most worked through peaceful protest and persuasion | ||||
c. | became a mass movement in the most industrialized countries by turn of century | ||||
6. | by 1900: | ||||
a. | some women had been admitted to universities | ||||
b. | women’s literacy rates were rising | ||||
c. | some U.S. states passed laws allowing women to control their property and wages | ||||
d. | some areas liberalized divorce laws | ||||
e. | some women made their way into new professions: teaching, nursing, social work | ||||
f. | 1893: New Zealand became first country to grant universal female suffrage | ||||
7. | the movement led to discussion of the role of women in modern society | ||||
a. | taboo sexual topics were aired | ||||
b. | deep debates over women’s proper roles | ||||
8. | bitter opposition | ||||
a. | some argued that strains of education and life beyond the home would cause reproductive damage | ||||
b. | some saw suffragists, Jews, and socialists as “a foreign body” in national life | ||||
9. | feminism spread beyond Europe and the United States, but less widely than nationalism |
IV. | Reflections: Revolutions Pro and Con |
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A. | The legacies of the Atlantic revolutions are still controversial. |
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1. | to some people, they opened new worlds of human potential |
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2. | but the revolutions also had many victims, critics, and opponents |
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a. | conservatives believed that societies were organisms that should evolve slowly; radical change invited disaster |
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b. | argued that revolutions were largely unnecessary |
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B. | Historians also struggle with the pros and cons of revolutionary movements. |