This lesson will have you really digging into revolution. For this quick opening activity, you’ll choose something in your life or in your local, regional, national, or global community that you would like to see changed. Using the lyrics from a revolution-related or protest song, you will think through the changes you’d like to see, why you would like to see them, and the actions you might take to make those changes happen. This should help you apply lessons learned from history to issues that exist today, which will help make this history more usable.

There have been famous songs throughout human history that have called for revolution or change. Your teacher is going to share one of these songs with you. Your job is to think about the call to action that the song is suggesting, and then think about something in your life today for which you would like to see immediate change. Using the song lyrics to guide you, your teacher will have you consider how you might make this change. The following questions should help guide your thinking:

• What kind of change do you want to see?
• Why do you want to see the change?
• How will you make this change happen (for example, via peaceful protests or civil disobedience)?

Be prepared to present your ideas about the change you want to see and how you would make those changes happen. In this lesson, you are going to learn a ton about revolutions—what causes them, what the consequences of revolutions are, and so on. You should think about the revolution or change you want to see today as you consider other revolutions in history…perhaps it will spark some ideas for how you can promote positive change in the world!

Between 1775 and 1825, a series of revolutions overturned the administration of aristocratic or overseas rulers in several parts of the Atlantic world. The French, American, Haitian, and Latin American revolutions were wars of independence inspired to some extent by liberal political ideas, but they only partly lived up to their promise.

So far, you have seen a series of economic, political, and ideological changes, and you have been told that these led to revolutions. But what, and where, were those revolutions, and what did they accomplish? In this article, you will briefly encounter four sets of revolutions as evidence to help you respond to the Unit 4 Problem: How did people transform the political systems under which they lived, and were these changes felt equally around the world and within communities?

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. How, according to the author, did the Seven Years’ War help lead to both the American and French Revolutions?
2. What were the results of the American Revolution in terms of achieving independence? What were the results in terms of creating an egalitarian society?
3. How did the French Revolution transform France? What was not transformed?
4. Why, according to the author, was the Haitian Revolution the most radical of them all?
5. What fears, according to the author, led to internal divisions within the Latin American revolutions?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following question:

1. This article lists a bunch of different revolutions, and some were more revolutionary than others. What sort of things can political revolutions change? Are there any limits on the change these sorts of revolutions can bring? Why or why not? What are the limits?

In the late eighteenth century, the French colony of Saint Domingue teetered on an unstable social pyramid. At the top of the hierarchy were wealthy white plantation owners who enslaved the vast majority of the island’s population: hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans and their descendants. New ideas about natural rights swirled around the Atlantic world and reached the people of Saint Domingue—including enslaved people—and helped launch the most radical of the Atlantic revolutions. But the fight didn’t end with independence, as the new nation of Haiti continued to struggle for its survival and the end of slavery.

This video will provide you with evidence to evaluate the revolutions of the long nineteenth century through the lens of history’s most successful slave revolt. It will also help you support, extend, and challenge all three frame narratives. The Haitian Revolution challenged ideas about who had rights. It was made possible by networks of free and enslaved people who exchanged information around the Atlantic world. And it defied the plantation system that was the foundation of global production and distribution during the long nineteenth century.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

As a reminder, open and skim the transcript, and read the questions before you watch the video.

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video:

1. Who made up the social classes in Saint Domingue, and why was this social pyramid unstable?
2. According to Dr. Daut, what was life like for an enslaved person in Saint Domingue?
3. According to the Dr. Daut, what was the goal of the revolutionaries in the revolution’s early days?
4. Who was Toussaint Louverture, and why did he fight first with the Spanish and then with the French?
5. How did enslaved people learn about revolutionary ideas?
6. This video makes the argument that Haiti’s struggle continued long after the revolution and independence. What evidence is provided to support this point?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. This video makes the argument that the Haitian Revolution was the most radical of the Atlantic revolutions. Do you agree? What evidence from the video supports your view?

We often learn about the US War of Independence, the French Revolution, and revolutions in Haiti and Latin America as a set of “Atlantic revolutions” that share some characteristics and were connected to each other by shared ideas and trade networks. But West Africa was also part of this increasingly linked Atlantic world. Were West African revolutions part of this Atlantic “Age of Revolutions”? Did these conflicts share causes and impacts with those across the ocean? This article argues that to some degree, they did. You will have to decide whether you agree or not.

