Democracy: American and
French Revolutions
Theme: The effect of Enlightenment ideas
on government and society
Lesson 9
The American Revolution
The Enlightenment and “The Shot
Heard ‘Round the World”
Agenda
• The Age of Enlightenment
• The Seven Years’ War and its Impact on the
Colonies
• Representation and Country Ideology
• Increased Tensions
• Capabilities and Limitations of Both Sides
• Strategies and the Importance of the Population
• The Shot Heard ‘Round the World
A Changing World
• In the mid-18th Century, British colonists in
North America seemed content with British
rule, but in the mid-1760s things started to
change
– First, new ideas about a just society began to
circulate in the Enlightenment era
– Second, the British imposed new taxes to
offset the cost of the Seven Years’ War; taxes
which seemed to the colonists to conflict with
the Enlightenment philosophy
Scientific Revolution
• In 1543,Copernicus published On the
Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
which argued that the sun, rather than
the Earth, stood at the center of the
universe and that the planets revolved
around the sun
• Copernicus’ work inspired astronomers
to examine the heavens in new ways
• Increasingly, they based their theories
on observed data and used
mathematical reasoning to organize the
data
• This reliance on observation and
mathematics ushered in the “Scientific
Revolution”
Impact of the Scientific Revolution
• Suggested that rational analysis of behavior and
institutions could have meaning in the human as
well as the natural world
• Increasingly, thinkers challenged recognized
authorities such as Aristotelian philosophy and
Christian religion and sought to explain the world
in purely rational terms
• The result was a movement known as the
“Enlightenment”
Absolutism
• King Louis XIV (1643-1715) of France is
credited with having said “L’etat c’est
moi!” or “I am the state.”
• Louis’s statement is consistent with the
idea of absolutism– the theory that
ultimate power in the early centuries of
modern Europe was vested in a
hereditary monarch who claimed a Godgiven right to rule
• Louis went so far as to call himself the
“Sun King,” claiming that like the sun,
everything revolved around him
• Catholicism was the national religion of
France
– “One faith, one law, one king.”
– In 1685 Louis revoked the Edict of
Nantes and insisted that Huguenots
convert to Catholicism
Louis and his family
portrayed as gods
Philosophes
• Enlightenment thinkers
considered absolutism to be
unnatural and they sought
to discover natural laws that
governed human society in
the same way Newton’s
laws regulated the universe
• Collectively, these thinkers
were called the philosophes
(“philosophers”)
– Voltaire
– Montesquieu
– Locke
Abbé Delille recites a poem in the
salon of Madame Geoffrin, site of
many gatherings of the
Enlightenment philosophes
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (17121778)
• Many Enlightenment thinkers
condemned the legal and
social privileges enjoyed by
aristocrats and called for a
society in which all individuals
were equal before the law
• In 1762, Rousseau wrote The
Social Contract arguing that
members of a society were
collectively the sovereign
– All individuals would
participate directly in the
formulation of policy and
the creation of laws
Seven Years’ War
• Commercial competition in
the New World ultimately
generated violence that
culminated in the Seven
Years’ War (1756-1763)
– In North America, the
Seven Years’ War
merged with the ongoing French and
Indian War which pitted
the British and French
against each other
George Washington fought for the
British and was defeated in the
opening battle of the French and
Indian War at Fort Necessity in the
Ohio Country
British Victory
• The British emerged victorious
and as a result they gained
control of North America from
the French
• The war helped create
conditions that led to the
American Revolutionary War,
because the British colonists no
longer needed British protection
from the French and would
come to resent the taxes
imposed by Britain to pay for its
military commitments
American Revolution: New
Legislation
• Trying to recover financial losses from the
French and Indian War and the Seven
Years’ War, the British passed a series of
new taxes on the colonies
–
–
–
–
Sugar Act (1764)
Stamp Act (1765)
Townshend Act (1767)
Tea Act (1773)
• Other offensive legislation included the
Quartering Act of 1765 and the Intolerable Acts
Taxation
• While other issues annoyed the colonists, it was
taxation that most led to demands for independence
• Because Parliament had usually refrained from
taxing them, many colonists assumed that it could
not
• One American asked, if taxes were now imposed
“without our having a legal Representation where
they are laid, are we not reduced from the Character
of free Subjects to the miserable State of tributary
Slaves?”
