The Age of Revolutions

Important Revolutions in History

The Age of Revolution is usually discussed in terms of three major nationwide revolts, the ideas of which became influential to the peoples of other countries who also wanted to effect change. These primary uprisings are (in order of chronology): the American, French, and Haitian revolutions. The American and French revolutions happened for similar reasons involving taxation, while the rebellion in Haiti (then called the French colony of Saint-Domingue) was a result of the practice of slavery. These revolts directly affected each other and had an impact on the dissatisfied peoples of other nations, inspiring revolutions in Spain, Portugal, and Italy in the 1820s, including the Greek War of Independence in 1821.

The American Revolution Period

The period of the American revolution began in 1763, just after the end of the Seven Years' War, or, more specifically, the French and Indian War. These conflicts began around the year 1755, and brought the age-old rivalry between the British and the French to a head in their New World territories. During these conflicts, colonial American men were not as amenable to British military service as was expected by their superiors. To that effect, there was a certain amount of culture shock at work behind British lines, and the British-American troops were not used to the level of discipline and professional deference demanded of them.

Despite these internal setbacks, the British emerged victorious over French forces, acquiring a huge swath of land, which included France's North American territories east of the Mississippi River and Canada. Many members of the Thirteen Colonies were impatient to move west, investigating and settling these lands, but deadly Native American resistance in the Great Lake area convinced Britain to institute the Proclamation Line. This forbade colonial American western migration and aggravated many would-be settlers.

At the same time, Great Britain was struggling with a national deficit that had doubled due to the multi-year war that had just come to a close. In an effort to alleviate the pressures of the budget on British nationals, the government decided to make up the debt by imposing a series of hefty taxes on the daily essentials of colonial Americans. Predictably, this did not go well, with protests, petitioning, and riots resulting in opposition to each newly proposed tax, which would then be repealed and replaced by another. This cycle resulted in the violence of the Boston Tea Party in 1773, and the so-called Intolerable Acts in response to colonial rebellion.

By 1774, the Americans had assembled the First Continental Congress to discuss the colonial response to the Intolerable Acts and other instances of British aggression. Organizations sympathetic to colonial issues were created, including colonial militias, assemblies, and the Sons and Daughters of Liberty. Eventually this background organizing resulted in the Battles of Lexington and Concord, when the British governor of Massachusetts sent royal forces into rural areas in search of militia ammunition and armaments. These battles marked the beginning of the American Revolutionary War.

General Washington crosses the Delaware River, circa 1776.

Lieutenant General George Washington led the Continental army, aided by the colonial militias. Their initial victories around Boston gave the Americans time to hold a Second Continental Congress, which eventually resulted in the drafting and publication of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The British annexed Philadelphia in 1777, but with Benjamin Franklin's help, by 1778 the Continental army allied with French naval and army forces as well as with various military veterans from Europe. Stymied, British general Cornwallis began to strike at the American South in 1779, taking the coastline, while much of the fighting devolved into guerrilla warfare.

In 1781, Cornwallis and his diminished army retreated north to Yorktown, Virginia. There they found the French Navy waiting in the Chesapeake Bay, and were subsequently trapped by a joint Franco-American force led by Washington and the French Comte de Rochambeau. This final loss functionally ended the fighting and the British were forced to begin negotiations, which concluded with the 1783 Treaty of Paris and the official end of the war. America was now a self-governed constitutional republic.

The French Revolution Period

The French revolution followed, and was inspired by the American Revolutionary War. The war had incorporated many members of France's military forces, both naval and terrestrial infantry. In addition, prior to France's direct involvement in the war, the French crown had covertly supported the American colonists through funds and shipments of weapons and ammunition. The extensive spending habits of the French monarchy, including this money sent in aid of America, contributed directly to the development of their own people's rebellion.

