World History Journal Entry

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22

Atlantic Revolutions and the World 1750–1830

801

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The Promise of Enlightenment FOCUS What were the major ideas of the Enlightenment and their impacts?

Revolution in North America FOCUS What factors lay behind the war between North American colonists and Great Britain?

The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire

FOCUS What changes emerged from the French Revolution and Napoleon’s reign?

Revolution Continued in the Western Hemisphere

FOCUS What were the motives and methods of revolutionaries in the Caribbean and Latin America?

COUNTERPOINT: Religious Revival in a Secular Age

FOCUS What trends in Enlightenment and revolutionary society did religious revival challenge?

backstory Rising global trade and maturing slave systems brought wealth to merchants and landowners in many parts of the world during the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries. Emboldened by this newfound wealth, they joined bureau- crats and aristocrats in the struggle for more influence, not only in the great land-based empires such as the Qing, Mughal, and Ottoman states but also in some of the small states of Europe. Except for Spain, these small European states had developed overseas coastal trading posts, which after several centuries they hoped to exploit more efficiently and turn into true empires. They had also built their military capability and gained adminis- trative experience as they fought one another for greater global influence. Maintaining this influence was costly, however. Simultaneously the Scientific Revolution (see Chapter 19) and the beginnings of a movement to think more rationally about government were causing some critics in Europe to question the traditional political and social order.

World in the Making Simón Bolívar, the “Liberator,” traveled the Atlantic world, gaining inspiration from the Enlightenment and revolutionary events. On his return to South A merica, he helped spearhead the movement for independence there. No democrat, Bolivar learned from hard experience that success demanded support from South A merica’s rich variety of slaves and other workers.

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Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) began life as the privileged son of a family that in the sixteenth century had settled in Caracas, a city in Spanish-controlled South America. His early years were full of personal loss: his father died when he was three, his mother when he was five, and his grandfather, who cared for him after his mother’s death, when he was six. Bolívar’s extended family sent him to military school and then to Spain to study—typical training for prominent “creoles,” as South Americans of European descent were called. Following the death of his young wife, the grieving Bolívar traveled to Paris, where his life changed: he saw the military hero Napoleon crown himself emperor in 1804 and witnessed crowds fill the streets of the capital with joy. “That moment, I tell you, made me think of the slavery of my country and of the glory that would come to the person who liberated it,” he later wrote.1 After a visit to the newly independent United States, Bolívar returned to Caracas in 1807, determined to free his homeland from the oppressions of Spanish rule. He, too, took up arms, leading military campaigns, which along with popular uprisings eventually ousted Spain’s government from much of Latin America. For his revolutionary leadership, contemporaries gave him the title “Liberator.”

The creation of independent states in Latin America was part of a powerful upheaval in the Atlantic world. North American colonists successfully fought a war of independence against Britain in 1776. The French rose up in 1789 against a mon- archy that had bankrupted itself, ironically in part by giving military support to the American rebels. In 1791 a massive slave revolt erupted in the prosperous French sugar colony of Saint-Domingue, leading to the creation of the independent state of Haiti. The independence of Latin American states was globally inspirational. The English poet Lord Byron named his yacht Bolivar and in the 1820s went off to liber- ate Greece from the Ottomans.

These upheavals were connected with a transformation of thought and everyday life in the West called “the Enlightenment.” Traders in Asia, Africa, and the Americas had brought ideas and goods to Europe. The arrival of new products such as sugar, coffee, and cotton textiles freed many Europeans’ lives from their former limits, and this newfound abundance led to new thinking. Both ordinary people and the upper classes proposed changing society. Ideas from Enlightenment thinkers and global contact affected North American politicians, Caribbean activists, and creole re- formers like Simón Bolívar, transforming them into revolutionaries. The impulse for change extended beyond the Atlantic world. In Ottoman-controlled Egypt, French revolutionary forces under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte invaded, claiming to bring new political ideas of liberty. A determined leader, Muhammad Ali, helped drive out the French and then promoted reform himself. Thus, global connections

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of different kinds played a key role in creating the conditions that sparked the devel- opment of new ideas and in providing pathways for the spread of those ideas.

By 1830, when the revolutionary tide in Latin America ended, the map of the world had changed, but that change came at a great cost. Alongside the birth of new nations and a growing belief in political reform, there had been widespread hardship and destruction. Soldiers died by the hundreds of thousands; civilians also perished because political and social change set them against one another. The breakdown of established kingdoms was the work of the warriors, the masses, and determined lead- ers, but this age of revolution crushed many. Napoleon Bonaparte was condemned to exile, and even so privileged a revolutionary as Bolívar died of utter exhaustion in 1830 just as the new nations of Latin America began their independent existence.

OVERVIEW QUESTIONS

The major global development in this chapter: The Atlantic revolutions and their short- and long-term significance.

As you read, consider:

1. What role did the

Scientific Revolution

and expanding global

contacts play in the

cultural and social

movement known as the

Enlightenment?

2. Why did prosperous

and poor people alike

join revolutions in the

Americas and in France?

3. Why were the Atlantic

revolutions so influential,

even to the present day?

The Promise of Enlightenment

FOCUS What were the major ideas of the enlightenment and their impacts?

Europeans in the eighteenth century had a great deal to think about. The scien- tific revolution had challenged traditional views of nature and offered a new meth- odology for uncovering nature’s laws. Reports from around the world on foreign customs, ways of conducting government, alternative techniques in agriculture,

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and trade practices fueled discussion worldwide but especially among Europeans. Moreover, participation in this intellectual ferment was not limited to the politi- cal and social elite. As literacy, already advanced in Chinese and Japanese cities, spread in Europe, ever more people were caught up in the debate over social, po- litical, and economic change. These wide-ranging reconsiderations are collectively called the Enlightenment.

A New World of Ideas Some Enlightenment writers hammered away at the abuses of monarchies and proposed representative rule based on the consent of the governed—a proposal that later became the foundation of many states. The will of a monarch is not the best basis for government, English philosopher John Locke wrote late in the seventeenth century. Rather, he maintained, governments should be established rationally, by mutual consent of the governed. The idea of compact or contract government grew from Locke’s philosophy that people were born free, equal, and rational, and that natural rights, including personal freedoms, were basic to all humans. In Locke’s view, governments were formed when people made the rational choice to give up a measure of freedom and create institutions that could guarantee natural rights and protect everyone’s property. If a government failed to fulfill these purposes, the people had the right to replace it. Locke’s ideas justified the situation in seventeenth- century England, where citizens and the Parliament had twice ousted their king.

In contrast to Locke, French writers Voltaire and Baron Louis Montesquieu criticized their own society’s religious and political abuses by referring to prac- tices in China and elsewhere beyond Europe. They set their widely read writings in faraway lands or used wise foreigners to show Europe’s backwardness. A wealthy trained jurist, Montesquieu in The Persian Letters (1721) featured a Persian ruler visiting Europe and writing back home of the strange goings-on. The continent was full of magicians, Montesquieu’s hero reports, such as those who could turn wine and wafers into flesh—a mocking reference to the Christian sacrament of commu- nion. Voltaire, a successful author thrown several times into jail for insulting the authorities, portrayed worthy young men cruelly treated by priests and kings in his rollicking novels Zadig (1747) and Candide (1759). Voltaire asked for a society based on merit, not on aristocracy of birth: “There is nothing in Asia that resembles the European nobility: nowhere in the Orient does one find an order of citizens distinct from all the rest . . . solely by their birth.”2 Voltaire did not have the story quite right, but other Enlightenment thinkers joined his call for reason, hard work, and opportunity in both economic life and politics.

Swiss-born Jean-Jacques Rousseau took up the theme of freedom and opportu- nity in many influential writings. In The Social Contract (1762) he claimed that “man

contract government  A political theory that views government as stemming from the people, who agree to surrender a measure of personal freedom in return for a government that guarantees protection of citizens’ rights and property.

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is born free,” but because of despotic government “he is every where in chains.” As for the process of shaping the modern citizen, Rousseau’s best-selling novel Emile (1762) describes the ways in which a young boy is educated to develop many practical skills. Instead of learning through rote memory, as was common, Emile masters such skills as carpentry and medicine by actually working at them, and he spends much time outdoors, getting in touch with nature by living away from cor- rupt civilization. Like China’s Kangxi emperor (the fourth of the Qing dynasty), whom Enlightenment thinkers held up as a model, Emile becomes a polymath— that is, someone with a knowledge of many subjects and numerous skills, especially those that could earn him a livelihood. Emile thus becomes a responsible citizen who can fend for himself following natural laws, not despotically imposed ones.