– The idea of “No taxation without representation”
was consistent with Rousseau and other
Enlightenment thinkers
The Issue of Representation
• In England, electoral districts for Parliament
were often based on earlier conditions
– For example, Dunwich continued to maintain
its right to elect a parliamentary
representative long after the city itself had
been washed into the North Sea
– Manchester, however, was a rapidly growing
city that lacked representation
• Most Englishmen accepted this condition
because they believed in “virtual representation”
– Representatives served the interests of the
entire nation rather than just their home
locality
The Issue of Representation
• Such Englishmen assumed
that since the colonists held
interests in common with
citizens back home, they
were “virtually” represented
• Americans, on the other
hand, had enjoyed “actual
representation” since the
founding of the colonies
– They believed elected
representatives should be
directly responsive to local
interests and they were used to
instructing their legislators about
how to vote on key issues
– They were skeptical of the idea
of “virtual representation”
Thomas Jefferson
represented Albemarle
County in the House of
Burgesses
Country Ideology
• Even before the Seven Years’ War, the British
had borrowed heavily to fund several other wars
and developed a large bureaucracy to collect
taxes to pay the war debt
• In response, a “Country” or “Real Whig” ideology
emerged that:
– Stressed the threats to personal liberty posed
by a large standing army and a powerful state
– Emphasized the dangers of taxation to
property rights and the need for property
holders to maintain the right to consent to
taxation
Country Ideology
• Country ideology stressed that it was the duty of
the Parliament (particularly the House of
Commons which represented the people as a
whole) to check the executive power of the Crown
– It was the House of Commons’ control of taxation that
controlled tyrannical leaders
– John Locke had argued that rulers had authority to
enforce law “only for the public good”
– When the Crown did its job properly, the House of
Commons appropriated the necessary funds
– When rulers infringed on the people’s liberties, the
House restrained them by withholding taxes
Country Ideology
• Because of these important
responsibilities, Country ideology required
representatives to be of sufficient property
and judgment to make independent
decisions
• A representative of appropriate social
status was generally assumed to be
qualified to lead, but if he proved
otherwise, his constituents should be able
to vote him out
Country Ideology
• Country ideology appealed to
many Americans
– It was consistent with the
idea that power should
reside at the local level
– It emboldened those who
feared they lacked a voice in
decisions being made in
England
– Its insistence on the
important political role of the
propertied elite appealed to
the local gentry
Patrick Henry addressing the
House of Burgesses
The Sugar Act
• Given the philosophies of the Enlightenment
and Country ideology, the colonists
responded only mildly to the Sugar Act
– The effects of the act were felt mostly in New
England where it cut into the smuggling trade with
the French West Indies
– Still on principle, the act was offensive and
eventually all the assemblies passed resolutions
declaring that any Parliamentary tax on America,
including the Sugar Act, was unconstitutional
The Stamp Act
• The Stamp Act, because its
effects were felt equally
throughout the colonies, elicited
a more swift response
• One response was the
formation of the Sons of Liberty,
a collection of loosely organized
protest groups, who put
pressure on stamp distributors
and British authorities
• The American response was
troublesome enough that in
March 1766, the Stamp Act was
repealed
• Still the British persisted in their
right to impose taxes, including
the Townshend Duties in 1767
The Boston Massacre
• The Townshend duties continued
to strain the relationship between
America and Britain, and most of
its articles were eventually
repealed
• Before that, however, on March 5,
1770, the “Boston Massacre”
occurred in which British troops
fired on an unruly crowd, killing five
men
• A period of quiet followed this
outbreak, but during it the colonies
established “committees of
correspondence” to keep each
other informed of objectionable
British actions
The Boston Tea Party
• The “Quiet Period” was broken on
December 16, 1773 with the Boston
Tea Party
– Partly because Americans were
drinking smuggled and untaxed
tea, the British East India
Company was nearly bankrupt
– Lord North, the British prime
minister, tried to rescue it by the
Tea Tax of 1773 which was a
thinly disguised measure to get the
Americans to pay the old
Townshend duty on British East
India Tea