Beginning in 1777, the position of general of finance went through a series of occupants with different ideas with regard to how the country's budget problems should be addressed. Jacques Necker believed a flat-tax system would be helpful without placing undue burden on any one group; however, this was strongly opposed by nobles and aristocrats, who did not pay taxes. Thus, in 1783 Charles-Alexandre de Calonne took up the position, initially increasing spending so as to stimulate the economy. When it became clear that this was an insufficient and potentially destructive solution, Calonne began advocating for the replacement of extant sources of taxation with a universal land tax. This plan too was generally unpopular with those needed to support it, and Calonne was replaced with Etienne-Charles Lomenie de Brienne in 1787, but de Brienne soon became convinced of the plan's necessity. When he brought the universal land tax to the parlements they would not approve the reforms, and called for the Estates General to handle the issue.

The Estates General was a representative governmental body drawn from the three main classes, or estates, of French society: the clergy, the nobility, and the peasant and middle classes. Initially these were equal in number, until it became known that the first two estates could outvote the Third; protests ensued until the number of representatives for the working people was doubled. In the course of their duties, a majority of the Estates General, including most of the First and Third Estates and forty-seven members of the Second, decided to draft a constitution instead and became the ''National Assembly of the People'' in June 1789. The group then became the ''National Constituent Assembly'' once the new constitution had been drafted in July.

King Louis the XVI was understandably shaken by these developments, and did his best to consolidate and protect the power of the crown. Unfortunately, his actions, including the removal of Necker and the relocation of the Invalides gunpowder to the Bastille, only served to convince the crowds that the King was planning a coup. The people stormed the Bastille, liberating prisoners and the gunpowder stores, and taking prisoner the soldiers therein. The following month, the National Assembly issued the ''August Decrees'', effectively leveling the playing field by removing the advantages previously enjoyed by the nobility, clergy, and even certain guilds and provinces. This was followed shortly by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which functioned as a statement of intent for the Assembly and the ongoing revolution.

Even then the people's wrath was not fully focused on the king. Many believed that Louis XVI was being led astray by advisors in Versailles, and ought to be brought to Paris to live nearer the people. The king was convinced to do so by the crowded Women's March on Versailles in October, and he, the queen, Marie Antoinette, and the dauphin did so the next day. The National Constituent Assembly followed suit, moving to the capital while continuing to institute countrywide reforms.

The power of the church waned in 1790, while that of the Assembly only grew, and factions began to form internally, including the radical Jacobin Club. The increasingly violent radicalism of the people made the nobility ever more anxious, and in 1791 the royal family attempted to escape Paris, only to be stopped by the national guard and returned to Paris under house arrest. Prussia and Austria demanded the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly and the freedom of Louis XVI, but when the Holy Roman Emperor died in 1792, the French declared war on Austria.

A few months later, crowds stormed the Tuileries, where the royal family was held, as well as the prisons, executing around 1,400 prisoners in the September Massacres. The Paris Commune took over the city and the newly created National Convention took over the governing duties of the Constituent Assembly. In December the king was arraigned before the Convention for ''conspiracy against the public liberty and the general safety'' and in January of 1793, he was executed by guillotine. Marie Antoinette was executed in similar fashion in October of that year, and their eldest son died in prison.

King Louis XVI is executed before the masses, circa 1793.

Around this time the Reign of Terror began in earnest. Maximilien Robespierre, a radical Jacobin lawyer, became the head of the National Convention's Committee of Public Safety. Through this organization, 18,000 French nationals were executed for actions treasonous to the revolution, including those who had supported the initial rebellion, but not Robespierre's leadership. As so often happens with authoritarian leaders, Robespierre began to eat his own, executing not only the members of other political factions but moderate Jacobins as well. The crowd turned on him in 1794, known as the Thermidorian Reaction, and Robespierre and his aides were executed by guillotine.

The French then created a new legislature based on a 500-member representative house, known as the Council of the Five Hundred, and a 250-member senate called the Council of Elders. Together these two bodies chose a group of five people each year to lead the nation; this group was referred to as the Directory. The Directory worked to keep France safe from the outside threats of Prussia, Austria, and eventually Britain, as well as from the inside threat of political turmoil exacerbated by Robespierre. This was the government that Napoleon overthrew in 1799, creating the Consulate that he directed, and ending the French Revolution.

