Lecture 23—Revolutions in the Transatlantic World

The Transatlantic Revolutions: The revolutions of 1776-1824 changed the life of the Americas and Europe. These revolutions were inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment and by each other, from the USA to France to South America. As a result, the largest republic in history was created in North America, the Old Regime was destroyed in Europe, and Spain and Portugal's colonies became republics as well. Further, slavery now came under attack. Political and economic life was freed from old limits and regulations. With slavery fading, wage labor was rising. This age also gave birth to nationalism as a political force. The American and French revolutions (especially the French) showed the power of a nation at arms.

Revolution in the British Colonies in North America:

Resistance to the Imperial Search for Revenue: In the French and Indian War / Seven Years War (1754/1756-1763), Britain and its colonies finally conquered Canada from the French (among many other gains), but the war left Britain financially drained. Britain needed money and to reorganize, govern, and defend its new territories. The Sugar Act of 1764 cracked down on the smuggling of sugar, while lowering the tax in hopes of more effective enforcement of the lower rate to raise revenues. (Smuggling was rife in the colonies. John Hancock of Boston smuggled 1.5 million gallons of molasses a year, evading 35,000 pounds worth of taxes. This was roughly equivalent to 2,059,988.39 in 2007 dollars.). The Stamp Act of 1765, which spawned huge colonial protests that led to its repeal in 1766, imposed a tax on paper. Americans protested that the taxes were illegitimate because no colonists sat in Parliament. Parliament backed down but asserted its right to govern the colonies in the Declarative Act (1766).

American Political Ideas: The colonists asserted the rights established in the Glorious Revolution and claimed King George III (1760-1820) and his ministers were infringing upon them. They justified revolt through the social contract theory of John Locke, itself developed to justify opposition to earlier Kings of England during the Exclusion Crisis (1679-81) and the Glorious Revolution (1688). They also drew on the Commonwealthmen's critique of the system of Dutch finance introduced by William III. The Commonwealthmen believed permanent taxes led to corruption and attacked standing armies as weapons for tyranny.

Crisis and Independence:

Townshend Duties—1767—Imposed new trade duties in hopes of raising

revenue. In Boston, riots ensued on the seizure of John Hancock’s boat,

Liberty, leading to 1768 stationing of troops.

Non-Importation Movement: Large scale boycott of British goods was organized.

March 5, 1770—Townshend duties are rescinded, Boston Massacre happens. British soldiers being harrassed by a Boston mob finally snap and fire into the mob. Three civilians died there, two died later from injuries. The soldiers were put on trial, but future US President John Adams' defense of them led to the acquittal of all but two.

Committees of Correspondence: Formed to coordinate action during the

quiet which followed.

Tea Act of 1773—Allowed the importation of duty-free tea to Boston, gave a monopoly to the British East India Company. This lead to the Boston Tea Party, December 16, 1773, in which a bunch of Bostonians dressed up as Indians and threw all the BEIC tea into the harbor.

The Boston Tea Party led to the Intolerable Acts (1774):

Coercive Acts:

Boston Port Act closed Boston,

Administration ofJustice Act: Magistrates who killed

colonists to be tried in England,

Massachusetts Government Act: Increased royal control of the state government.

General Gage became govenor of Massachusetts.

Quartering Act: Enabled him to quarter troops almost

anywhere.

Quebec Act: Enlarged the size of Quebec, created a no-assembly

government with non-jury trials and full rights for Catholics.

The Continental Congresses and the American Revolution: The First Continental Congresswas called in 1774 to address the growing crisis, but was unable to reconcile with the British. A confrontation in Massachusetts when the British tried to seize a colonial armory at Concord led to violence in early 1775 and the siege of Boston. The Second Continental Congress was called in 1775 and sat until the end of the war in 1783, serving as the effective central government, though it could only persuade and beg the states, not command them. The thirteen colonies declared independence on July 4, 1776 and fought the British in a long war (1775-1783). French intervention, the difficulty of fighting a war across the ocean, and stubborn Patriot resistance eventually forced the British to give up and grant the new nation its independence.

Confederation and Constitution: The new nation was briefly governed by the very loose Articles of Confederation (1783-8), but these proved inadequate to deal with post-war depression, disputes with foreign nations, and internal trade wars between states. In 1787, a new Constitution set up the United States as a federation of states, with some powers controlled by the central government and others reserved to the states and the people. In 1789-90, a Bill of Rights was added to guarantee the rights of the people against a variety of abuses which the British had been accused of in the 1760s and 70s. The colonies embraced democracy, though only for white male property owners. (Soon, the colonies cast off property ownership as a pre-requisite of power.) They rejected hereditary nobility and proclaimed every citizen an equal; their nation was the freest in the world, even though slavery persisted and women were shut out. The Spanish and Portuguese colonies would follow American aspirations in revolting against Europe and even the French would soon have their own revolution.