Enlightenment thinkers also rethought the economy. In 1776, Scottish philoso- pher Adam Smith published one of the most influential Enlightenment documents, On the Wealth of Nations. Citing China as an important example throughout, Smith proposed to free the economy from government monopolies and mercan- tilist regulations. This idea of laissez faire (French for “let alone”) became part of the theory called liberalism, which endorsed economic and personal freedom guaranteed by the rule of law. Smith saw trade as benefiting an individual’s charac- ter because it required cooperation with others in the process of exchanging goods. The virtues created by trade were more desirable than the military swaggering and confrontation of aristocratic lives, and he continually stressed that alongside in- dividualism there needed to be concern for the well-being of the community as a whole. Slavery, he argued, was inefficient and ought to be done away with. Still other Enlightenment writers said that a middle-class way of life promoted sensibil- ity, love of family, thrift, and hard work—again, in stark contrast to the promiscu- ous and spendthrift habits these reformers saw in the nobility.

Enlightenment thinkers explicitly drew on the knowledge acquired through global economic connections. Such connections also made it possible for Enlight- enment ideas to spread around the world. Some Japanese thinkers and officials wanted to learn about recent Western breakthroughs in practical subjects as well as scientific practices based on rational observation and deduction. Chinese schol- ars, though not directly influenced by Enlightenment thought, were reflecting on issues of good government and the capacities of the individual within the impe- rial system. Future nation builders in the North American colonies—Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson—were steeped in both the practical and political sides of the Enlightenment, running businesses, designing buildings, conducting scientific experiments, and writing political documents.

Enlightenment thought reached many in Western society—high and low, male and female. Population growth in cities such as Paris opened neighborhoods and

laissez faire  A n economic doctrine that advocates freeing economies from government intervention and control.

liberalism  A political ideology that emphasizes free trade, individual rights, and the rule of law to protect rights as the best means for promoting social and economic improvement.

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work life, allowing new ideas to flourish. Women of the wealthier classes conducted salons—that is, meetings in their homes devoted to discussing the latest books and findings. German Jewish women, often kept at a distance from Christians, made a name for themselves by forming such groups. Along with coffeehouses in European and colonial cities, modeled on those in the Ottoman Empire, salons created a public sphere in which people could meet outside court circles to talk about current affairs. Together with the new public libraries, reading groups, and scientific clubs that dotted the Atlantic world, they built new community bonds and laid the groundwork for responsible citizenship. Instead of a monarchical government single-handedly determining thought and policy, ordinary people in Europe and its colonies, relying on knowledge gained from public discussion, could express their opinions on the course of events and thereby undermine government censorship.

public sphere  A cultural and political environment that emerged during the Enlightenment, where members of society gathered to discuss issues of the day.

Eighteenth-Century English Drawing Room W hen drinking their tea imported from Asia, middle- and upper- class Europeans aimed for elegance, inspired by Asian tea rituals. They used porcelain, whose production European manufacturers had recently figured out, and wore sparkling white muslin, probably imported from India, which produced high-quality cloth that Europeans valued above cotton from anywhere else.

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The ideals of the Enlightenment were well represented in the Encyclopedia (1751–1772) of France’s Denis Diderot. This celebrated work contained dozens of technical drawings of practical machinery that could advance prosperity. The Encyclopedia described the freedoms and rights nature endowed on all people, not just aristocrats. Like Rousseau, Diderot maintained that in a natural state all people were born free and equal. French writer Olympe de Gouges further proposed that there was no difference among people of different skin colors. “How are the Whites different from [the Black] race? . . . Why do blonds not claim superiority over brunettes?” she asked in her “Reflections on Negroes” (1788). “Like all the different types of animals, plants, and minerals that nature has produced, people’s color also varies.”3 Essayists in the Encyclopedia added that women too were born free and endowed with natural rights.

Many of the working people of Europe’s growing towns and cities responded en- thusiastically to the ideas set forth by Enlightenment philosophers such as Voltaire and Rousseau. The French glassworker Jacques Ménétra, for example, acquired and also distributed these new antireligious and egalitarian ideas as he moved from city to town and village, installing glass windows. With some religious schooling and then an apprenticeship in his trade, Ménétra, like his fellow journeymen arti- sans, led this kind of mobile life as a young man before establishing his own shop in Paris. During his travels, he provided news of the Parisian thinkers to artisans along his route. Young journeymen like Ménétra helped make the Enlightenment an affair not only of the well-born but also of many average people.

Enlightenment and the Old Order Despite its critique of monarchs, church officials, and the aristocracy, “Enlighten- ment” was a watchword of some of Europe’s most powerful rulers. “Enlightened” rulers came to sense that more rational government could actually strengthen their regimes, for example by increasing governmental efficiency and tax revenues. In- stead of touting his divine legacy, Prussian king Frederick the Great (r. 1740–1786) called a ruler someone who would “work efficiently for the good of the state” rather than “live in lazy luxury, enriching himself by the labor of the people.”4 A musician and poet, Frederick studied several languages, collected Chinese porcelain, and advocated toleration. For him, Enlightenment made monarchs stronger. Spread- ing to Russia, the Enlightenment moved Catherine the Great (r. 1762–1796) to sponsor the writing of a dictionary of the Russian language, to correspond with learned thinkers such as Diderot, and to work to improve the education of girls. Additionally, Catherine’s goal was to put a stop to aristocrats’ “idle time spent in luxury and other vices corrupting to the morals,” as she put it, and instead trans- form the nobility into active and informed administrators of her far-flung empire and its diverse peoples (see Seeing the Past: Portrait of Catherine the Great).5

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SEEING THE PAST

Portrait of Catherine the Great Catherine the Great was a monarch of towering

ability and ambition. Although her regime was

known for smashing peasant uprisings and territo-

rial conquests, it also promoted the arts and knowl-

edge. Catherine commissioned the first dictionary

of the Russian language and communicated with

the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment. While

sponsoring education, she tried to reform her

government to increase its power. In this regard,

Enlightenment was not just about the fine arts but

also about generally raising the economic and po-

litical profile of the monarchy through rationally de-

vised policies.

Enlightenment thinkers often referred to the

excellent customs and the rational policies of non-

Western monarchs of their day—especially those

in China—but also prized classical Greece and

Rome for their democratic and republican forms

of government. For this image, a skilled Parisian

craftsperson of the 1760s chose Minerva—Roman

goddess of both war and wisdom—as the figure

closest to the celebrated Catherine. The luxurious

detail on this round box assures us that it was

destined for an aristocratic palace, perhaps that of

the monarch herself.

Examining the Evidence

1. W hat does this depiction of the empress as Minerva tell you about the society over which Catherine ruled?

2. How does this image of leadership compare with others you have seen, including those of U.S. presidents? How do you account for the differences? For the similarities?

Catherine the Great as the Roman Goddess Minerva (Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens; Photo by Ed Owen.)

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The Spanish monarchy in the eighteenth century likewise instituted a series of policy changes called the Bourbon Reforms, named after the ruling “Bourbon” family of monarchs. They aimed to make the monarchy financially sound by taxing the colonies more efficiently. Spain’s rulers also attempted to limit the church’s independence. Often opposing slavery and promoting better treatment of native peoples, the Jesuit order, for instance, had many followers in Spain’s “New World” empire. Thus the order was an alternate source of allegiance: the monarchy outlawed it.

Leaders of the Spanish colonies adopted many Enlightenment ideas, including scientific farming and improvements in mining—subjects dear to forward-looking thinkers who read the Encyclopedia. In Mexico, reformers saw the education of each woman as central to building responsible government. As one journalist put it, under a mother’s care the young citizen “grows, is nourished, and acquires his first notions of Good and Evil. [Therefore] women have even more reason to be enlightened than men.”6 In this view, motherhood was not a simple biological act but a livelihood critical to a strong national life.