– A well-organized band of men,
some disguised as Indians,
boarded the tea ship Dartmouth
and broke open 342 chests of tea
and threw the contents into the
harbor
The First Continental Congress
• The Boston Tea Party led to the
British passing three repressive
measures known collectively as
the Intolerable Acts
• These acts united the colonists
like never before and the First
Continental Congress met in
Philadelphia from September 5
to October 26, 1774
– Even now, however, it was
but a minority who favored
war with Britain
– Most hoped and believed the
British would change their
policies and all would be well
again
Peyton Randolph presided
over the Continental
Congress
Increased Tensions
• Colonists began to separate into
“Whigs” who advocated
increased rights and “Tories”
who were more loyal to the
Crown
• Both the Americans and British
could see a crisis was looming
and took steps to prepare
• In 1774, General Thomas Gage,
the commander of the British
army in America and governor of
Massachusetts, dissolved the
legislature which then proceeded
to assemble anyway
Thomas Gage
Increased Tensions
• A “Provincial Congress”
established the “Committee
of Safety,” to be headed by
John Hancock, in October
1774 for the purpose of
stockpiling weapons and
organizing militia volunteers
– Special companies of “minute
men” were to be ready at “a
minutes warning in Case of an
alarm”
• In a move to quell such
belligerence, Lord North
ordered Gage to take
decisive action
Lexington and Concord
• On April 18, 1775, Gage
assembled 700 men on the
Boston Common and
marched them toward
Lexington and Concord
– His goal was to arrest rebel
leaders Samuel Adams and
John Hancock in Lexington
and destroy the military
supplies the Committee of
Safety had stockpiled in
Concord
• Riders like Paul Revere
warned fellow patriots, and by
the time the British reached
Lexington they found 70
armed militiamen waiting for
them
Lexington and Concord
• No one knows who fired
the first shot, but the end
result was 18 Americans
killed or wounded
• The British then
marched to Concord and
burned some supplies
• Some 4,000 militia men
descended on the British
and harassed their
retreat back to Boston,
inflicting 273 casualties
while suffering nearly
100 of their own
Lexington and Concord
Concord Hymn
By the rude bridge that
arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze
unfurled,
Here once the embattled
farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard
‘round the world.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Declaration of Independence
• On July 4, 1776,
the Continental
Congress
adopted “The
Unanimous
Declaration of the
thirteen united
States of
America” (The
Declaration of
Independence)
The Declaration of Independence
• “all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”
• Governments derive their power and authority
from “the consent of the governed”
• When any government infringes upon
individual’s rights, “it is the Right of the People to
alter or abolish it, and to institute new
Government”
• Declared the colonies to be “Free and
Independent States”
David vs Goliath
• However, declaring independence and actually
winning it by war were two different things
• Victory in the Seven Years’ War had left Britain
as the dominant power in the world
– It had a population of eight million with a professional
army, large navy, and formidable wealth
• The colonists had a population of two and a half
million (20% of which were slaves) and no army,
navy, or significant financial resources
British Troops: August 1776
• 24,000 soldiers
• Average soldier was 30 years old with 10 years
service
• Muskets, bayonets, light field guns
• Two or three ranks of infantry supported by light field
guns
• Powerful Navy (30 warships, 400 transports)
• More experienced, better led, more thoroughly
disciplined and trained
• General William Howe knew generals from their
Seven Years’ War record
Colonial Troops: Aug 1776
• 28,000 soldiers
• Average soldier was 20 years old with less than a year of
service
• Muskets, bayonets, light field guns
• Two or three ranks of infantry supported by light field guns
• Used simplified British tactics (experience from Seven
Years’ War)
• No Navy
• Great disparity in quality between militia and Continental
Army
• Many generals were imposed upon General George
Washington by Congress or state governments
The Difference
• What gave the colonists hope was
the opportunity to be gained by
courage, cause, the home court
advantage, and patriotism
• Unlike earlier European dynastic
squabbles, the American
Revolution was an ideological war
that affected the population
• “Remember, officers and soldiers,
that you are freemen, fighting for
the blessings of liberty; that slavery
will be your portion and that of your
posterity if you do not acquit
yourselves like men.”
