The Atlantic Revolutions

A revolutionary Atlantic

"How did global events connect the Atlantic Revolutions?"

Every year, on July 4, July 5, July 14, and January 1, people around the world celebrate the formation of new states that arose from political revolutions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These celebrations commemorate events that took place during a period of great change in government, empire, commerce, and societies throughout the Atlantic region. We call this the Age of Revolutions.

There were many hints of the changes to come, but the start of this age was probably the American War of Independence, which began in 1775 and which eventually created the United States from 13 British colonies. This conflict helped create the conditions for the French Revolution of 1789, which transformed much of Europe and which was based on ideas that spread around the world. Chaos in France helped set the scene for the most revolutionary revolution of all: the years-long rebellion of enslaved people, out of which emerged the island state of Haiti, in 1804. These changes all helped inspire and support a decade of revolution in the Spanish Americas that overthrew Spanish rule and resulted in countries like Colombia (1810), Venezuela (1811), Chile (1818), and Mexico (1821).

A shared context

Historians have determined that these revolutions happened close in time because they were part of a wider set of changes, although each one had local causes as well. Other uprisings and rebellions across Europe, the Caribbean, and West Africa are also linked to these upheavals. We’re going to describe these revolutions, but before we can delve into each one, we must set the context.

In the late eighteenth century, three really important things were happening in the Atlantic that helped set the scene for each revolution.

First: empire. Without examining the role of empire, it’s difficult to understand anything that was going on. European states on the Atlantic were in competition for colonies and possessions across the Atlantic. Because empires are by definition unequal and exploitative, they helped create the conditions people wanted to change. But they also provided pathways for ideas to move back and forth across the Atlantic quite rapidly.

Second: economics. The rise of empires helped to contribute to economic crises as European empires needed money to fight each other and expand their colonial holdings. This money came in the form of taxes, and empires needed lots of them. But these taxes weren’t evenly applied. Empires made a few people very rich, but they were fueled by the labor of enslaved peoples of Africa and Indigenous Americans. The empires also extorted taxes from merchants and peasants who worked the land in Europe. All of these groups—peasants, merchants, the enslaved—were primed for revolution, and just needed some ideas to guide them.

Last: ideas. These ideas were mostly provided by the intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was really a debate about individual rights, liberties, and the very nature of the world, and it gave inspiration and organizing principles to revolutionaries. But it’s important to note that other ideas—from Indigenous Americans, enslaved African communities, and European peasants—also provided inspiration.

The American War of Independence

Economic issues were the trigger for the American War of Independence. Coming off an expensive war with France (Seven Years’ War 1756–1763), Great Britain unsuccessfully attempted to raise revenue from the American colonies, prompting protests and riots. In 1773, the British imposed the Tea Act, which resulted in the Boston Tea Party. Colonists, disguised as Indigenous Americans, dumped British tea into Boston Harbor. This act of defiance prompted the British to enact the Coercive Acts (also known as the Intolerable Acts) in 1774, which closed Boston’s harbor, restricted local elections, and expanded the power of the royal governor. In response, the First Continental Congress, which convened in Philadelphia in September 1774, resolved to resist British oppression. Hostilities between British and American forces began in April 1775 at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts.

The members of both the First and then Second Continental Congress (1776), were inspired by ideas of liberty that had been developed by Enlightenment thinkers, although many felt those freedoms didn’t apply to Africans or Indigenous peoples. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, proclaiming the sovereignty of the American states and listing the natural rights of mankind. They found support from other empires. French volunteers began arriving in 1777 to support the revolution, and by 1778, the French government had officially allied with the Americans against the British. Spain and the Dutch Republic also declared war on Great Britain in 1779 and 1780, respectively.

The war's financial burden and European pressures forced Britain to recognize the independence of the 13 American colonies in the 1783 Treaty of Paris. Thus, a new nation was born, though it was not entirely egalitarian, as the United States continued to enslave millions despite its own fight for independence.

Revolutionary France

French soldiers returning home from participating in the American War of Independence found a nearly bankrupt government. King Louis XVI needed to pay for these imperial wars, but his attempts to raise taxes were blocked because, for various reasons, people could not pay. Several years of poor harvests had led to food shortages, unemployment was high, and merchants complained that they were taxed more than the nobility.

