Chapter 16 - Atlantic Revolution Global Echoes
Even as the strong Mughal Empire controlling India disintegrated, the Safavid dynasty that had controlled Persia (now Iran) for several centuries had entirely crumbled by the 1730s. At the same time, the Wahhabi movement in Arabia posed a severe danger to the Ottoman Empire, and its theological principles were at the root of huge political upheavals in Central Asia and beyond.
As a result, the Atlantic revolutions in North America, France, Haiti, and Latin America were part of a broader global context. They, like many previous upheavals, happened in the context of costly wars, weakened governments, and destabilizing commercialization processes. The Atlantic revolutions, however, stood out in a number of respects as compared to other upheavals.
Although women, slaves, Native Americans, and landless men did not benefit greatly from these upheavals, the ideologies that accompanied them provided weapons for the future.
The Atlantic revolutions' last distinguishing trait is their enormous worldwide effect, which extends well beyond the Atlantic realm. Revolutionary France's soldiers, for example, conquered Egypt, Germany, Poland, and Russia, bringing seeds of change with them.
Every American schoolchild is taught from an early age that the American Revolution was a fight for freedom from tyrannical British tyranny. The battle began with the Declaration of Independence in 1776, culminated in an unexpected military triumph in 1781, and culminated in the adoption of a federal constitution in 1787, uniting thirteen previously independent provinces into a new nation.
The revolutionary aspect of the American experience was not so much the revolution itself as it was the type of society that had already developed inside the colonies. Independence from the United Kingdom was not accompanied by any major societal changes.
Despite this, many American patriots believed they were establishing “a new system for the ages.” “We pursued a new and more noble road... and effected a revolution that has no precedent in the history of human society,” wrote James Madison in the Federalist Papers. Supporters from all around the world agreed.
The French Revolution's example was heard loudest in the French Caribbean colony of Saint Domingue, afterward called Haiti. Saint Domingue was widely considered as the world's richest colony, with 8,000 plantations that generated 40 percent of the world's sugar and probably half of its coffee in the late eighteenth century.
The ideals and example of the French Revolution lighted numerous fuses in such a combustible environment, putting in motion a spiral of bloodshed that consumed the colony for more than a decade.
When the dust cleared in the early nineteenth century, it was apparent that something extraordinary and unparalleled had occurred, an upheaval unlike any other in Atlantic and global history. In terms of social standing, the last had risen to the top.
The Haitian Revolution's devastation, severe internal racial and class conflicts, and persistent exterior resistance all led to Haiti's persistent poverty and autocratic and unpredictable politics.
From about 1780 to 1890, a tremendous transformation in human affairs occurred as slavery, which had been extensively practiced and seldom criticized since at least the dawn of civilization, lost its legitimacy and was generally abolished.
Slavery had become increasingly controversial among Enlightenment thinkers in eighteenth-century Europe as a violation of everyone's natural rights, and the public declarations of the American and French revolutions about liberty and equality drew attention to this obvious violation of those principles.
Slaves' acts also contributed to the abolition of slavery. In the early nineteenth century, the spectacular triumph of the Haitian Revolution was followed by three significant rebellions in the British West Indies, all of which were brutally suppressed.
Even as the strong Mughal Empire controlling India disintegrated, the Safavid dynasty that had controlled Persia (now Iran) for several centuries had entirely crumbled by the 1730s. At the same time, the Wahhabi movement in Arabia posed a severe danger to the Ottoman Empire, and its theological principles were at the root of huge political upheavals in Central Asia and beyond.
As a result, the Atlantic revolutions in North America, France, Haiti, and Latin America were part of a broader global context. They, like many previous upheavals, happened in the context of costly wars, weakened governments, and destabilizing commercialization processes. The Atlantic revolutions, however, stood out in a number of respects as compared to other upheavals.
Although women, slaves, Native Americans, and landless men did not benefit greatly from these upheavals, the ideologies that accompanied them provided weapons for the future.
The Atlantic revolutions' last distinguishing trait is their enormous worldwide effect, which extends well beyond the Atlantic realm. Revolutionary France's soldiers, for example, conquered Egypt, Germany, Poland, and Russia, bringing seeds of change with them.
Every American schoolchild is taught from an early age that the American Revolution was a fight for freedom from tyrannical British tyranny. The battle began with the Declaration of Independence in 1776, culminated in an unexpected military triumph in 1781, and culminated in the adoption of a federal constitution in 1787, uniting thirteen previously independent provinces into a new nation.
The revolutionary aspect of the American experience was not so much the revolution itself as it was the type of society that had already developed inside the colonies. Independence from the United Kingdom was not accompanied by any major societal changes.
Despite this, many American patriots believed they were establishing “a new system for the ages.” “We pursued a new and more noble road... and effected a revolution that has no precedent in the history of human society,” wrote James Madison in the Federalist Papers. Supporters from all around the world agreed.
The French Revolution's example was heard loudest in the French Caribbean colony of Saint Domingue, afterward called Haiti. Saint Domingue was widely considered as the world's richest colony, with 8,000 plantations that generated 40 percent of the world's sugar and probably half of its coffee in the late eighteenth century.
The ideals and example of the French Revolution lighted numerous fuses in such a combustible environment, putting in motion a spiral of bloodshed that consumed the colony for more than a decade.
When the dust cleared in the early nineteenth century, it was apparent that something extraordinary and unparalleled had occurred, an upheaval unlike any other in Atlantic and global history. In terms of social standing, the last had risen to the top.
The Haitian Revolution's devastation, severe internal racial and class conflicts, and persistent exterior resistance all led to Haiti's persistent poverty and autocratic and unpredictable politics.
From about 1780 to 1890, a tremendous transformation in human affairs occurred as slavery, which had been extensively practiced and seldom criticized since at least the dawn of civilization, lost its legitimacy and was generally abolished.
Slavery had become increasingly controversial among Enlightenment thinkers in eighteenth-century Europe as a violation of everyone's natural rights, and the public declarations of the American and French revolutions about liberty and equality drew attention to this obvious violation of those principles.
Slaves' acts also contributed to the abolition of slavery. In the early nineteenth century, the spectacular triumph of the Haitian Revolution was followed by three significant rebellions in the British West Indies, all of which were brutally suppressed.
