An Era of Revolutions

Between 1775 and 1825, revolutions broke out across the Americas and Europe. Colonies in the Americas wanted their independence from European empires. Within 50 years, new nations throughout the Atlantic had achieved independence. Revolutionaries were inspired by the ideals of the Enlightenment, such as individual freedom. They rejected the authority of the aristocracy, or the traditional ruling class.

Revolutions during this era included the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. There was also the Haitian Revolution and several revolutions in Latin America. These revolutions were connected by a network of ideas, trade, and global events. While each revolution was different, they were all influenced by global political conditions and by each other.

For most of the 18th century, European empires were at war. The British Empire fought the French in the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), and the result left both countries in debt. To earn money, the governments issued new taxes on their colonies. Thousands of miles away, the colonists had little say in the matter.

Until then, the American colonists had been more or less in charge of themselves. They did not like the British Empire raising their taxes or making their rules. Many started openly challenging British authority.

The American Revolution

Beginning with the Stamp Act of 1765, Great Britain issued a number of new taxes in the American colonies. In response, the colonists staged protests and riots. After a tax was put on tea in 1773, several Boston men dressed up as Indigenous Americans and boarded British tea ships. They threw the tea into Boston harbor to protest the tax. In response, the British announced the Coercive Acts in 1774. These were also known as the Intolerable Acts. These laws closed Boston’s harbor, restricted local elections, and expanded the power of the royal governor. In April 1775, fighting broke out between British and American troops in Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts.

During the Second Continental Congress in 1776, the representatives of the colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence. It announced that the United States was its own nation and listed the natural rights of mankind. In 1778, the French government allied itself with the revolutionaries against the British, and other countries soon joined in. The British were forced to recognize the independence of the 13 colonies in the 1783 Treaty of Paris. The United States was formed and structured as a representative democracy.

American revolutionaries rejected the authority of the king, in part, based on the idea that all people were equal. Even after revolution, though, deep inequalities remained. For example, the new government continued to allow and profit from slavery.

The French Revolution

After the Seven Years’ War, the French government was almost completely out of money. King Louis XVI wanted to raise taxes, so in 1788 he called a legislative body known as the Estates General. It was the first time such a meeting had been called since 1614.

The French people were divided into three “estates.” The First Estate was the clergy, members of the Catholic church. The Second Estate was the nobility, the traditional ruling class that controlled the country’s wealth. The Third Estate was everyone else. The first two estates enjoyed many special privileges, while the Third Estate paid all the taxes and had no say in government or lawmaking. When the king called the Estates General, the Third Estate suddenly had a voice.

In May of 1789, the opening session of the Estates General was held. The delegates were sharply divided into two sides, and no agreement could be reached. Though the Third Estate represented many more people and had twice the number of delegates, each estate had an equal vote. In June, the Third Estate met alone and declared itself the National Assembly.

In response, King Louis XVI sent an army towards Paris. On July 14th, Parisians responded by storming the royal prison, called the Bastille. They freed a handful of prisoners, seized weapons to defend the city, and cut off the heads of two officials. The king backed down, but the country was now in revolt. Revolution spread from the cities to the countryside. The National Assembly stripped the church and nobility of their power. In 1789, it passed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, declaring that all citizens had individual rights and were equal before the law. Over the next two years, a new constitution was written. It established a system of representative democracy.

The French empire strikes back

As the French Revolution spread, it became more extreme. It also turned violent, as peasants attacked castles and burned their debt records. The new government seized and sold church lands. In 1793, King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antionette were killed by the French revolutionaries. After, a French Republic was declared. Understandably, the other European monarchs were pretty shocked.

The first French Republic was a much more equal society than the system it replaced. It brought an end to feudalism, the economic system in which peasants had to work on land they could never own. The National Assembly even passed laws ending slavery.

The republic did not last for long, however. A powerful and popular general named Napoleon Bonaparte soon rose to power. He declared himself emperor in 1799 and began taking over new land.

Napoleon’s empire spread many of the ideas behind the French Revolution. His armies ended feudalism and established equal rights and religious tolerance in new places. But this was not all good. Napoleon also enforced French values and authority with an iron fist.

A revolt leads to a new nation

In present-day Haiti, France controlled a colony called Saint Domingue, the richest plantation colony in the world. There were around 8,000 plantations that produced 40 percent of the world’s sugar and about half of its coffee. Enslaved laborers made up 90 percent of the population. In 1791, enslaved people revolted. This forced the French National Assembly to abolish slavery in 1794.

The Haitian Revolution went for many hard years. The man who emerged as its leader was named Toussaint Louverture, a brilliant general. He outmaneuvered foreign powers like the Spanish and British and defeated Napoleon.

The nation of Haiti declared its independence in 1804, and the Haitian Revolution was won in 1808. Haiti became second independent republic in the Americas. It was the first independent nation-state ruled by people of African descent.

It was not just a fight for national independence, though. The Haitian Revolution was about human rights and racial equality. Haitian leaders rejected European racial categories, which placed whites above other groups. Instead, all Haitians were defined as “black.” The plantation system was taken apart, and Haiti became a nation of farmers who grew their own food on their own land.

The Latin American revolutions

The Creoles led the revolutions at first. The Creoles were native-born descendants of Spanish and Portuguese settlers. The first revolutions in Latin America were sparked by events in Europe. In 1808, Napoleon invaded and conquered Spain and Portugal, the two colonial powers that controlled Latin America. Suddenly, the Latin American colonies found themselves without a direct European power telling them what to do. This triggered revolts throughout the colonies, led at first by groups within the Creole population. The Creoles were native-born descendants of Spanish and Portuguese settlers.

In 1810, peasants in Mexico revolted because they wanted their own land and food prices were too high. Two priests, Miguel Hidalgo and José Morelos, led the uprising. It was eventually put down, however, by wealthy Creole landowners. They were alarmed by the peasant revolt, worrying that it would take away their power as a ruling class. So they joined together with anti-revolutionary priests. In 1821, they negotiated Mexico’s independence from Spain, but they kept their privileged position in society.

In other parts of Latin America, several revolutionary movements were gaining strength. In the northern regions, general Simón Bolívar claimed large amounts of land from Spanish forces. In 1819, he created a new nation called “Gran Columbia” that was modeled after the United States. It included the territories of present-day Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela. But it only lasted until 1830. Bolívar had the support of the young nation of Haiti. The country sent soldiers and weapons to help him fight the Spanish.

Meanwhile, another general named José de San Martín led a revolt against the Spanish in southern Latin America, freeing the modern nations of Argentina, Chile, and Peru. Both San Martín and Bolívar liberated huge parts of the region. Neither revolution, however, led to the creation of a long-lasting constitutional republic. Instead, South America was soon taken over by rulers who cared more about power than democratic ideals.

An era of revolutions

Though each of these revolutions had its own origins, important figures, and results, they were all tied together by three things. First, they were inspired by the moral and political ideas of the Enlightenment. Second, they rejected political systems that gave a ruling class total power. Finally, they were influenced by the same global events and colonial history.

The era of revolutions transformed the world. Colonial powers shrank and new nations were formed. They went on to create completely new kinds of governments and societies.