As you study the revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, you may see some patterns. For example, historians see revolutions in different parts of the Atlantic as being linked by shared ideas but also as reactions to economic inequality. West Africa is often left out of these discussions. By looking at new research on revolutions in West Africa, you can get a sense of how political events in this region had both similarities and, in some cases, differences to other parts of the Atlantic world. This will help you understand the broader pattern of the revolutions you are studying.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. When did ‘Uthman dan Fodio’s revolution take place in northern Nigeria? What other revolutions in the Atlantic world were taking place right around this time?
2. What economic factors led to revolutions like ‘Uthman Dan Fodio’s in West Africa, according to the article? Were these factors similar or different from other parts of the Atlantic?
3. What was the ideology or unifying force for revolution in West Africa, according to the article, and why?
4. What revolutionary state did ‘Uthman dan Fodio create? How revolutionary was this state, and other new Islamic states, according to the article?

Evaluating and Corroborating

For the third close read, you should think about how the article relates to the idea or question you thought about as you read.

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. Why do you think the history of West Africa has generally been left out of the study of revolutions in the Atlantic in this period?
2. Would you include ‘Uthman dan Fodio and the Islamic revolutions of West Africa as one of the “Atlantic revolutions”? In what ways was it linked or similar to other revolutions in this period, and in what ways was it unique or unconnected?

We’re used to hearing about revolutions in the US, France, Latin America, and Haiti. Less frequently do we hear about the role of Indigenous Americans in this revolutionary history. The first large-scale, successful revolt against colonizers in the United States was launched in 1680 by the Pueblo people of New Mexico. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 temporarily drove out the Spanish and helped ensure the endurance of Pueblo culture and communities into the present. In this video, Jerad Koepp interviews Porter Swentzell about the causes, experiences, and long-term effects of the revolt.

This video provides you with evidence to evaluate the Age of Revolutions through the lens of an earlier, lesser-known revolt. It will help you extend the narratives about revolution and colonization that you’re encountering by including a successful Indigenous revolution. It will also help you understand how Indigenous peoples around the world took part in making—and contesting—the modern world.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Remember to open and skim the transcript, and then read the questions below before you watch the video.

Key Ideas – Factual

Think about the following questions as you watch this video.

1. How does Dr. Swentzell describe the Pueblos of New Mexico before Spanish arrival?
2. Why did the Spanish decide to invade New Mexico and what were some of the immediate consequences of the decision?
3. What are some examples that Dr. Swentzell provides about how Pueblo people experienced colonization?
4. What are some of the ways that Pueblo people resisted Spanish colonization before 1680?
5. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 was about many different issues, but it was sparked by one big event. What were the main grievances, and what was the big event?
6. How did the Pueblos coordinate the revolt? Was it successful?
7. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 is sometimes called the first and most successful revolt against European colonialism. Does Dr. Swentzell agree? What evidence does he mention to support or challenge this idea?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. This video makes the argument that the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 should be included in the stories about the Age of Revolutions—including the American, French, Latin American, and Haitian Revolutions. Can you think of any evidence you’ve learned in this course that challenges that claim?

Manuela Sáenz (1797-18) was born into rebellion. The daughter of a wealthy Ecuadorian merchant, she became a rebel and spy for ‎Simón Bolívar during the wars for Latin American independence. She also rebelled against the rules governing how women should act in her society. But she could not have done it without her enslaved companions, Jonotas and Natan, about whom we know little.

Political revolutions, industrialization, and the movements that accompanied them were supposed to have changed peoples’ lives and provided them with many more opportunities. But did they? Manuela Sáenz’ story, and that of her two compatriots shows how some people could push the boundaries, but also how some limits remained in place.

Read 1: Observe

As you read this graphic biography for the first time, review the Read 1: Observe section of your Three Close Reads for Graphic Bios Tool. Be sure to record one question in the thought bubble on the top-right. You don’t need to write anything else down. However, if you’d like to record your observations, feel free to do so on scrap paper.

Read 2: Understand

On the tool, summarize the main idea of the comic and provide two pieces of evidence that helped you understand the creator’s main idea. You can do this only in writing or you can get creative with some art. Some of the evidence you find may come in the form of text (words). But other evidence will come in the form of art (images). You should read the text looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the main idea, and key supporting details. You should also spend some time looking at the images and the way in which the page is designed. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What was Manuela Sáenz’ status when she was growing up?
2. How did Manuela’s father try to teach her to be obedient, and what was the result?
3. Who were Manuela Sáenz’ companions, and why don’t we know a lot about them?
4. How did Manuela, Jonatas, and Natan serve Simón Bolívar and the revolutionaries?
5. How does the artist show Manuela’s attempt to break out of confinement using art?
6. How does the artist portray Jonotas and Natan? Why does she make this choice?

Read 3: Connect

In this read, you should use the graphic biography as evidence to support, extend, or challenge claims made in this unit of the course. On the bottom of the tool, record what you learned about this person’s life and how it relates to what you’re learning.

1. How does this biography of Manuela Sáenz support, extend, or challenge what you have learned about social transformations and their limits during the long nineteenth century?

To Be Continued…

On the second page of the tool, your teacher might ask you to extend the graphic biography to a second page. This is where you can draw and write what you think might come next. Here, you can become a co-creator of this graphic biography!