European prosperity depended on the productivity of slaves in the colonies, and wealthy slave owners used Enlightenment fascination with nature to devise scientific explanations justifying the oppressive system. Though many Enlightenment thinkers such as Olympe de Gouges wanted equality for “noble savages,” in slave owners’ minds A fricans were by nature inferior and thus rightly subject to exploitation. Scientists captured A fricans for study and judged racial inferiority to be a “scientific fact.” Others justified race-based slavery in terms of character: blacks were, one British observer explained, “conceited, proud, indolent and very artful” in contrast to the egalitarian and hard-working European.7 Thus, some strands of Enlightenment thought helped buyers and sellers of A fricans and native Americans argue that slavery was useful and rational, especially because slaves could produce wealth and help society as a whole make progress.

Popular Revolts in an Age of Enlightenment Popular uprisings in many parts of the world, including in slave societies, showed the need for improved government. In Russia, people throughout society came to protest serfdom’s irrationality and unfairness. In 1773 the discontent of many serfs crystallized around Emel’ian Ivanovich Pugachev, once an officer in the Russian army, who claimed to be Peter III, the dead husband of Catherine. Tens of thousands of peasants, joined by rebellious workers, serf soldiers in Catherine’s overworked armies, and Muslim minorities rose up, calling for the restoration of

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Pugachev, alias Peter, to the throne. Promised great riches for their support, serfs plundered noble estates and killed aristocrats. They justified revolt in slogans and songs: “O woe to us slaves living for the masters. . . . how shameful and insulting / That an- other who is not worthy to be equal with us / Has so many of us in his power.”8 The rebellion was put down only with difficulty. Once Catherine’s forces captured Pugachev, they cut off his arms and legs, then his head, and finally hacked his body to pieces— just punishment, nobles believed, for the crimes of this “monster” against the monarchy and upper classes.

Uprisings among the urban poor, farmworkers, and slaves also occurred in the Caribbean and other parts of the Western Hemi- sphere. Slaves fled their masters to Maroon communities far from plantations. Native peoples in Latin America protested harsh con- ditions, which only grew worse with Spain’s demand for more rev- enue. Some envisioned the complete expulsion of the Spaniards or the overthrow of the wealthy creoles, who owned estates and plantations. Between 1742 and 1783, several different groups in Peru attempted to restore Inca power and end the tax burden in-

flicted by the Bourbon Reforms. Backed by his determined, talented wife Michaela Bastida, charismatic trader and wealthy landowner Tupac Amaru II (TOO-pack a-MAH-roo), an indigenous leader who took his name from the Inca leader of the late sixteenth century, led tens of thousands against corrupt government. Eventually captured by Spanish authorities, Tupac Amaru II had his tongue cut out, was drawn and quartered by four horses, and finally was beheaded—after first watching the ex- ecution of his family. Rebellions continued amid the complexities of Enlightenment.

Revolution in North America

FOCUS What factors lay behind the war between north American colonists and Great Britain?

The Atlantic world was part of a global trading network. A Boston newspaper in the 1720s advertised the sale of Moroccan leather, Indian chintz and muslin fabrics, South American mahogany, and Asian tea. The global livelihoods of merchants, fishermen, and sailors enabled the British colonies to grow prosperous and cosmo- politan, engaged in all facets of Enlightenment and commercial growth.

0

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200 Miles

Black Sea

C asp

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Moscow

Pugachev Uprising in Russia, 1773

Area of rebellion Pugachev's route

Ural R .Vo

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RUSSIAN EMPIRE

Pugachev Uprising in Russia, 1773

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The British Empire and the Colonial Crisis 1764–1775 In the eighteenth century European states waged increasingly costly wars to boost global power. The expense of the Seven Years’ War of 1756–1763 was enormous as Europeans also fought to gain influence in South Asia, the Philippines, the Caribbean, and North America. Ultimately beating both the French and the Spanish, Britain received all of French Canada and Florida at the end of the war (see Map 22.1). It wanted higher colonial taxation to recoup its expenses and pay the costs of administering its empire.

In 1764 the British Parliament raised taxes on molasses with the Sugar Act, on printed material and legal documents with the Stamp Act (1765), and on useful commodities such as paper, glass, and paint with the Townshend Acts (1767)—all of them important to colonists’ everyday lives. Tapping England’s own history of revolution and the new political theories, colonial activists protested, insisting that if they were going to be taxed, they needed direct representation in the English Parliament. This argument followed Locke’s theory of the social contract: a gov- ernment where citizens were not represented had no right to take their property in taxes. With a literacy rate of 70 percent among men and 40 percent among women in the North American colonies, new ideas about government and reports of Brit- ish misdeeds spread easily.

The Birth of the United States 1775–1789 W hen yet another ta x was placed on prized imported tea, a group of Bostonians, disguised as native A mericans, dumped a load of tea into the harbor in Decem- ber 1773. The British government responded to the “Boston Tea Party” by clos- ing the seaport’s thriving harbor. As tensions escalated, colonial representatives gathered for an all-colony Continental Congress that resulted in a coordinated boycott of British goods. In April 1775 artisans and farmers in Lex ington and Concord fought British troops sent to confiscate a stockpile of ammunition from rebellious colonists. On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress issued its “Decla- ration of Independence,” a short, dramatic document written largely by Thomas Jefferson that aimed—like the Enlightenment itself—to convert its readers to the side of reason in matters of government. The Declaration argued that the monarchy was tyrannical and had forfeited its right to rule. It went on to artic- ulate an Enlightenment doctrine of rights—the famous rights of “ life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Some of the rebel colonists likened themselves to “slaves” lack ing individual freedom, drawing a parallel—even though some of them, including Thomas Jefferson, were slave owners—with slave rebels across the Western world.

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Lexington/Concord 1775

Yorktown 1781

Camden 1780

Saratoga 1777

Germantown 1777

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Montreal

NOVA SCOTIA

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Boundaries of the United States, 1795

Colonial Crisis and Revolution in North America, 1754–1789

Key ba�les of the Revolutionary War, 1775–1781

MAP 22.1 Colonial Crisis and Revolution in North A merica, 1754–1789 The Seven Years’ War left Great Britain with a hefty war debt and the threat of Native A merican clashes. To prevent the latter, the Proclamation of 1763 forbade colonists’ settlement west of the Appalachians. Taxation to fund the debt affected all colonists, from northern merchants to owners of southern plantations, sparking resistance until the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781.

812

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The British sent a powerful army and nav y to defeat the colonists, while colo- nists engaged in war both against the British and viciously among themselves. As British forces burned coastal towns and occupied New York, Philadelphia, and other crucial centers of commerce and government, George Washington headed the Continental A rmy, which lacked clothing, food, pay, and efficient recruiting. In the background, revolutionaries and loyalists burned one another’s property and other wise inflicted horrific damage on neighbors holding opposite views. Even so, against large British armies in battle formation, the colonists proved effective at guerrilla warfare, sniping with bows and arrows if they lacked guns. Others joined in: colonial women fed armies in their vicinity, k nitted and sewed clothing, and cared for the wounded. Critical help arrived from countries inter- ested in block ing British expansionism, foremost among these France but also Spain and the Netherlands. Substantial assistance from the French under the Marquis de Lafayette ultimately brought the British to surrender at Yorktown in 1781 (see again Map 22.1).

Growing immigration had made the United States ethnically diverse well before its founding. Uprisings and disputes over trade and taxation followed the 1781 vic- tory, showing that a strong federation, or union of states, was needed. The Articles of Confederation, drawn up in 1777 as a provisional constitution, proved weak because they gave the central government few powers. A “frail and tottering edi- fice seems ready to fall upon our heads and crush us beneath its ruins,” A lexander Hamilton, Washington’s trusted aide, warned.9 In 1787, a Constitutional Conven- tion met in Philadelphia to draft a new constitution. Two-thirds of the delegates were educated law yers, many of them versed in Enlightenment thought, but some had humble beginnings, including a delegate from Connecticut who had worked as a shoemaker before becoming a merchant. Most, however, were men of prop- erty: George Washington, who presided over the meeting, not only had a substan- tial plantation (like others in the group) but also was the owner and manager of his wife’s hundreds of slaves.

The Constitution enshrined the contract theory of government from the En- lightenment with its opening words: “We the people of the United States in order to form a more perfect union . . . .” The document also reflected a primary motive of these well-off founders in creating a strong government: to protect the right to private property. W hat, however, should the Constitution say about slaves, indi- viduals who were themselves property? Should slavery be acknowledged, as many of the representatives from the southern states wanted, or should it be abolished, as major participants such as A lexander Hamilton of New York believed? Born in the Caribbean of a poor family, Hamilton’s job as a bookkeeper while still a young

federation A union of equal and sovereign states rather than a thoroughly integrated nation.