The Haitian Revolution Period

Prior to the revolution, Haiti was known as Saint-Domingue, and was home to a massive slave population who produced most of the world's sugar cane. While the white plantation owners wanted to secede from French governance, having created laws protecting their rights while extending none to mulattos and free black people, these people of color wanted to be represented in the Estates General. When they were denied this opportunity, they started an uprising in 1790 that went nowhere politically. However, the slaves of the island took notice, absorbing the rhetoric of the French Revolution they heard whites and free people of color debating. Thus the Haitian revolution began in 1791, in the middle of the rebellion sweeping its colonial landowner, France.

The slaves burned the cane fields of the western side of the island, and eventually the rebellion spread to the eastern, Spanish side -- what would become the Dominican Republic. Spain marched on the east in an attempt to regain control of their side of the island, while the white upper class of Saint-Domingue convinced the British to aid their anti-French cause in the west. In 1793, France sent a Jacobin commissioner to make sense of the chaos, who went beyond his station and declared the abolition of slavery on the whole of the island. This allowed the rebelling former slaves to ally with French forces against the Spanish and British.

Toussaint Louverture, an ex-slave, became commander of these joint forces and pushed the British out in 1798. As governor of the colony, Toussaint became in essence an authoritarian ruler, concerned with retaining the freedom they had won, and as a result he faced opposition from many. This included many of the former slaves who wanted a society without the remaining white colonists, as well as the ability to claim land and establish farms, along with the free people of color, who largely did not trust a former slave to be in power. Toussaint put down a 1799 mulatto uprising in a year, developed laws to maintain order, resumed sugar production, and pursued diplomatic relations with the United States.

His power secured from within, Toussaint justified his centralization of power by making it clear that strength was required to ensure the abolition of racial hierarchy and slavery. In order to ensure this, Toussaint enforced the working of plantations in order to rebuild and uphold economic power; freedom meant legal liberty and the freedom to work, not to ''do what you will'' as in the French revolution. His labor regulations also emphasized a Christian morality code and the use of child labor, and his Constitution of 1801 outlawed divorce.

Toussaint's rule was not to last, however, as Napoleon sent forces to retake the island for France, and captured the governor in 1802. Toussaint's lieutenant, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, stepped up to command the army, uniting the ex-slaves and free men of color for the first time since the beginning of the revolution. The thousands of French soldiers were defeated in 1803 -- losing many to yellow fever in addition to warfare -- and early in 1804 the Haitian declaration of independence was written.

The revolution ended a few months later in the 1804 Massacre, in which Dessalines and his army hunted down 3,000 remaining white colonists and executed them. The French defeat in Haiti convinced Napoleon that he would not be able to secure the Louisiana territory indefinitely, and he determined to sell it to the United States, which fed the American lust for westward expansion. In 1805, Dessalines created a new constitution to replace Toussaint's, and declared himself emperor of Haiti. The new constitution was the first in the world to enshrine the abolition of slavery, and all would be known simply as ''blacks''. While it did not result in a democracy, the revolution was over. Haiti was a free state, and the white world quivered at the thought of such a successful revolution mounted by former slaves.

Armies face off at the Battle of Crete-a-Perriot, circa 1802.

Lesson Summary

The Age of Revolutions was a period of world history characterized by violent rebellions, sociopolitical upheaval, and a turn to republican forms of government. This began with the American Revolution (c. 1763-1783), which saw the end of the thirteen British colonies and the beginning of the United States of America with the 1783 Treaty of Paris. This was followed by the French Revolution (c. 1789-1799), in which radical Jacobins encouraged the execution of thousands of people, including King Louis XVI, by guillotine. Then the Haitian Revolution (c. 1791-1804) occurred, in which an army of former slaves repelled the British, Spanish, and French, while simultaneously enduring civil war before ending in the 1804 Massacre that eliminated white colonists from the island. These are only three of the most important rebellions in Western history, and dozens more across Europe and the world were inspired by them.