Atlantic Revolutions
Driving Question: How was the period from 1750 to 1825 an “age of revolution”?
What does it take to drive a society toward revolution? Beginning in the late eighteenth century, revolutionary movements swept across the Atlantic Ocean and turned the world upside down.
Learning Objectives:
- Identify the conditions that led to revolutions in the Atlantic world.
- Use the historical thinking skill of causation to evaluate the causes and effects of the American, French, Haitian, and Latin American revolutions.
- Use a graphic biography to support, extend, or challenge the overarching narratives of this period.
Vocab Terms:
In this lesson, you’ll learn about political and social upheavals that swept the world. This activity will get you thinking about the impacts of the Age of Revolution.
Visual Vote: Atlantic Revolutions
The Age of Revolution was complicated, and so were the people who participated. This graphic biography explores the duality of British thinker Edmund Burke.
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Guiding Questions
Did you know: After the Bastille fell in 1789, the Marquis de Lafayette sent the key to the hated prison to his “adoptive father,” George Washington. Lafayette trusted Thomas Paine to deliver the key for him. This is a great illustration of the transoceanic connections that fueled the Age of Revolutions.
Take a look at how some OER Project teachers have adapted the Recipe for a Revolution activity for their classroom and learn how it worked for them.
Beginning in the late eighteenth century, a revolutionary wave swept the Atlantic Ocean, overturning old governments and ushering in new ideas about freedom.
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Guiding Questions
In this closing activity, consider all you’ve learned as you make your own claim about the so-called Age of Revolution.
Annotation strategy: Students use the margins of their reading to write notes, ask questions, or make connections to content from previous lessons. Once they’re done reading individually, discuss the reading as a group and have students share their “margin moments.”
The revolutions that swept the Atlantic world may have been idealistic at the start. But in many cases, things got messy. Few revolutionary figures illustrate this better than Napoleon Bonaparte.
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Guiding Questions