To address the crisis, Louis XVI convened the Estates-General in 1788, a body that had not met since 1614. French society was divided into three estates: the clergy (First Estate), the nobility (Second Estate), and everyone else (Third Estate). The first two estates enjoyed many privileges, while the Third Estate bore the tax burden and had no governmental voice. These groups could not agree on a solution, but many representatives of each estate felt the king had failed in his duties. Inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment, they sought to limit the king’s power. In June 1789, the Third Estate declared itself the National Assembly, and in response, King Louis XVI sent an army marching toward Paris.

Democracy: a form of government in which power ultimately rests with the people, either directly or through elected representatives

Plantation: a large estate used for cultivating commercial crops such as rubber, tea, cotton, or coffee

That army never arrived. Instead, on July 14, 1789, Parisians stormed the Bastille, a royal prison, freeing prisoners, seizing weapons, and beheading two officials. The revolt spread throughout the country and by the end of the summer, the privileges of the nobility and the church were abolished. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen proclaimed that all citizens were equal before the law and had individual rights. Within the next two years, France abolished the nobility and established a representative democracy through its new constitution. But many issues remained, and the French Revolution soon became violent as different factions turned against each other.

The most successful slave revolt of all time

The first French Republic dramatically altered the country's political and social structure, dismantling traditional power structures and transforming governance. The National Assembly ended the privileges of the nobles and abolished feudalism in France. They even briefly abolished slavery, which significantly impacted the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue. However, the republic was short-lived as a powerful and popular general named Napoleon Bonaparte soon rose to power and declared himself emperor in 1799. His armies nearly conquered all of Europe, in the process spreading some of the values of the revolution. But they also put limits on those ideals: slavery returned to the empire.

The people of the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) on Hispaniola closely watched the French Revolution. Saint-Domingue was the richest plantation colony globally, with around 8,000 plantations producing 40% of the world’s sugar and half its coffee, profiting through enslaved labor. The colony’s population included around 500,000 enslaved people, 30,000 free people of color, and 40,000 whites. The white population was divided between wealthy plantation owners (grands blancs) and poor whites (petits blancs). This unstable social structure, marked by exploitation and inequality, led to grievances among all groups.

In 1791, the colony erupted in the Haitian Revolution, the most radical of its era—a revolt of enslaved people. The Haitian Revolution established the second independent republic in the Americas and the first nation-state ruled by people of African descent.

The Haitian Revolution was the world’s greatest revolt against slavery, and also a successful revolt against empire. Toussaint L’Ouverture emerged as the revolution’s leader, overcoming internal resistance and outmaneuvering foreign powers like Spain and Britain. He also defeated Napoleon’s attempt to regain control. Haiti declared its independence on January 1, 1804, rejecting European racist hierarchies and defining all Haitians as “Black.” The plantation system was dismantled, transforming Haiti into a nation of subsistence farmers working their own land.

The Latin American revolutions

Together, these revolutions helped inspire a series of uprisings in Latin America, uprisings that were helped by the weakening of the Spanish monarchy during Napoleon’s wars. As in the United States, the main instigators of these revolutions were Creoles—people of European descent who lived in the American colonies, and who felt that the empire was not serving them well. They particularly objected to the fact that merchants back in Europe got favorable treatment over them. It’s important to note, though, that other rebels were Indigenous people, enslaved people, and the poor. They didn’t have the same objectives as the Creoles, but they often found common cause with them.

In 1810, led by priests Miguel Hidalgo and José Morelos, Mexican peasants revolted over land and high food prices. In this case, wealthy Creoles chose to side with the existing government, fearing that the rebels would take down the Creoles as well as the Spanish government. But elsewhere, Creoles found ways to work with the lower classes in their revolts against Spain. Still, fear of violent rebellions loomed over Latin American revolutions from 1810 to 1825, with frequent violence along racial, class, and ideological lines.

Revolutionary general Simón Bolívar, with support from Haiti, fought Spanish forces and created the short-lived Gran Colombia between 1819 and 1830. In southern Latin America, José de San Martín led another revolt against the Spanish. These revolutions didn’t result in lasting constitutional republics, nor did they necessarily give financial relief to the poor or liberate the enslaved. They did, however, shift power from the Spanish empire to local elites.

An era of revolutions

Empire, economics, and Enlightenment. Three great trends helped to reshape the Atlantic world in the Age of Revolutions. How did local factors affect the shape of each revolution? And just how revolutionary were their effects? These are topics for deeper analysis as you explore an age that was the origin of so many of the ideas and experiences that have shaped the world today.