American Revolution
The war that gave birth to a new nation in North America marked a turning point in world history, as for the first time a colony
wrested independence from its imperial master. The American victory over formidable odds became a symbol of the fight for freedom
the world over.
Great Britain's colonial policy toward its North American holdings changed dramatically after the conclusion of the French and Indian
War in 1763, prompted in part by the enormous war debt Britain had accumulated. Prime Minister George Grenville advocated raising
additional funds from the colonies themselves. In 1765, the British Parliament enacted the Stamp Act, which imposed taxes on a wide
variety of printed materials. The American colonists were outraged over the new levy, and their protests led to the Stamp Act riots. In
1766, Parliament admitted that the Stamp Act had proved unenforceable and repealed it, but it did not abandon its attempts to exert
greater control over colonial affairs.
Throughout the tension over the Townshend Acts in 1768, the Boston Massacre in 1770, the Boston Tea Party in 1773, and the
Coercive Acts of 1774, the Americans became more and more divided from their British brethren, and the radicals gained greater
acceptance among colonial political circles. Slowly, a new ideology began to emerge from this struggle to defend colonial rights—
independence. In September 1774, the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and became the first colonialwide governing body. The Second Continental Congress, which convened in May 1775, took significant steps toward advancing the
cause of independence.
The month before the second congress convened, the British Army had engaged colonists from the towns of Lexington and Concord,
just 20 miles outside Boston, in the first armed conflict of what would become the American Revolution. The Battles of Lexington and
Concord had been relatively small but held tremendous symbolic significance, and they were widely publicized as an effort by
colonial farmers to defend their homes from aggressive British regulars. As British officials and Americans loyal to British rule
barricaded themselves in Boston, thousands of men flocked to the Boston area from around New England to fight the British.
A second and more organized conflict occurred in June 1775, when the British Army attempted to retake the hills surrounding Boston
in the Battle of Bunker Hill. Although the colonists eventually were forced to surrender their position, the cost of British victory was
extremely high, with far more British killed in action than Americans. Recognizing the march of events, the Continental Congress
created the Continental Army and appointed Virginian George Washington its commander in chief. Over the course of the following
year, Washington managed to force the British to evacuate Boston in March 1776 following the Battle of Dorchester Heights. By mid1776, a groundswell of public support began to emerge for independence. On July 4, 1776, the congress announced its adoption of the
U.S. Declaration of Independence.
The British Army approached the American Revolution with extreme confidence, believing that the patriots would be defeated
quickly. In the summer of 1776, Sir William Howe's British troops captured New York City, and Washington retreated to New Jersey.
Yet on December 26, 1776, Washington enjoyed the first decisive American victory when he and his army secretly crossed the
Delaware River and captured 900 Hessians at Trenton. A few days later, Washington successfully captured Princeton. Those victories
marked the end of military campaigns for the year as both armies went into winter quarters.
The British effort in 1777 was a two-pronged attack to capture the mid-Atlantic colonies and upstate New York. Despite strong
showings by Washington's forces at the Battles of Brandywine Creek and Germantown, Howe took Philadelphia. At the same time,
Sir John Burgoyne recaptured Fort Ticonderoga, which the Americans had taken in the opening days of the war. Throughout the fall
of 1777, Burgoyne moved south from Canada and won a series of impressive victories until his entire force suffered a humiliating
defeat at the Battle of Saratoga on October 17, 1777. The Battle of Saratoga proved a turning point in the war, as the American victory
led to an open alliance with France, which brought much-needed supplies and troops into the fight against Britain and gave the
fledgling country a powerful symbol of legitimacy.
Meanwhile, the war moved to the South, where a string of British victories led the American general Benjamin Lincoln to surrender
the entire southern Continental Army. Washington then appointed Nathanael Greene to command patriot forces in the South against
Lord Charles Cornwallis. Greene garnered support by urging leniency against neutral settlers and loyalists, and he also managed to
convince most Native American groups to end their alliances with the British. At the end of 1780 and into 1781, the tide in the South
turned toward the Americans in a series of small but important fights, including the Battle of Cowpens in early 1781. Fighting in the
South continued throughout the spring, but the Americans steadfastly reclaimed lost territory and forced the British to a massive
retreat to the North Carolina coast.
By the fall of 1781, Cornwallis had moved his troops to the Yorktown peninsula in Virginia. Washington and his army swept down
toward Yorktown from New Jersey, while a French naval fleet intercepted and defeated a substantial British fleet in Chesapeake Bay
that had been sent to relieve Cornwallis. The combination of American troops on land and French ships on the water kept the British
under siege in Yorktown for several weeks before a major battle on October 19 ended in British defeat. Cornwallis' surrender
following the Battle of Yorktown marked the end of fighting in North America.