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teenager gave him valuable connections with merchant families in North America; they helped him relocate to New York City, where he attended Columbia College and then studied law. His roots in the Caribbean made Hamilton abhor the slave system. “The existence of slavery,” he wrote, “makes us fancy many things that are founded neither in reason or experience.”10

Hamilton lost this argument. The new Constitution, formally adopted in 1789, echoed the aims of the revolution and the rights of individuals—except slaves and women. It fostered commerce and the spirit of industry by providing stable laws.

Samuel Jennings, Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences (1792) This painting shows Liberty displaying Enlightenment accomplishments in the arts and sciences to freed slaves. A lthough across the West, Liberty was usually depicted as a woman, the principles of equal citizenship expressed in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence did not apply to women, A frican A mericans, or native A mericans. (The Library Company of Philadelphia)

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Its banking structure promised reliability in the international credit markets, and it advanced U.S. involvement with the global economy by lifting restrictions on commerce and business life. The political rights given to the minority—the enfran- chised white men—by the U.S. Constitution and by state law inspired this burst of activity, innovation, and enterprise. To achieve the Constitution, the founders, as men of the Enlightenment, negotiated, made concessions, and came to hard- fought agreements. The U.S. Constitution thus became a monument to consen- sus politics and to the form of government called a republic. Given the heated disputes, George Washington wrote to the Marquis de Lafayette in France that achieving the document was “little short of a miracle.”

The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire

FOCUS What changes emerged from the French Revolution and napoleon’s reign?

In 1780, on the eve of victory in its War of Independence, the fledgling United States had only about 2.7 million people, but its triumph had a powerful impact on the far larger population in Europe. “The [French] nation has been awakened by our revolution,” Ambassador Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1788 to President George Washington, “they feel their strength, they are enlightened.”11 More directly, the cost of French participation in global warfare with Britain, including the North American War of Independence, hastened the collapse of the monarchy. France’s taxation policy put the cost of warfare on the poor and exempted the wealthy from paying their share. In 1789, less than a decade after the victory at Yorktown, the French people took matters into their own hands, ultimately ousting the king and launching a republic. The French Revolution resonated far and wide, and under the French conqueror Napoleon Bonaparte, revolutionary principles advanced across Europe and beyond, even as Europe’s monarchs struggled to halt the march of “liberty, equality, fraternity.”

From Monarchy to Republic 1789–1792 Having borrowed recklessly (as had his predecessors) to pursue wars and princely living, the French monarch Louis X V I (r. 1774–1793) in 1787 was met with a firm “no” when he asked for more loans from bankers and financial help from the aris- tocracy. The king was forced to summon the Estates General—a representative

republic A political system in which the interests of all citizens are represented in the government.

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body that had not met since 1614—to the palace at Versailles to bail out the government. Members of the Estates General arrived at their meeting in May 1789, carrying lists of grievances from people of all occupations and walks of life.

Competing agendas converged at the meeting of the Estates General: those of the monarchy to repair its finances; those of the nobility to take power from the king; and those of the common people, who at the time were suffering from crop failures, heav y taxation, governmental restraints on trade, and a slowdown in business because of bad harvests. The meeting quickly broke down when rep- resentatives of the middle classes and common people left the general meeting. They were joined by sympathetic, reform-minded aristocrats and clergymen such as Abbé Sieyès, who asked what this mass of commoners meant to the kingdom. “Everything,” he responded to his own question. “W hat has it been until now in the political order? Nothing.”12 This varied group of representatives declared itself a National Assembly of “citizens” of France, not the lowly subjects of a king.

Soon much of France was overwhelmed by enthusiasm for this new government based on citizen consent. On July 14, 1789, crowds in Paris stormed the Bastille, a notorious prison where people could be incarcerated simply at the king’s orders. The liberation of the Bastille by the people of Paris so symbolized the French Rev- olution that it became France’s national holiday, just as the Declaration of Inde- pendence on July 4 eventually made that Independence Day in the United States.

In its first years, Enlightenment principles and strong citizen protest motivated the legislators of the National Assembly, who like U.S. revolutionary leaders were mostly from the propertied classes. With peasants rioting in the countryside against the unfair rule of aristocratic landowners, in August 1789 the nobility surrendered its privileges, such as its exemption from taxation. Later that month the National Assembly issued the “Declaration of the R ights of Man and of the Citizen,” an an- nouncement of the basic rights possessed by each citizen, including rights to free speech, to property ownership, and to safety from arbitrary acts of the state. In 1791, Olympe de Gouges issued a “Declaration of the R ights of Woman and the Female Citizen,” declaring, “Woman is born free and lives equal to man in her rights.”

In October 1789, the market women of Paris, protesting the soaring cost of food, marched to the palace of Versailles and captured the royal family, bringing it to live “with the people” in the city and thus showing that monarchs existed to serve the people. The government passed laws reducing the power of the clergy and abol- ishing the guild system and other institutions that slowed trade. Suddenly people could pursue the jobs they wanted on their own terms outside guild restrictions. Enthusiastic demonstrations by newly empowered citizens helped make the liberal Enlightenment program of freedom for the person and for trade a reality.

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These early acts of the French Revolution stirred the hearts and minds of many. Women petitioned for a range of rights, and for a time the power of the husband over his wife was eliminated. Across the English Channel, poet William Wordsworth cap- tured the rush of youthful belief that through newly active citizens the world would be reborn: “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very heaven!” The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen inspired the addition of a Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution, which outlined the essential rights, such as freedom of speech, that the government could never overthrow. English author Mary Wollstone- craft penned A Vindication of the Rights of Man (1790) in defense of the revolution.

Women’s March to Versailles A lthough the French Revolution began with the ceremonial meeting of the Estates General, people from many livelihoods soon joined in. In October 1789, the market women of the city marched to the royal palace at Versailles, returning the monarch to the city of Paris, where they could keep an eye on him.

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Two years later Wollstonecraft followed up with A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), a globally influential work that saw men’s privileges over women as similar to the French aristocracy’s privileges over the peasantry. Wollstone- craft wrote from bitter experience. Born into a well-to-do family, her brother not only inherited most of the family estate but also took his sisters’ inheritances for himself. Destitute, they had to earn a living without having been trained to do so. Wollstonecraft first became a governess and then a journalist, whose classic works protested that the legal privileges of men allowed them to impoverish women. Wollstonecraft’s book was evidence for Mirza Abu Talib K han’s Vindication of the Liberties of the Asiatic Women (1801). A well-traveled Indian official, he claimed that women in Asia had complete control over family funds whereas European women were left utterly without resources.

War, Terror, and Resistance 1792–1799 As revolutionar y fer vor spread across national borders, in the spring of 1792 the royal houses of Austria and Prussia declared war on France. Wartime brought to power the law yer Ma x imilien Robespierre, who became convinced that it was time to do away with the monarchy and to establish a republic. Patriotic holi- days to replace religious ones, dishes with revolutionar y slogans, and new laws mak ing the family more egalitarian turned the countr y upside down. Workshops were set up for the unemployed to earn a living by mak ing war goods, and all citizens were urged to help the war effort. In 1793 both K ing Louis X V I and Queen Marie A ntoinette were executed by guillotine—an “enlightened ” mode of execution because it k illed swiftly and reduced suffering. France prepared for total transformation.

Claiming that there could be no rights in wartime, Robespierre and the newly created Committee of Public Safety stamped out free speech, squashed the wom- en’s clubs aiming to gain the rights of citizenship, and executed people such as Olympe de Gouges. This was the Terror, during which the government murdered people from all classes and livelihoods—from the highest to the lowest—because enemies of the republic, the government claimed, lurked on all rungs of the social ladder. To justify its actions, the Committee of Public Safety turned to Rousseau’s idea of the general will. Rousseau’s interpretation of the social contract main- tained that once agreement among citizens had created a state, that state acted with a higher wisdom with which truly loyal citizens could not disagree, especially in wartime. The “general will” or collective spirit justified the Terror’s mass execu- tions and the suspension of individual rights and even free thought. The concept was one of the French Revolution’s most powerful revolutionary legacies, enacted

general will The political concept that once agreement among citizens creates a state, that state is endowed with a higher wisdom about policies with which virtuous citizens could not disagree.