Revolution in France: The Seven Years War began a fiscal crisis of French absolutism. The American Revolution only made finances worse. The nation could not impose enough taxes to pay its debts. Finally, in 1789, King Louis XVI (1774-1792) had to call the Estates General, which had not met since 1614, to get approval for new taxes.

Revolutions of 1789:

The Third Estate Becomes the National Assembly: The Estates General had three houses: First—Clergy, Second—Nobility, Third—Everyone Else. The Third Estate was twice as large as either of the others, and disputes erupted over whether a majority of all votes or a majority of estates would decide issues. In June 1789, the Third Estate, allied with a few members of other estates, declared itself the National Assembly, causing a crisis that ended with the King caving in and sending the first two estates to be part of the Assembly as individual members.

Fall of the Bastille: Louis tried to assemble troops to threaten the assembly, only to have the citizens of Paris rise up and storm his political prison, the Bastille.

The Great Fear and Surrender of Feudal Privileges: In the 'Great Fear', the peasantry now rose up and overthrew its landlords. They burned the homes of the nobles and landlords, destroyed records, and refused to pay feudal dues. On the night of August 4, 1789, the nobles of France gave up their special privileges in an attempt to contain the disturbances.

Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. On August 27, 1789, the Assembly issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. It proclaimed that all men were born free with inherent rights—"liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression." (Heritage, p. 672.) Government existed to protect these rights and could be overthrown if it failed to protect them. All were equal before the law. Freedom of religion was guaranteed and taxation would be according to wealth levels. When Louis hesitated to approve it, the citizens of Paris stormed into Versailles and forced him to come to Paris. Louis now remained under the assembly's thumb.

Reconstruction of France: The National Constituent Assembly protected property and tried to restrain small property owners and the property-less, focusing on civic equality over social equality or full democracy.

Political Reorganization: The Constitution of 1791 sought to make France a Constitutional Monarchy. A unicameral legislature, checked by the King's ability to delay legislation, was supreme, and elected by a complex formula. Only about 50,000 out of 26 million Frenchmen qualified to vote. Women could not vote; some protested. France was now reorganized into 83 departments instead of the historical provinces, and a new judicial system created.

Economic Policy: The guilds were crushed and grain now traded freely. Peasants and urban workers were disappointed due to not getting any help with their debts and hunger. In 1791, unions were banned by the Assembly. The nation tried to pay its debts through assignats, bonds backed by the value of confiscated church lands. However, too many were issued, leading to inflation.

Civil Constitution of the Clergy: The CCC, issued in 1790, turned the French clergy into servants of the state. It was a major blunder, as it provoked the Church to turn on the Revolution, along with any devout Catholics. In 1791, the Pope condemned the CCC and also the Declaration of the Rights of Man, beginning a Catholic counter-offensive against liberalism and revolution which lasted a century. It divided the loyalty of the French nation between Pope and state.

Counterrevolutionary Activity: In the summer of 1791, Louis XIV tried to escape, only to be captured and turned back. Two months later—August 27, 1791—Emperor Leopold II of Austria and King Frederick William II of Prussia issued the Declaration of Pilnitz, in which they swore to restore the royal family of France if the other major European powers agreed. This was unlikely, though, to happen at the time. But this made the Revolutionaries get paranoid.

A Second Revolution:

The Jacobins: The Jacobins were political radicals. In the newly elected Legislative Assembly in 1792, the Girondists (Jacobins led by people from the department of the Gironde) took the lead. They wanted to spread the revolution and led France into war with Habsburg Austria in April, 1792.

End of the Monarchy: The war unleashed revolutionary forces in France because it was necessary to institute a draft and call on public sentiment to fight the war successfully. Parisians set up a committee or 'commune' of elected representatives from all districts. When the war went poorly, the Paris mob turned on the King in August 1792 and imprisoned him.

The Convention and the Sans-Culottes: In September 1792, 1200 city prisoners were killed under charges of being 'counter-revolutionaries' in the September Massacres. The Paris Commune now demanded the creation of the Convention—a body to be elected by universal manhood suffrage to write a democratic constitution. The Convention took its seats on September 21, 1791; it declared France a Republic—a land without a king. The Girondists and the Sans-Culottes had driven this second revolution. The poor radicals of France (artisans, shop keepers, day laborers, etc) were known as the 'Sans-Culottes', which essentially means 'breeches-less', men who wore cheap trousers instead of fancy aristocratic knee-breeches. The Sans-Culottes wanted economic assistance and social equality and hated both the urban bourgeoise and the nobility. The more radical Jacobins, the 'Mountain', worked with them in the Convention. The Mountain and the Sans-Culottes secured the trial and execution of Louis XVI late in January, 1793. In Frebruary, the Convention declared war on Great Britain, Holland, and Spain. France was now at war with most of Europe, only to have royalists lead a revolt in the Vendee. The Girondists found they had raised a storm but could not control it.