American diplomats Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and John Adams negotiated a preliminary peace treaty in November 1782 in Paris
in which Britain recognized the colonies' independence. The Treaty of Paris (1783) was formally signed by both nations on September
3, 1783.
Further Reading Dickerson, O. M. The Navigation Acts and the American Revolution, 1951; Draper, Theodore. A Struggle for Power: The American Revolution. New
York: Times Books, 1996; Johansen, Bruce E. Forgotten Founders: Benjamin Franklin, the Iroquois and the Rationale for the American Revolution. Ipswich, MA:
Gambit, 1982; Lancaster, Bruce, The American Revolution, 1987. MLA Citation "American Revolution." World Histoy: The Modern Era. ABC-CLIO, 2014. Web. 16
May 2014.
French Revolution
The French Revolution from 1789 to 1799 was a major European historical turning point that transformed France from a monarchy to
a republic. This social, political, economic, and legal upheaval began modestly and was meant to limit royal absolutism. Yet as the
revolution progressed, its proponents became more extreme in their desires for democracy. What began as a call for constitutional
monarchy erupted into a decade of turmoil that resulted in six consecutive governments, the execution of the king, and finally, a
dictatorship that ushered in the Napoleonic Era.
Ancien Régime
The ancien régime refers to the societal, economic, and political structure of France before the French Revolution. At the top of the
regime's pyramid-like structure was King Louis XVI, an absolute monarch. He had succeeded to the throne in 1774 and inherited
nearly insoluble problems from his predecessors. Below the king came the clergy, or the First Estate; then the nobles, or the Second
Estate; and finally the remaining French subjects, or the Third Estate.
The First Estate comprised approximately 100,000 clergy, and the Second Estate comprised some 300,000 nobles. The tax-exempt
nobles owned 20% of the land, while the clergy owned 10%. The Catholic Church was tax exempt as well. The remaining 23.5 million
French people, the Third Estate, included lawyers, a rising bourgeoisie, workers, shopkeepers, and peasants. Approximately 90% of
the people in the Third Estate were peasants. The Third Estate, despite being the poorest group, paid the taxes that ensured the
financial well-being of the state, clergy, and nobles. All three groups were represented in the Estates-General, France's advisory body
for the monarch, but the king had not convened the assembly for more than 100 years.
Causes of the French Revolution
Rather than simple disloyalty to the king, various causes contributed to the downfall of the ancien régime. First of all, throughout the
18th century, the development of Enlightenment thought led to increasing criticism of absolute monarchy and an interest in republican
ideals. Considered subversive, literature by such writers as Voltaire, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau critiqued the monarchy
and the Catholic Church and examined democratic forms of government. Enlightenment writings were widely disseminated and
discussed in France, and they even played a role in the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1776.
Second, a financial crisis contributed to the outbreak of the French Revolution. France's heavy military expenditures during the
American Revolution resulted in a national debt of approximately four billion livres in 1789. The country could not afford to meet its
loan payments nor could it obtain more credit.
Third, compounding the financial crisis, a long cycle of industrial depression had been in effect since 1770. Some 50% of people in
urban areas were unemployed. Successive bad harvests, especially in 1788, made the situation perilous. The most populated country in
Europe could not feed itself. Starving commoners could not afford to buy bread, and food shortages contributed to bread riots,
burning, and looting.
Fourth, members of the lower classes began to chafe at their lack of power in the government. The peasants, already burdened by the
food shortages, were increasingly aware of the injustice of the feudal system, whereby the nobles enriched themselves through the toil
and taxes of the commoners. Moreover, a relatively wealthy portion of the Third Estate, the members of the growing bourgeoisie,
resented their exclusion from political power.
The social unrest and mounting financial problems led Louis XVI to call a meeting of the Estates-General for the first time since 1614.
Further Reading, Cobb, Richard, The French and Their Revolution, 1999; Doyle, William. The Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press, 1990; Forrest, Alan I., Soldiers of the French Revolution, 1990; Godineau, Dominique, The Women of Paris and Their French Revolution, 1998;
Jordan, David P., The King's Trial: The French Revolution v. Louis XVI, 1979; McManners, John. The French Revolution and the Church. New York: Harper & Row,
1970; Palmer, R. R. Twelve who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989; Schama, Simon. Citizens: A
Chronicle of the French Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1989; Scott, Samuel F., and Barry Rothaus, eds., Historical Dictionary of the French Revolution, 1789-1799,
1985. MLA Citation "French Revolution." World History: The Modern Era. ABC-CLIO, 2014. Web. 16 May 2014.