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not only by totalitarian regimes in the twentieth century but even by democracies during times of stress.

By 1794, largely because the war was turning in France’s favor, moderate politicians regained public support and overthrew Robespierre’s faction. Simultaneously, France’s revolutionary armies went on the offensive, spreading the idea of rights, constitutions, and republicanism to countries across Europe. These citizen-soldiers believed in republican government, especially the upward mobility in the revolutionary army. A newly minted officer, the young Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821), seized the opportunity.

Napoleon’s Reign 1799–1815 Bonaparte, born into a modest Corsican family, became commander-in-chief of the French revolutionary army in Italy at the age of twenty-seven. A student of En- lightenment thought and an avid reader of history, Napoleon entered the army just as its aristocratic officers were fleeing the revolution by moving to other countries. R ising to power through the ranks, he attempted the conquest of Egypt in 1798 but escaped the country as he began to lose the campaign. Returning to France, Napoleon took advantage of the turbulent political scene to seize power, crowning himself emperor in 1804. “As in Rome, it took a dictator to save the Republic,”13 Napoleon said.

Yet Napoleon solidified many revolutionary changes, notably those concerning citizenship and the right to private property, as outlined in the Code Napoleon (1803–1804), a new set of basic laws. The Code set rules for property, ending re- strictions on sales of the nobility’s land and establishing rules for assets such as bonds, stocks, and mortgages. The Code advanced prosperity by providing secure laws for commercial, industrial, and agricultural livelihoods; Napoleon’s founding of national schools for teachers, engineers, and the military served this end too. In the realm of family law, however, the Code reversed gains made by women during the revolution by making the wages and other property of married women the legal property of their husbands and by not allowing them to be guardians of their own children. Financial impoverishment gave women no choices in life but to remain loyal wives—principles that Napoleon’s triumphant armies spread through Europe and that encouraged imitators around the world. He thus enforced Rousseau’s idea that women should raise the next generation of citizens but not be equal citizens themselves.

Maintaining loyalty by keeping the nation at war and plundering other coun- tries, Napoleon launched successful wars against Spain, the German states, and Italy (see Map 22.2). Then, in 1812, he made a disastrous attempt to invade and

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MAP 22.2 Napoleonic Europe, 1796–1815 Napoleon’s Europe was tumultuous and bloody until 1815, when the allied forces of Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Great Britain finally defeated the French emperor’s “Grand A rmy.” French forces brought revolutionary ideas and aroused national feeling but suffered from imperial overreach; victors redrew the political map of Europe to ensure a balance of power.

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conquer Russia. The Russian army, the Russian people, and deadly winter condi- tions combined to deal him a catastrophic defeat. A coalition of German, Russian, Austrian, and British forces defeated Napoleon in Paris in 1814 and then defini- tively at Waterloo in 1815.

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At the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815), the coalition resettled the boundaries of European states in hopes of blocking further reforms (see again Map 22.2). It was far too late to stamp out the principles of constitutional government and nat- ural rights, however. Monarchs (including France’s) restored to their thrones in 1815 found limitations on their powers. Moreover, Napoleon’s military campaigns spread principles of rights and citizenship and lodged them in people’s minds around the world.

Muhammad Ali and the Revolutionary Spirit in Egypt Despite Napoleon’s ultimate defeat, the revolutionary legacy fomented reform activity for more rational government not only across Europe but also outside it. W hen the French revolutionary armies under Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, they faced the forces of the Ottoman Empire, whose administration, like that of other great land-based empires, was in decline. From time to time a modernizing sultan came to power hoping to enact reforms, but the entrenched powers of the janissaries (elite troops) and ulamas (learned Muslim authorities) usually put a stop to such efforts. The similarly entrenched Mamluk (M A M-luke) military force that ran the Egyptian government increasingly alienated landlords and other elites with its violence and demands for more taxes.

To some among these elites, the Atlantic revolutions provided a wealth of ideas for reform. Napoleon entered the country accompanied by a huge team of doctors, artists, scientists, and other learned men armed with proposals for more enlight- ened rule. Amid combined resistance from local Mamluk leaders, Ottomans, and British, the French army departed Egypt, leaving behind rising interest in Euro- pean ideas, political innovation, and technology.

Muhammad A li (1769–1849) was a prime student of “enlightened” ways. An officer in the Ottoman forces, Muhammad A li had worked his way up the military ranks during the anti-French campaign. Born in the Ottoman Balkans (present-day A lbania), Muhammad A li began his career as a merchant before the Ottoman army drafted him as part of the A lbanian quota of young men owed to the Ottomans. Muhammad A li’s rise to power was based on military accomplishments and on the negotiating skills he learned as a merchant. As a politician he exchanged favors with ordinary people and persuaded wealthy traders and soldiers alike to support his ouster of the hated Mamluks.

Appointed viceroy in 1805, Muhammad A li set out to modernize Egypt, hiring French and other European administrators, technicians, and military men to advise him. Illiterate until he was forty-seven, he had many works translated into Arabic, the translations being read to him as they progressed. One major work, a translation of Italian political theorist Machiavelli’s The Prince, he cut short

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Napoleon Celebrates the Birthday of Muhammad Napoleon’s invasion of Eg ypt simultaneously brutalized and tried to accommodate Eg yptians. The French army ransacked homes and public buildings, but some Eg yptians welcomed the books and scientific drawings Napoleon made available to them in the name of Enlightenment.

because the message was “commonplace,” Muhammad A li reportedly announced. “I see clearly that I have nothing to learn from Machiavelli. I know many more tricks than he knew.”14 He advanced economic specialization in the country, spon- soring the large-scale production of cotton by several hundred thousand slaves while discouraging agriculture that was not for the market. Centralization of gov- ernment, founding of public schools, improved transportation, and tighter bureau- cratic control of Islam rounded out Muhammad A li’s reforms. His death in 1849 left his dream to make Egypt fully independent of the Ottomans unfulfilled, but he remained for many the founder of modern Egypt.

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Revolution Continued in the Western Hemisphere

FOCUS What were the motives and methods of revolutionaries in the caribbean and latin America?

Such was the strength of late eighteenth-century global contacts that news of the French and American Revolutions quickly spread to other parts of the Atlantic world. In the Western Hemisphere, revolutions broke out on the island of Hispan- iola, motivating slave revolts elsewhere and arousing fear among whites. In Latin America, rebellion erupted not only among slaves and oppressed workers but also among middle- and upper-class creoles such as Simón Bolívar who wanted inde- pendence from Spain and Portugal. The Napoleonic Wars disturbed global trade, adding further to discontent and swelling the calls for political change.

Revolution in Haiti 1791–1804 News of the French Revolution spread to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, where the sugar plantations and coffee farms enriched merchants, plantation owners, and sugar refiners—whites and free blacks alike. The western part of the island was the French colony of Saint-Domingue (san-doe-M A NGH, modern Haiti). The eastern part of Hispaniola was Santo Domingo (modern Dominican Republic), a colony of Spain. Saint-Domingue was the wealthiest colony in the region, in part because the newly independent United States could now purchase sugar from French rather than British plantations, and it did so from Saint-Domingue. Merchants in France poured vast sums into expanding production to reap profits there.

Caribbean slaves lived and died under inhumane conditions. The hot, humid climate made work punishing and kept their life span short. Some committed sui- cide; women used plant medicines to induce abortions and prevent bearing chil- dren who would live in misery. Slaves also developed community bonds to sustain them. The spirit of community and resistance arose from the daily trade of vegeta- bles grown by the slaves in their small garden plots, from the use of a common lan- guage made up of French and various A frican dialects, and from joint participation in Vodoun and other religious traditions among slaves on the islands.