– George Washington
British Challenges
• Underestimated the impact of patriotism
• Overestimated the Loyalist strength
– Only about 20% of white Americans were Tories
• Colonial decentralization meant colonies had no
strategic heart and the British would have to occupy vast
expanses of territory
• Supply and communications were difficult with England
3,000 miles away
• The British population was not united behind the war
• Britain still had enemies in Europe to worry about
Civilians
• Both sides understood from the
beginning that they were fighting
for the allegiance of a people
and for the destruction or
preservation of one state and
the creation of another
• The colonists had to defeat the
British and control the loyalists
without losing popular support
or destroying the republican
principles for which they fought
• The British argued that they
were protecting loyalists from
the tyranny of a few ambitious
rebels
The British Strategy
• The British never really found a
good solution for dealing with
the population
• Tried various strategies with
little success
– Intimidating the rebels with a
show of force
– Combining force and
persuasion to break the
rebellion without alienating a
majority of the colonists
– Enlisting the support of
loyalists in a gradual and
cumulative restoration of
royal government
American Strategy
• Primarily defensive and
therefore shaped by
countering British moves
• Uncertainties about supplies
and manpower worked
against a consistent strategy
• However, Washington
understood his strengths
and weaknesses and had
the defender’s advantage
American Strategy
• Maintain a principal striking force in a central
position to block any British advance into the
interior
• Be neither too timid or too bold in seeking battle
for limited objectives (Partisan operations in the
South)
• Avoid the destruction of the army at all costs
(Greene’s instructions to Morgan before the
Cowpens)
• Find some means of concentrating a sufficient
force to strike a decisive offensive blow whenever
the British overextended themselves (Yorktown)
The United States
• In September 1783, the British formally recognized
American independence
• In 1787, Americans drafted the Constitution of the United
States which created a federal government based on
popular sovereignty
– The Bill of Rights in particular stressed individual
liberties such as freedom of speech, the press, and
religion
• The success of the American Revolution and this early
understanding of freedom, equality, and popular
sovereignty in America would have broad implications
throughout the world
– Remember Emerson’s “shot heard round the world”
French Revolution: Ancien Regime
• The Americans sought independence from
British imperial rule, but they kept British
law and much of the British social and
cultural heritage
• On the other hand, French revolutionaries
sought to replace the ancien regime (“the
old order”) with new political, social, and
cultural structures
French Revolution: Estates
General
• In May 1789, in an
effort to raise taxes,
King Louis XVI
convened the Estates
General, an assembly
representing the
entire French
population through
three groups known
as estates
King Louis XVI
French Revolution: Estates
General
• The first estate was about
100,000 Roman Catholic
clergy
• The second estate was
about 400,000 nobles
• The third estate was
about 24 million others
(serfs, free peasants,
laborers)
– In spite of these
numerical
discrepancies, each
estate had one vote
ancien regime
French Revolution: Estates
General
• The third estate
demanded sweeping
political and social
reform, but the other
two estates resisted
• On June 20, 1789,
the third estate
seceded from the
Estates General and
declared itself the
National Assembly
Marie Antoinette
French Revolution: National
Assembly
• The National Assembly
vowed not to disband until
France had a written
constitution
• This assertion of popular
sovereignty spread to Paris
and on July 14 a crowd
stormed the Bastille to seize
weapons and ammunition
• The garrison surrendered in
the wake of great bloodshed
– The attackers severed the
commander’s head and
paraded it through the streets
on a pike
• Insurrections spread
throughout France
Storming of the Bastille
French Revolution: Declaration
• In Aug 1789, the National Assembly issued
the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the
Citizen
– Obviously influenced by the American Revolution
and the Declaration of Independence
• Proclaimed the equality of all men, declared
that sovereignty resided in the people, and
asserted individual rights to liberty, prosperity,
and security
Reforms of the National Assembly
• Reconfigured French society
– Ended the fees and labor services
the peasants owed their landlords
– Seized church lands
– Abolished the first estate and
defined clergy as civilians
– Required clergy to take an oath of
loyalty to the state
– Made the king the chief executive
but deprived him of legislative
authority (a constitutional
monarchy)
The motto of the National
Assembly was “Liberty,
– Men of property could vote for
equality, fraternity”
legislators
The Convention
• Alarmed by the disintegration of monarchial
authority, the rulers of Austria and Prussia
invaded France to support the king and restore
the ancien regime
• The revolutionaries responded by establishing
the Convention, a new legislative body elected
by universal male suffrage
• The Convention abolished the monarchy and
proclaimed France a republic
The Convention
• Drafted people and
resources for use in
the war through the
levee en masse
(universal
conscription)
– A move toward total
war
• Used the guillotine
to execute enemies
to include King
Louis XVI and
Queen Marie
Antoinette in 1793
for treason
Maximilian Robespierre (17581794)
• Led the radical Jacobin
party which believed
France needed
complete restructuring
and used a campaign of
terror to promote their
agenda
• Dominated the
Convention from 17931794
Robespierre and the Jacobins
• Sought to eliminate the
influence of Christianity
– Closed churches
– Forced priests to take wives
– Promoted a new “cult of
reason” as a secular alternative
– Devised a new calendar which
recognized no day of religious
observance
• Between the summers of
1793 and 1794, the Jacobins
executed 40,000 people and
imprisoned 300,000
"It is dreadful but necessary" ("Cest
affreux mais nécessaire"), from the
Journal d'Autre Monde, 1794.