In this vocab activity, you’ll be given a stack of vocab words to “sneak” into a conversation with a classmate. This is probably the most difficult—and perhaps silliest—of all the vocab activities. You have to incorporate Unit 4 vocabulary as seamlessly as possible into a conversation. Although difficult, this is one of the best ways to use and apply new vocabulary—in context.

You’re going to play the word sneak game. You will be given four Unit 4 vocab words, and asked to have a casual conversation with a classmate. Your job is to use your vocab words as part of that conversation, sneaking them in wherever appropriate.

Here are the steps:

1. Get your vocab cards.
2. Partner with someone else in the class. Do not show them your cards or tell them your words.
3. Have a five-minute conversation, and see how many words you can sneak into the conversation while you’re chatting. There are two things you need to know for your conversation:
   • You have to integrate your words in a legitimate way that makes sense.
   • You may need to steer the conversation in a different direction as a way to get to use your words. One good way to do this is by asking your partner questions.
4. Be prepared to debrief your conversation with the class.

In this activity, you’ll create a recipe that explains the causes for a particular political revolution. Since revolutions are often messy (and bloody!), analyzing the causes and categorizing them will allow you to expand your understanding of how causation helps to explain historical processes and how historians focus on particular causes to shape people’s understanding of these events.

Comparison, claim testing
You will further develop your causation skills by comparing different revolutions. By evaluating the similarities between revolutions, you will be able to understand causal relationships more fully, specifically as they relate to the causes of revolutions across different temporal and spatial settings. As always, you should claim test the assertions you make in order to provide sound logic and solid reasoning when determining the causes and effects of a historical event.

For this activity, you’ll be creating a recipe to “cook up” a political revolution. First, you’ll be assigned one of the revolutions you’ve learned about earlier in this lesson. Then, your task will be to create a recipe that consists of causes (your list of ingredients) for your revolution. You’ll also include detailed directions about how to combine all the ingredients in your recipe. These directions will actually be an account of how the causes led to a revolution.

Part 1: Categorizing Causes

First, your teacher will break the class into groups of two to three students and assign each group one of the following political revolutions: American, French, or Latin American. Then your teacher will either hand out or have you download the Causation—Recipe for a Revolution worksheet, which includes the Causation Tool, and have you review the video or video transcript for your assigned revolution. While watching or reading, make a list of all the causes and consequences you can find for your assigned revolution. You might need to conduct additional research to find enough causes (eight to ten) to create your recipe. If you do conduct outside research, make sure someone in your group keeps a list of where you found your information/sources. As you research, be sure to include the appropriate evidence (that is, the “good” evidence) for the causes and effects for your revolution. These might include dates, key terms, and names that relate to the revolution.

After your group has identified all your causes and effects, categorize your causes and add the effects to the Causation Tool. Remember that you’ve already categorized by time and type. For this activity, you’ll also be categorizing by role. Categorizing by role can help you determine which causes were required for the event to happen, and those which were just relevant, or contributed to the event happening.

• Necessary – These causes were required. The historical event or process would not have occurred without these causes.
• Relevant – These causes are important but not required. The historical event or process would still happen without these causes.
• Triggering event – You should be familiar with the triggering event, which is the most immediate cause of the historical event or process.

This categorization process can be difficult, and you may not agree on the time, type, or role. However, you should be able to back up your claims with evidence. In fact, historians don’t always agree on these topics either, which is why there are often different perspectives or histories written about the same historical event or process.

Part 2: Creating the Recipe

Use your causes from the Causation Tool to create your recipe for revolution. Here are the steps you’ll have to follow to create your recipe:

1. Write the list of “ingredients” (the causes of the revolution). Note: You should have eight to ten causes in your list of ingredients.
2. Next, rank your causes from most essential to least essential, with 1 being the most essential. This will be your ingredient list for the recipe. Then, explain how your top three ingredients compare with the bottom three. Ranking the causes will help you understand the relative significance of each cause.
3. Create “directions” (that is, preparation steps). This can be accomplished by answering the following question: How does each cause come together (or get “mixed”) to create revolution? Think about the verbs you might see in a recipe such as mix, blend, stir, chop, and sprinkle. There are lots of other examples—use your imagination!
   • The event that triggered the revolution
   • Timeframe/periodization
   • Historical context

Your teacher may have you share your recipes with the class, and will collect your worksheets and use them to assess how your causation skills are progressing.

How revolutionary was the American Revolution? This video examines how the aftermath of the Seven Years War collided with Enlightenment ideas about sovereignty and equality to create revolution. The revolution did have far-reaching impacts, such as getting rid of the aristocracy. But for a revolution that claimed “all men are created equal”, it benefited rich white men much more than it benefited women, enslaved people, and men who didn’t own land. The same rich white men who held power in the Thirteen Colonies continued to hold power after they became the United States of America.