Solidarity and suffering made the Caribbean ripe for revolution. Slave uprisings took place regularly, and, as we saw in Chapter 21, individual slaves escaped into the forests and hills to create new maroon communities, some of which wrested independence from Spain. Added to this, the Caribbean—like the entire Atlantic region—was a crossroads of ideas. Among those ideas were freedom and human

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rights, circulating not only among African and North American slaves but also among the several thousand free blacks and mulattos in Haiti, who constituted some 30 percent of the slave owners in the region. W hen whites passed legislation discriminating against them, these successful black landowners and traders lobbied politicians in Paris for equality. The outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 made their demands grow louder. “You must return to these oppressed citizens,” a group of free blacks entreated the National Assembly in October 1789, “the rights that have been unjustly stripped from them.” As one free black put it in 1790, all were “more committed than ever to uphold [our rights] with the last drop of our blood.”15

Rumors that French revolutionaries had freed them spread among the slaves, and in 1791 an organized slave uprising erupted in Saint-Domingue (see Map 22.3). From a cluster of leaders, the free black Pierre-Dominique Toussaint Louverture (too-SAN loo-ver-CHUR E) emerged as the most able military commander. The

slave revolt moved from suc- cess to success, and in 1794, against the wishes of plantation owners and merchants—both black and white—the French revolutionary government for- mally declared that blacks had rights equal to those of whites. Toussaint, himself a former slave and one grateful to France for its support of black equality, joined the French in driving back the British and Spanish, who had intervened in hopes of conquering the French portion of the island for themselves. W hen black plantation owners refused to cooperate politi- cally or economically with ex- slaves, civil war broke out. In 1800 Toussaint overcame this too and issued a series of stiff reforms. Although slaves were free, they were to return to the sugar plantations, Toussaint

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MAP 22.3 Haitian Rebellion and Independence, 1791–1804 In the French colony of Saint-Domingue the sale of slaves and the sugar they produced brought with it the flow of new ideas from around the world. Slavery led to grievances but also solidarity: free blacks protested racism too. In 1791, slaves in Saint-Domingue revolted and ultimately declared themselves the independent nation of Haiti.

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legislated, and for their work they would receive a quarter of the profit from sugar production. The owners would receive another fourth, and the gov- ernment would receive half.

By this time, however, Napoleon had come to power in France. Answering the appeal of Saint- Domingue plantation owners—who wanted far more profit than 25 percent—he determined to “pursue the rebels without mercy [and] flush them out,” thereby regaining the upper hand in the colony.16 The campaign led to the capture of Toussaint, who died in jail in 1803. A ll blacks now united against any French takeover, as the invad- ing army suffered huge losses—some fifty thou- sand of an army of fifty-eight thousand—many of them from yellow fever. On January 1, 1804, the black generals who defeated the French pro- claimed the independent republic of Haiti.

Revolutions in Latin America, 1810–1830 The thirst for change gripped people in other em- pires. In Spain’s Latin American empire discon- tent among artisans, agricultural workers, and slaves, along with rivalries among creoles and Spanish-born officials sent from the homeland, erupted after the Napoleonic con- quest of the Iberian peninsula in 1808. “It is now time to overthrow the [Spanish] yoke,” a group of rebels in La Paz (capital of Bolivia today) declared in 1809. “It is now time to declare the principle of liberty in these miserable colonies.”17 This spirit swept the Spanish lands, as the government back home in Europe crumbled.

W hen Napoleon invaded Spain and Portugal in 1807, he sent the ruling dy- nasties packing to give his own family control. The Portuguese monarch fled to Brazil in hopes of ruling the empire from the colonies, while in Spain the monarch was replaced by Napoleon’s brother Joseph. Guerrilla warfare erupted against the French while Spanish activists also organized juntas (HUN-tahs), or ruling coun- cils, around the country despite French rule. In 1808, a national junta unveiled a broad program of reform. In the Spanish colonies, political confusion set in. Like imperial rulers elsewhere, the Spanish kings had come to treat their colonies as junta A ruling council.

Toussaint Louverture In 1791, Toussaint Louverture, a freed slave and slave owner, joined a slave revolt that erupted in Saint-Domingue, France’s prosperous Caribbean sugar colony. Louverture, shown here in his general’s uniform, possessed strong military skills and soon became the leader of the Haitian Revolution, writing the constitution of the fledgling nation.

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cash cows, milking them dry to pay for a lavish way of life in Europe. In the disor- der brought on by the Napoleonic invasions, reform-minded colonial leaders saw an opportunity to end these heav y burdens by ousting Spain entirely.

The Napoleonic Wars opened up the possibility of transformative change. Be- cause Spain was allied with Britain in the wars against Napoleon, people in the Spanish colonies had new contacts and new opportunities. Like Britain, Spain had formerly tried to prevent its colonies from manufacturing their own goods or trad- ing directly with other countries. A ll goods were to be carried in Spanish vessels. Trade-minded local creoles resented these restrictions, as well as the privileged place of Spanish traders and the monopoly on good jobs enjoyed by Spanish aris- tocrats. The wars threw open ports to British vessels carrying both new ideas and new products. Mule drivers, parish priests, and market people also spread global news, alerting neighborhoods in distant towns to the possibility for change. Aspir- ing leaders saw a situation full of potential. Their struggles for independence would last until 1830 (see Map 22.4).

Reformers and rebels sprang into action throughout Latin America. In the lucra- tive colony of Mexico, Father Miguel Hidalgo, a Mexican priest trained in Enlight- enment thought by the Jesuits and exiled by the Spanish to a rural parish because of his ideas, opened a campaign against colonial rule in 1810. His soldiers were his parishioners, most of them native American day laborers for the Spanish and creoles. The collapse of silver mining and the soaring prices of food made them desperate. Hidalgo’s army swelled to some sixty thousand fighters, who hoped to get paid or fed as they fought. The average fighter, in the opinion of the Mexican viceroy however, was a “robber, assassin, and libertine.”18 Hidalgo’s followers, mo- tivated in fact by outrage at the poverty and oppression, slaughtered Spaniards, creoles, and anyone else who stood in their path.

Father Hidalgo was captured and executed in 1811, but other armies appeared under the leadership of mulattos, mestizos (mixed-blood people of native Ameri- can and European ancestry), and well-born creoles, who wanted the Spanish out and opportunity reborn. The Spanish, however, were able to turn other native Americans, slaves, and mestizos against creole-led armies by pointing out that cre- oles owned the exploitative large farms. By 1815 the Spanish had put an end to this first stage of the Mexican drive for independence and had executed its leaders— adding to the hatred of colonialism that many felt.

Amid ongoing attacks from bandits and personal armies, discontented creoles set aside their prejudices to unite with the native masses. They developed an effec- tive nationalist sensibility, accepting the idea to distinguish all those inhabitants of Mexico born in the New World—the Americanos—from those born in Spain.

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Revolutions in Latin America, 1810–1830

1821

MAP 22.4 Revolutions in Latin A merica, 1810–1830 As revolution rolled across the Atlantic world, colonial subjects in Latin A merica were equally roused to prolonged and wide-ranging struggles for independence from Spain. People from many walks of life and ethnicities as well as soldiers from different parts of the world were all motivated by the potential for revolutionary transformation.

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Continued guerrilla fighting eroded the institutions of Spanish rule in Mexico, but the decisive move came when the creole leader Augustin de Iturbide (ee-tur-BEE- deh) allied his forces with Vicente Guerrero (goo-R ER-eh), a leader of the pop- ular armies, himself a mestizo. Iturbide had once served the Spanish as an army officer, winning battles and collecting tribute for the government, but his creole birth blocked his advance. Resentment of unearned Spanish privilege made him a natural ally of people who were also held back by what the Spanish saw as low birth—that is, native American, black, mestizo, or mulatto. Iturbide’s and Guer- rero’s forces reached an agreement for a constitutional monarchy independent of Spain. In 1821, the three hundredth anniversary of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, Iturbide entered Mexico City as Spanish rule disintegrated. Still, the start of Father Hidalgo’s uprising of the common people on September 16, 1810, not this event, came to mark Mexico’s Day of Independence.

Across South America similar independent rebel armies sprang up, most of them controlled by a local strongman, or caudillo (kauh-DEE-yoh), who was able to raise armies from people of all classes and ethnicities. W hile keeping peace lo- cally, the caudillos had as many problems getting along with one another as they did enduring Spanish rule. One quality these creoles shared, however, was their contempt for native Americans, A fricans, mulattos, and mestizos. Simón Bolívar mustered caudillo support to liberate Venezuela in 1811, but at the time he firmly believed that slavery could be maintained in the fight for national independence.