The Directory
• Many of the victims of the reign of terror were fellow
radicals who had fallen out of favor with Robespierre and
the Jacobins
• In July 1794, the Convention arrested Robespierre and
his allies, convicted them of treason, and executed them
• A group of conservative men of property seized power
and ruled from 1795 to 1799 under a new institution
called the Directory
• The Directory sought a middle way between the ancien
regime and radical revolution but had little success
• In Nov 1799,Napoleon Bonaparte staged a coup d’etat
and seized power
Napoleon (1769-1821)
• Was an officer under
King Louis XVI and
had become a
general at age 24
• In a campaign of
1796-1797, he drove
the Austrians from
northern Italy and
established French
rule there
Napoleon (1769-1821)
• In 1799, he returned to France
and joined the Directory, but
when Austria, Russia, and
Britain formed a coalition to
attack France and end the
Revolution, Napoleon staged
a coup
• He overthrew the Directory,
imposed a new constitution,
and named himself first consul
• In 1802, he became consul for
life and in 1804 crowned
himself emperor
Napoleon: The Concordat
• Brought stability to France
• Made peace with the Catholic Church
– Concluded the Concordat with the pope in 1801
– France would retain the church lands seized during
the Revolution, but France agreed to pay priests’
salaries, recognize Roman Catholic Christianity as
the preferred faith of France, and extend freedom of
religion to Protestants and Jews
– Was a popular measure with people who supported
the political and social goals of the revolution but
didn’t want to replace Christianity with the cult of
reason
Napoleon: Civil Code
• In 1804,Napoleon established the Civil Code
which further stabilized France
– Affirmed the political and legal equality of all adult
men
– Established a merit-based society in which individuals
qualified for education and employment because of
talent rather than birth or social standing
– Protected private property, even allowing aristocratic
opponents of the Revolution to return to France and
reclaim their property
– Confirmed many of the moderate revolutionary
policies of the National Assembly but removed many
measure passed by the more radical Convention
Napoleon as Authoritarian
• Limited free speech, routinely
censoring newspapers
• Established a secret police
force and detained thousands
of political opponents
• Manipulated public opinion
through systematic propaganda
• Ignored elective bodies
• Surrounded himself with loyal
military officers
• Set his family above and apart
from the French people
Joseph Fouche, head of
Napoleon’s secret police
End of Napoleon’s Empire
• In 1812, Napoleon decided to invade
Russia, believing that the Russians were
conspiring with the British
• Napoleon and his “Grand Army” of
600,000 soldiers captured Moscow, but
the Russians refused to surrender
– Instead, Russian patriots burned the city,
leaving Napoleon without supplies or shelter
End of Napoleon’s Empire
• Napoleon was
forced to retreat
– Defeated by “General
Winter”
– Only 30,000 soldiers
made it back to
France
• The defeat in Russia
emboldened a
coalition of British,
Austrian, Prussian,
and Russian armies
to converge on
France
– Forced Napoleon to
abdicate his throne in
April 1814
An episode from the retreat from
Russia, by Nicolas-Toussaint Charlet
End of Napoleon’s Empire
• The coalition restored the French monarchy and
exiled Napoleon to the island of Elba, near
Corsica
• In March 1815, Napoleon escaped, returned to
France, and reconstituted his army
• This time the British defeated him at Waterloo
and banished Napoleon to the remote island of
St. Helena in the south Atlantic
• He died in 1821
Other Impacts
• The Enlightenment ideals and the
American and French Revolutions also
influenced:
– The Saint Domingue slave revolt (Lesson 5)
– Simon Bolivar in South America (Lesson 5)
– The abolition movement (Lesson 5)
– The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and
the Female Citizen
– Elizabeth Cady Stanton and women’s rights
movements
Compare and Contrast
Objective Type of
warfare
Am Rev
Fr Rev
Religion
Philosophical
rationale
and
declarations
International
reaction
Immediate and
long-term
results
Next
• Building of American States