This video provides evidence at a national scale for responding to the Unit 4 Problem: How did people transform the political systems under which they lived, and were these changes felt equally around the world and within communities? It may also challenge some assumptions about the American Revolution, especially in the context of the community frame narrative presented in this course.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Before you watch the video, open and skim the transcript. Additionally, you should always read the questions below before you watch the video (a good habit to use in reading, too!). These pre-viewing strategies will help you know what to look and listen for as you watch the video. If there is time, your teacher may have you watch the video one time without stopping, and then give you time to watch again to pause and find the answers.

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video:

1. How did the Seven Years’ War help cause the American Revolution?
2. Britain fought the expensive Seven Years’ War to defend their American colonies and went to war against the revolutionaries in an attempt to keep them under British rule. Why were the colonies so valuable to Britain?
3. What methods did the colonists use to protest British policies?
4. Who did the revolution benefit the most? Who benefited the least?
5. What does John Green think was the most important change produced by the American Revolution? Was it revolutionary?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. John Green lists a lot of different factors that led to the revolution. Make a list of what you think were the three most important causes. Are the items on your list political causes or material causes?
2. John Green says that, after the Revolution, Americans “came to view themselves as equal to each other.” Do you agree? When viewed through the communities frame, was the American Revolution revolutionary?

This video examines the causes and effects of the French Revolution. John Green explains how the revolution took a radical turn that undermined its idealistic beginnings. He argues that the French Revolution was much more revolutionary than the American Revolution, even though not a lot changed in France after it was over. The video highlights some long-term effects of the French Revolution.

This video provides evidence at a national scale for responding to the Unit 4 Problem: How did people transform the political systems under which they lived, and were these changes felt equally around the world and within communities? It will also help you to ask questions about the communities frame, in particular how the liberal and national revolutions of the nineteenth century reshaped how people all over the world understood their place in political communities.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Before you watch the video, open and skim the transcript. Additionally, you should always read the questions below before you watch the video (a good habit to use in reading, too!). These pre-viewing strategies will help you know what to look and listen for as you watch the video. If there is time, your teacher may have you watch the video one time without stopping, and then give you time to watch again to pause and find the answers.

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video:

1. Things weren’t going well in France in the years leading up to 1789. What were the political and economic problems facing King Louis XVI?
2. What was the Estates General, and what happened when Louis XVI called its first meeting since 1614?
3. Why did the rulers of European nations like Austria, Prussia, and Britain oppose the revolution?
4. What was the Terror?
5. Make two lists: In what ways does John Green argue that the French Revolution was revolutionary? In what ways was it not revolutionary?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. Do you think the French Revolution was mainly caused by Enlightenment ideas like sovereignty, or do you think economic factors were more important?
2. John Green says that the French Revolution was more impactful and more revolutionary than the American Revolution. Do you agree? Why or why not?

This video tackles the widespread and complex series of events that led to an entire continent gaining independence from three centuries of rule by European empires. John Green explains the complex social and racial hierarchies that existed before the revolutions. He highlights some of the major moments of the revolutions in Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, and Argentina. The revolutionary South Americans failed to build a unified South America, as imagined by Simón Bolivar, but they did build several new and independent nation-states.

This video provides evidence at a national scale for responding to the Unit 4 Problem: How did people transform the political systems under which they lived, and were these changes felt equally around the world and within communities? It will also help you to ask questions about the networks frame, in particular by connecting revolutions in Latin America to earlier events in the United States, Haiti, and France. How did those earlier revolutions affect Latin America? Were these the same kind of revolutions? Did they start for similar reasons? Did they transform their communities in similar ways?

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Before you watch the video, open and skim the transcript. Additionally, you should always read the questions below before you watch the video (a good habit to use in reading, too!). These pre-viewing strategies will help you know what to look and listen for as you watch the video. If there is time, your teacher may have you watch the video one time without stopping, and then give you time to watch again to pause and find the answers.

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video:

1. What were the three institutions that controlled life in Latin America before the revolutions, according to John Green?
2. What is transculturation and why was it important?
3. Why was Brazil the last country to fully abolish slavery (not until 1888)?
4. How did Simón Bolivar overcome the divisions created by the social hierarchy of Latin American society in order to build successful revolutions?
5. What aspects of Latin American society did the revolutions change? What stayed the same?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. The three other Crash Course videos on revolutions are all about revolutions in one nation—the United States, France, and Haiti. Why do you think John Green talks about revolutionary movements in all these different places that would become nation-states (Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, etc.) as a single event? Do you agree that they are as interconnected as he makes it seem?
2. How were the social hierarchies in Latin American communities similar to American, French, and Haitian society before their revolutions? How were they different? How did these social structures and their relationship to production and distribution help create revolution?