Nonetheless, with the Spanish monarch’s return to power after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, it became clear that creoles in Latin America needed to ally themselves with oppressed workers, agricultural laborers, and the llaneros (yah- NEH-rows), or local cowboys, of all races (see Lives and Livelihoods: The Cowboy Way of Life). A llying with the llaneros, Bolívar called for the forging of a Gran Colombia—a united nation like the United States, composed of all lands liberated from the foreign-born Spanish. Spanish oppression, the appeal to all “Americans,” and the help of black troops enabled Bolívar to take Bogotá, Caracas, and Quito by 1822. In the meantime Argentinean general José de San Martin conquered Buenos Aires, western Argentina, and Chile, moving into Peru in 1818. His armies bogged down in Peru, however, leaving the final task of ousting the Spanish to Bolívar, whose armies finally took Lima in 1823 and upper Peru or Bolivia in 1825 (see again Map 22.4). Both San Martin and Bolívar had originally seen no con- flict between their own freedom and the existence of slavery, but as the need for slave support became obvious, Bolívar declared it “madness that a revolution for liberty should try to maintain slavery.”19 Many liberation leaders thus promised and awarded slave soldiers their emancipation, either immediately as a way of at- tracting fighters or after the wars as a reward for victory.

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Brazil gained its independence from Portugal more tranquilly and with little change in the social situation: slavery and the bureaucracy alike were left intact. The ruling family, safe in Brazil, was summoned back to Portugal at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, but the king left his son Pedro behind in the capital of R io de Janeiro. Pedro proceeded to cooperate with business and other leaders and in 1822 declared Brazil independent of Portugal and made himself king. With the masses set against Portuguese foreigners, there was widespread rejoicing at independence even without major social change. A frontier society like the United States, Brazil beckoned entrepreneurs, adventurers, and exiles from around the world as a land of opportunity.

In general, however, the new Latin A merican countries had been so devastated by years of exploitation, misrule, banditr y, and armed uprising that except in Brazil, economies lay in shambles. Instead of effecting social reform that would have encouraged economic initiative, most new governments worked to ensure creole dominance, often refusing the promised slave emancipation. In 1799 a Spanish bishop-elect had noted the “great conflict of interests and the hostil- ity which invariably prevails between those who have nothing and those who have ever y thing.”20 Independence did not transform this situation, and thus the grass-roots forces that would have promoted innovation and increased activity were thwarted.

New Ideologies and Revolutionary Legacies Despite the failure of the revolutions in the Americas and Europe to bring full and free citizenship to slaves, women, and a range of other oppressed peoples, they nonetheless inspired hopes for the economic opportunity and personal freedom that define the term liberalism. Inspired by Enlightenment principles, revolution- aries sought to create centralized nation-states ruled under a constitution instead of arbitrary rulings by monarchs and aristocrats. In the early days of both the North American and French republics, this faith in a unified nation of like-minded peo- ples, which came to be known as nationalism, went hand in hand with liberalism. The unified rule of law under a single nation, as embodied in the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of the R ights of Man, would guarantee constitutional rights and economic growth through free trade. Latin American leaders such as Bolívar had much less faith in all the people of the nation being ready for participation in government.

Complicating ideas of nationalism, opponents of the new governments of the United States and France believed that time-honored monarchical traditions were a better guarantee of a peaceful society than constitutions and republics. Such thought was called conservatism, and many prominent conservatives, appalled

nationalism A belief in the importance of one’s nation, stemming from its unique laws, language, traditions, and history.

conservatism A political philosophy emphasizing the continuation of traditional institutions and opposition to sudden change in the established order.

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LIVES AND LIVELIHOODS

The Cowboy Way of Life One of the most important livelihoods in the West- ern Hemisphere was that of cowboys or cattle hunters. Called gauchos in Argentina, llaneros in Venezuela and Colombia, and vaqueros in Mexico, cowboys rode the prairies rounding up the wild horses and cattle that grazed there. They created their livelihood, for only after 1494 when Colum- bus first introduced cattle into the Caribbean did cattle spread across both North and South America. As the livestock multiplied, cowboys hunted down the wild animals and slaughtered them. Cowboys developed an entire range of skills, making lassos, for example, from horses’ tails. Their most lucrative products were animal hides and byproducts such as leather and tallow for candle making.

These herdsmen, similar to those on the Asian steppes, were usually nomadic. Living as far as possible from cities and the centers of government,

Gauchos Like cowboys, their North A merican counterparts, gauchos prided themselves on skills with wild horses and other animals. In this etching, a gaucho hurls a rope with an attached ball to capture a rhea by entangling its legs in the rope. As South A merica developed economically, the gaucho came to symbolize its independent spirit.

romanticism A European philosophical and artistic movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that valued feeling over reason and glorified traditional customs, nature, and the imagination.

by the violence and bloodshed of the French Revolution, argued the case for tradi- tion, continuity, and gradual reform based on practical experience. Among them, Edmund Burke of England attacked Enlightenment ideas of a social contract, cit- izenship, and newfangled constitutions as destructive to the wisdom of the ages.

Like conservatism, romanticism—a philosophical and artistic movement that glorified nature, emotion, and the imagination—emerged partly in reaction to the Enlightenment’s reliance on reason, especially after the violent excesses of the French Revolution. Closely related to early nationalism, romanticism was also a response to the political turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars. Thus arose a romantic na- tionalism, especially in territories such as the German states. Romantic nationalists

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they aimed to keep their independence and to escape government regulation, which increased under the Bourbon Reforms. Cowboys in all areas usually refused to ride mares, deeming it unmanly, and generally prided themselves on maintaining the rough, masculine ways of frontiersmen. Enter- prising landowners, however, set up vast ranches and challenged the claims of the gauchos, llaneros, and vaqueros, who saw wild horses as their own.

Settled ranchers hired their own cattle tenders and then encouraged the government to see the inde- pendent cowboys as “cattle rustlers” and thieves.

Their independent way of life eventually led nation builders to mythologize gauchos, llaneros, and other cowboys as symbols of freedom for the nation as a whole. Their experience with horses and survival skills made them valuable fighters on both sides in the wars for Latin American independence.

Questions to Consider

1. For what reasons would some gauchos and llaneros ally themselves with upper-class creoles in the Latin American independence movements?

2. W hy have cowboys become such icons in both North and South America?

For Further Information:

Loy, R. Philip. Westerns and American Culture, 1930–1955. 2001. Oliven, Ruben George. Tradition Matters: Modern Gaucho Identity in Brazil. 1996. Reding, Nick. The Last Cowboys at the End of the World: The Last Gauchos of Patagonia. 2001. Slatta, Richard W. Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier. 1983.

revered language and traditions as sources of a common feeling among peoples. “Perfect laws are the beautiful and free forms of the interior life of a nation,” wrote one German jurist, criticizing reformers’ desire to take the Napoleonic Code as a model for change. For him, the Napoleonic Code had come neither “out of the life of the German nation” nor from its ancient past and shared cultural experience.21

To make the revolutionary legacy more complicated yet, Napoleon Bonaparte and Simón Bolívar ultimately became romantic heroes to rich and poor alike, even though they represented Enlightenment ideals of social mobility and economic modernizing. “My wife and I,” said one distillery worker in southern France in 1822, “have the emperor in our guts.”22 The many poets, musicians, and artists influenced

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by romanticism earned their livelihoods not only by glorifying feelings instead of reason but by spreading the myth of Napoleon and Simón Bolívar as superhuman rulers who overcame horrific obstacles to become conquerors. These powerful, if conflicting, ideas—liberalism, nationalism, conservatism, and romanticism— resonated down through the next centuries, shaping both local and global politics.

COUNTERPOINT: Religious Revival in a Secular Age

FOCUS What trends in enlightenment and revolutionary society did religious revival challenge?

In the influential cases of France and the United States, the principle of a secular state—one tied to no particular religion—flourished, supported by the Enlight- enment idea that reason rather than faith should determine social, political, and economic regulations. The French under Robespierre devised national festivals to substitute for religious holidays and even converted churches into “temples of reason.” Yet secularism did not prevail every where. In Europe and North America, great surges of religious fervor took hold of people’s daily lives, and in the Ara- bian peninsula reformers sought to restore Muslims to the fundamental teachings of Islam. Perhaps most consequentially, Muslim jihadis overthrew centuries-old kingdoms in West A frica, transforming these societies into massive slave-holding Islamic states.