The Reign of Terror and its Aftermath: The Reign of Terror was the period of executions and quasi-judicial murders which raged from the fall of 1793 to the summer of 1794. Somewhere between 18,000 to 40,000 people were killed.

Committee of Public Safety: Created in April 1793, it was intended to serve as an executive branch of government. The committee saw its task as that of suppressing internal and external enemies of the revolution, sometimes using the sans-culottes as tools. In June, the Sans-Culottes invaded the Convention and purged the Girondists; the Mountain now took over. A new democratic consitution was finished but suspended for the length of the war. In August, the 'levee en masse' was instituted, a national draft which would enable huge armies to be fielded. In September, price controls were made to try to help the sans-culottes.

The Society of Revolutionary Republican Women: Women now formed their own revolutionary organization. The SRRW was formed in May of 1793. It became increasingly radical. By the fall of 1793, it was banned.

The Republic of Virtue and Dechristianization: The leaders of the Committee of Public Safety believed they were creating a new kind of state, one home to virtuous civic behavior, as the philosophes had aspired to. It also would be a de-Christianized state. In October, 1793, a new calendar was instituted, stripped of Christian holidays and time-keeping. It counted the flow of time from the founding of the Republic and divided the year into 12 30 day months and 5 extra days, with ten day weeks. In November, 1793, the committee turned Notre Dame into a 'Cathedral of Reason', and began shutting down churches all over France. This aroused strong opposition.

Progress of the Terror: Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794) now came to dominate the committee; he saw the Terror as necessary to enforce civic virtue. The Reign of Terror was carried out by travelling tribunals who joined the Dechristianization campaign, hunting and executing the 'enemies of the revolution'. By 1794, Robespierre was using it to eliminate his political enemies on the right and left alike. He finally went too far, however, and on July 27th, the Ninth of Thermidor, he was shouted down in the Convention and then taken to be executed himself. The Terror soon burnt out; most of its victims had been peasants. With peasant dissent crushed and the war going well, the panicked frenzy which spawned the Terror now faded away.

The Thermidorean Reaction: End of the Terror and the Establishment of the Directory. A new constitutional arrangement followed due to the Thermidorean Reaction that ended the Terror. The Convention was now dominated by the middle-class and the sans-culottes and Jacobins lost power. The Constitution of Year III took the place of the never carried out 1793 constitution. It provided for a bicameral legislature which favored property owners. The upper house, the Council of Elders, elected a five man executive board—the Directory. As the war effort was succeeding, they now moved to suppress the sans-culottes after more bread rioting in the winter of 1794. When the Paris Commune revolted in 1795, the army was sent in (with Napoleon Bonaparte in its ranks) to mow them down.

The Napoleonic Era: Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) was from the Island of Corsica, which had only recently (1768) become French. His father secured him a 1785 commission as a French artillery lieutenant. He soon rose through the ranks and his success against the commune led to him being given an army in Italy. By October 1797, he took Austria out of the war. His invasion of Egypt, however, went poorly, and he had to abandon his army and come home to avoid capture. On Nobember 10, 1799 (19 Brumaire), allied with two of the Directors (Sieyes and Ducat), he overthrew the Directory and the legislature. He then issued the Constitution of the Year VIII, setting up a three man Consulate with himself as First Consul. This effectively ends the Revolution.

France Under the Consulate (1799-1804): Napoleon made short work of the enemies of France, forcing them all to make peace by 1802, even Britain (Treaty of Amiens). He then turned his attention to domestic reforms, consolidating his power, negotiating a power-sharing deal with Pope Pius VII in a concordat, and putting together the Napoleonic Code, a new system of civil law. It replaced a maze of feudal exceptions and patchwork law with a uniform system stripped of all remnants of feudalism, applying equally to all parts of France. It was based on a mixture of old Roman law and old French laws. It reinforced civic equality of all before the law, and finalized the abolishment of nobility and feudalism, but also reinforced traditional gender and household roles. Its main focus, however, was property law—acquisition, rights, etc.

Napoleon's Empire (1804-1815): In 1804, Napoleon made himself Emperor. Ten years of war ensued. Up to 1811, things went well for Napoleon, as he brought almost all of Europe to heel. His rule ended the last trappings of Western Feudalism, but forced Eastern Europe to build modernized armies which finally brought him down.

The War of the Three Emperors (1805-1807): In 1805, war resumed. Napoleon's fleet was destroyed at Trafalgar (1805), ruining plans to invade Britain, but he now turned east, and by 1807, he brought Austria and Prussia to heel and forced the Russians to make peace in the Treaty of Tislit. Austerlitz, his winter of 1805 victory over Russia and Austria, is often considered his greatest victory. The Holy Roman Empire was now dismantled and western Europe turned into a mix of puppet states and defeated former enemies. Napoleon now turned his efforts to trying to break Britain's economic power, but he failed.