Before we get started
 This chapter is about political, social and intellectual
revolutions.
 It is a prime chapter for essays on the national exam.
Popular Sovereignty and Political
Upheaval
 The era of revolutions in the late eighteenth centuries
had two major global results:
 Spread the Enlightenment ideals concerning freedom,
equality, and sovereignty.
 Fuel the consolidation of nation-states
Popular Sovereignty and Political
Upheaval
 Enlightened and Revolutionary Ideas
 John Locke

Government as a contract – Political power should lie with the
people and the role of the rulers should be to serve the best
interests of the people. When a ruler fails to do so, he should
be removed.
 Voltaire

Called for religious toleration and freedom of expression
 Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Demanded legal and political equality for all men and said
that the general will of the people should rule.
Political Sovereignty and Political
Upheaval
 The American Revolution
 Fought against the British in large part to the concept of
“Taxation without Representation”
 1775 – Continental Congress formed to coordinate
resistance to British Policies
 July 4, 1776 – Declaration of Independence signed
(Based largely on the philosophies of John Locke)
 America wins after nearly 5 years of fighting
 1787 – American Constitution drafted, emphasizing a
federal government based on popular sovereignty and
individual liberties.
Popular Sovereignty and Political
Upheaval
 The French Revolution
 Drew inspiration from the American Revolution, but became much
more radical.
 Goal was to replace the ancient regime (Monarchy) with new
cultural, societal, and political structures.
 Financial crisis in Louis XVI’s administration called for a meeting of
the Estates General (1st Clergy, 2nd Nobility, 3rd Everyone else)
 3rd Estate left and formed National Assembly and took the Tennis
Court oath in 1789 demanding a Constitution.
 Once they had power, the National Assembly began reconfiguring
French society by abolishing the privileges of the first 2 estates.
 Eventually, under the leadership of Maximillian Robespierre the
revolution took a radical turn and by 1794 the King, his wife, and
over 40,000 counterrevolutionaries had been killed by the
Guillotine.

Eventually turned on itself and Robespierre was put to death.
Popular Sovereignty and Political
Upheaval
 The Reign of Napoleon
 Napoleon Bonaparte





Made a name for himself on the battlefield and as a fervent support
of the revolution, Napoleon first joined the Directory and then
overthrew it.
Imposed a new constitution and eventually named himself Emperor
of France.
Returned a fair amount of stability to France, but also limited things
like free speech and the rights of women.
Amazing tactician and military strategist
 Conquered the Iberian and Italian peninsulas, occupied the
Netherlands, inflicted major defeated on the Austrian and
Prussian armies, and formed an alliance with the Russian Czar.
“General Winter”
 1812 was the beginning of the end for Napoleon when he lost over
500,000 soldiers by invading Russia in the winter.
 Final defeat for Napoleon came at the Battle of Waterloo, after
which he was exiled to St. Helena in the south Atlantic.
The Influence of Revolution
 The Haitian Revolution
 Haiti was a wealthy French sugar, coffee, and cottonproducing colony located on western Hispaniola.
 1790 – Population included about forty-thousand white
French settlers, thirty thousand free people of color, and
about five hundred thousand African slaves.
 Conditions were very harsh and many slaves escaped to form
maroons.
 1791 – Boukman, a Voudou priest, led a group of slaves against
white plantations owners to start the Haitian Revolution.
 Toussaint Louverture took over after Boukman’s death to lead
the revolution to success.

By 1804 Haiti had defeated the French armies and become an
independent republic.
The Influence of Revolution
 Wars of Independence in Latin America
 The ideals of the Enlightenment and of revolution spread to the
Portuguese and Spanish colonies in the Americas.
 Between 1810-1825 the criollos (individuals born in the Americas of
Spanish or Portuguese descent) successfully led independence
movements and established republics in all Spanish colonies in the
Americas except Cuba and Puerto Rico.
 Mexico

Key players: Father Miguel De Hidalgo
 Simon Bolivar

Influential in ridding Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile of
Spanish influences
 Brazil

Key Players: Prince Pedro
The Influence of Revolution
 The Emergence of Ideologies: Conservatism and
Liberalism
 Two important ideologies grew out of responses to the
American and French Revolutions: Conservatism and
Liberalism
 Conservatism: Viewed society as a slowly developing
organism which must be protected from radical or
revolutionary ideas as those beliefs lead to anarchy.
 Liberalism: Welcomed change which they saw as normal
and indeed required in the concept of progress.
The Influence of Revolution
 Testing the Limits of Revolutionary Ideals: Slavery
 The ideals of freedom and equality which had survived
and evolved during the political revolutions of the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were
eventually applied to the issue of slavery.
 Olaudah Equiano influential early.
 William Wilberforce – Leader in the movement to
abolish slavery in Britain.
 Abolition: 1833-Britian, 1848-France, 1865-U.S., 1886Cuba, 1888-Brazil

Political equality for Africans and African-Americans took
much longer.
The Influence of Revolution
 Testing the Limits of Revolutionary Ideals: Women’s
Rights
 Women had participated in the eighteenth-century
political revolutions and in the nineteenth-century
abolition movement.
 Sought to make a case for women’s rights as well.
 Eighteenth Century – Mary Wollstonecraft influential
arguing that women possessed all the rights John Locke
had said belonged to men.
 Nineteenth Century – Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Pushed for more access to education and voting rights.
The Consolidation of National
States in Europe
 While the revolutions of the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries helped to spread the ideals of
freedom, equality, and popular sovereignty, the
Napoleonic wars of the same era helped to spread the
concept of nationalism.
 Nationalism – The belief that people belong to
distinctive national communities based on a shared
sense of identity through language, custom, religion,
and tradition.
 Promoted prosperity and glory, which often fostered
jealousy and distrust of other national groups.
The Consolidation of National
States in Europe
 Nations and Nationalism
 Supporters of nationalism insisted that one’s national
state boundaries should be reflected in a shared
territory and a shared destiny.
 One unintended consequence of nationalist movements
was to foster separations between minority groups
within the societies and to distinguish those groups
from people in other lands.
 Suspicion of minority groups fueled historic antiSemitism, which eventually led to the Jewish push for a
national homeland for Jews in Palestine, the location of
ancient Israel.
The Consolidation of National
States in Europe
 The Emergence of National Communities
 The French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars
heightened the sense of national identity across Europe
and, in turn, instilled fears of nationalism in the hears of
conservative political leaders.
 Congress of Vienna in 1814-1815 attempted to remake
the map of Europe and restore the “legitimate” rulers
displaced by revolution and war.
 Nonetheless, nationalistic movements continued to
make headway throughout Europe.
The Consolidation of National
States in Europe
 The Unification of Italy and Germany
 Italy
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
Since the fall of the Roman Empire, Italy and Germy had been
disjoined regions, frequently controlled by outside powers
such as Spain or Austria.
Mid 1800s – combined efforts of Camillo di Cavour, Kin
Vittore Emmanuele II of Piedmont, and Guiseppe Garibaldi
allowed Italy to oust the Spanish and Austrians and create an
independent Italy.
 Germany
 1862 – Otto von Bismark appointed prime minister by King
Wilhelm II and used war and industry to fuel support for a
unified nation embracing all German-speaking people.