Christianity’s Great Awakening The spirit of Christian revival first took shape in Prussia, where Lutherans had called for a renewal of faith in the late seventeenth century. As Protestant revival spread across the European continent, people joined new evangelical churches, most of them focused on sharpening the inward experience of faith. In the middle of the eighteenth century, a wave of revivals that historians term the “Great Awak- ening” took place throughout Britain and the North American colonies. Emo- tional orators such as the English preachers John Wesley and George W hitefield roused the faithful to join new communities of faith such as Methodism, the evan- gelical Protestant church founded by Wesley and characterized by active concern with social welfare and public morals. Some observers were appalled by the sight of worshippers literally weeping at the perils of damnation, finding the scene “hor- rible beyond expression.”23 Nonetheless, in the middle colonies of British North

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READING THE PAST

Phillis Wheatley, “On Being Brought from Africa to America” Born in Senegal in 1853, Phillis Wheatley was

seven when she was sold into slavery to a Boston

family, who educated her along with their chil-

dren. Wheatley published celebrated poetry while

a slave, becoming a sensation in New England and

even traveling to England in 1773. A voyager to

three continents, Wheatley was a true child of the

Atlantic world. This poem, written while she was

a teenager, contains a host of ideas and images

about slavery. As you read, consider why this short

verse might pose problems for some modern

readers.

’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,

Taught my benighted soul to understand

That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too:

Once I redemption neither sought now knew,

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,

“Their colour is a diabolic die.”

Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,

May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.

Examining the Evidence

1. In what ways does this poem reflect Enlightenment thought?

2. How does it relate to the Great Awakening?

3. W hich ideas in the poem might present-day critics condemn? W hich ideas might they praise?

America alone, some 550 new Protestant congregations were organized between 1740 and 1770.

A frican American slaves were also fervent believers, finding in religion evidence of their humanity (see Reading the Past: Phillis W heatley, “On Being Brought from A frica to America”). Religion later provided arguments for an end to slavery as part of a rising democratic impulse among people who together addressed their comments directly and emotionally to God. Beginning around 1800, the United States experienced a Second Great Awakening in the face of the growth of science, rationalism, and emotional coldness in the old churches. Despite religious enthusi- asm, governments such as that of the United States declined to proclaim an official faith because of their people’s religious diversity and because of Enlightenment thinkers’ suspicion of churches as institutions.

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Government and Religion Allied In some instances, ties between government and religion became stronger, not weaker. In the Arabian peninsula an eighteenth-century religious reformer, Muhammad ibn Abd al- Wahhabi developed a strong alliance with Muhammad ibn Sa’ud, the head of a small market town. Ibn Abd al-Wahhabi called on Muslims to return to the tenets of Islam, most importantly the worship of the single god, A llah. At the time, people worshipped local fortune tellers and healers as well as graves, rocks, and trees. Thus, in one way Wahhabi revival aimed to rid Islam of its superstitions and superstitious leaders.

One traveler found Arabs “so negligent of religion” that they were “generally considered infidels.” Ibn Abd al-Wahhabi got help in his quest to return Arabs to the basic principles of Islam from the house of Sa’ud, the town’s leading family. Unity of worship would come with political unity, led in ibn Abd al-Wahhabi’s mind by the Sa’uds. They would unite the various tribes under a purified Islamic practice, realizing al-Wahhabi’s belief that “Arab” meant Muslim.24

Finally, Muslims carried out jihad across West Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centu- ries. Overturning what they saw as corrupt gov- ernments, some of them Muslim, jihadist leaders sought to restore purity in behavior and thought and to eliminate greed, vanity, and other attitudes that contradicted Islamic values. Jihad was thus both a political and an individual struggle, which

in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries entailed the overthrow of a false Islam for a true one—in this case, an Islam in which practicing Muslims were not sold into slavery while false believers were at risk. At the turn of the century, jihadi leader Uthman dan Fodio (1754–1817) was successful in establishing new purified religious governments that built slave enclaves and that ended the rule of nonbeliev- ers. As conquered nonbelievers were enslaved, the slave population soared to the point that more slaves lived in West Africa than in either Brazil or North America.

Mecca and Wahhabism Wahhabis fought for a purified Islamic faith and an end to “superstitious” beliefs. Because the pilgrimage to Mecca was one of the five “pillars” of the faith, Mecca itself, depicted here, remained a center of religious devotion that grew in importance as Islam spread around the world.

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The powerful jihadist revolution in West Africa forms a counter- point to the secularly based political revolutions in other parts of the Atlantic world. Yet, it also shows that Africans too were on the march against corrupt political rule.

Conclusion This period saw widespread challenges to centuries-old empires in the Americas, Europe, the Caribbean, West Asia, Africa, and Egypt. The most direct of these challenges came from the popular uprisings known as the Atlantic revolutions. In these revolutions, state power and rigid social structures impinged on people’s lives by promoting high taxes and controlling commerce. Deepening poverty and frustrated ambition afflicted ordinary folk, whether in France or in Peru, causing both riots and political activism. These economic conditions awakened some revolutionaries. Others were inspired to push for political reform by Enlightenment ideas about government based on individual rights and the rational rule of law rather than on inherited privilege and notions of a divine order. Simón Bolívar was one such secular-minded revolutionary and state-builder. Other political actors, such as the Sa’ud family of the Arabian peninsula and jihadis in West Africa, drew on religious fervor in their state-building, forming a counterpoint to the general trend.

Independence in the Western Hemisphere affected the entire world. As frontier societies, North American and Latin American countries served as magnets for European investment and for people searching for better livelihoods. Still, count- less people of all classes and ethnicities who participated in the uprisings in the Atlantic world benefited not at all or in the most limited way. Slavery remained entrenched and even expanded in some countries; women, free blacks, and other people of color were usually disqualified from participating in politics. As repre- sentative government developed, it too was uneven, especially in Latin America, where a creole elite dominated the new nations.

These political revolutions nonetheless formed a platform for further social and economic change, and we remember them for their powerful and enduring influence. In the short term, the revolutions created conditions for heightened manufacturing and eventually the Industrial Revolution. In the long term, they gave citizens confidence to use their freedom. “It is harder to release a nation from servitude than to enslave a free nation,” Bolívar had written, quoting the Enlight- enment author Montesquieu, and in this respect the age of revolutions nurtured aspirations and opened up opportunities.25

0

0 200 Kilometers

200 Miles

Arabian Sea

Red Sea

Persian Gulf

Riyadh

Mecca

Baghdad

Medina

Arabia, 1802–1807

O�oman Empire Core Wahhabi territory, c. 1800 Area of Wahhabi in�uence, c. 1818 Wahhabi a�ack, 1802–1807

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A rabia, 1802–1807

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review The major global development in this chapter: The Atlantic revolutions and their short- and long-term significance.

Important Events

1751–1772 Publication of the Encyclopedia

1762 Jean-Jacques Rousseau publishes The Social Contract and Emile

1775–1781 Revolution in North America

1776 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

1789 U.S. Constitution formally adopted; revolution begins in France

1791 Revolution begins in Haiti

1792 France declared a republic; Mary Wollstonecraft writes A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

1799 Napoleon comes to power

1804 Haiti becomes independent from France

1811 Simón Bolívar first takes up arms against Spain

1815 Napoleon is defeated at Waterloo; Congress of Vienna resettles the boundaries of Euro- pean states

1816 Argentina becomes independent from Spain

1817 Chile becomes independent from Spain

1821 Mexico and Peru become independent from Spain

1822 Brazil becomes independent from Portugal

1825 Bolivia becomes independent from Spain

KEY TERMS conservatism (p. 829) contract government (p. 804) federation (p. 813) general will (p. 818)

junta (p. 825) laissez faire (p. 805) liberalism (p. 805) nationalism (p. 829)

public sphere (p. 806) republic (p. 815) romanticism (p. 830)

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M a k i n g C o n n e c t i o n s

CHAPTER OVERVIEW QUESTIONS 1. W hat role did the scientific revolution

and expanding global contacts play in the cultural and social movement known as the Enlightenment?

2. W hy did prosperous and poor people alike join revolutions in the A mericas and in France?

3. W hy were the Atlantic revolutions so influential, even to the present day?

MAKING CONNECTIONS 1. W hat was the relationship between the Enlight-

enment and the political revolutions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries?

2. W hat are the common challenges that centuries- old empires faced during this period?

3. W hat makes Napoleon a significant historical figure?

4. W hy was there so much bloodshed in the various efforts to achieve political and social change?

For further research into the topics covered in this chapter, see the Bibliography at the end of the book. For additional primary sources from this period, see Sources for World in the Making.