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HIST 102 FINAL EXAM NOTES
Age of Revolution
• The period from approximately 1774 to
1848 in which a number of significant revolutionary movements occurred in many parts of Europe and the Americas.
• Noted for the change in government
from absolutist monarchies to constitutionalist states and republics.
• Includes the American Revolution, the
French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, the Greek Revolution, the revolt of the slaves in Latin America, the First Italian War of Independence and the 1848 revolutions in Italy, and the independence movements of Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Latin America. In a way, it includes the Industrial Revolution.
• The American, French, and Haitian
revolutions brought forth new expressions of individual rights and freedom that began to influence
similar actions in the colonies of Latin America
• The period would generally weaken the
imperialist European states, which would lose major assets throughout the New World.
• For the British, the loss of the Thirteen
Colonies would bring a change in direction for the British Empire, with Asia and the Pacific becoming new targets for expansion.
• Major events covered during the age of
revolution include the storming of the Bastille marking the beginnings of the French Revolution and the publication of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, signaling the widespread political upheaval in Europe that comes in 1848.
• The two major events during this
period are the Industrial Revolution which begins in Britain and the French Revolution and subsequent wars under Napoleon. This “dual revolution” transforms not only Britain, France and the rest of Europe, but has economic
the armed conflict, and by the following summer, the rebels were waging a full-scale war for their independence
• France entered the American
Revolution on the side of the colonists in 1778, turning what had essentially been a civil war into an international conflict
• After French assistance helped the
Continental Army force the British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, the Americans had effectively won their independence, though fighting would not formally end until 1783
The French Revolution (1789-1799)
• During this period, French citizens
razed and redesigned their country’s political landscape, uprooting centuries-old institutions such as absolute monarchy and the feudal system
• This was a period of time in France
when the people overthrew the
monarchy and took control of the government
• Lasted 10 years from 1789 to 1799. It
began on July 14 when revolutionaries stormed a prison called the Bastille. The revolution came to an end when a general named Napoleon overthrew the revolutionary government and established the French Consulate (with Napoleon as leader).
• Like the American Revolution before it,
the French Revolution was influenced by Enlightenment ideals, particularly the concepts of popular sovereignty and inalienable rights
• Before the French Revolution, the
people of France were divided into social groups called “Estates.” Most of the people were members of the Third Estate, who paid most of the taxes, while the nobility lived lives of luxury and got all the high-ranking jobs.
• The French Government was in
constant turmoil throughout the revolution. At the start of it, representatives from the Third Estate
included the powerful Jacobin Club (led by Robespierre), the Cordeliers, the Feuillants Club, and the Pantheon Club.
• The French Revolution completely
changed the social and political structure of France. It put an end to the French monarchy, feudalism, and took political power from the Catholic church. It brought new ideas to Europe including liberty and freedom for the commoner as well as the abolishment of slavery and the rights of women. Although the revolution ended with the rise of Napoleon, the ideas and reforms did not die. These new ideas continued to influence Europe and helped to shape many of Europe’s modern-day governments.
• Although it failed to achieve all of its
goals and at times degenerated into a chaotic bloodbath, the movement played a critical role in shaping modern nations by showing the world the power inherent in the will of the people
The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804)
• Often described as the largest and
most successful slave rebellion in the Western Hemisphere
• Slaves initiated the rebellion in 1791
and by 1803 they had succeeded in ending not just slavery but French control over the colony
• In the 18th^ century, Saint-Domingue
(Haiti) became France’s wealthiest overseas colony, largely because of its production of sugar, coffee, indigo, and cotton generated by an enslaved labor force.
• There were five distinct sets of interest
groups in the colony. There were white planters – who owned the plantations and the slaves – and petit blancs, who were artisans, shopkeepers and teachers. Some of them also owned a few slaves.
• Many of the whites began to support
an independence movement that began when France imposed steep tariffs on the items imported into the colony. The planters were extremely disenchanted with France because
French Revolution’s “Declaration of the Rights of Man.”
• The General Assembly in Paris
responded by enacting legislation which gave the various colonies some autonomy at the local level. The legislation, which called for “all local proprietors... to be active citizens,” was both ambiguous and radical. It was interpreted in Saint-Domingue as applying only to the planter class and thus excluded petit blancs from government. Yet it allowed free citizens of color who were substantial property owners to participate.
• This legislation, promulgated in Paris to
keep Saint-Domingue in the colonial empire, instead generated a three- sided civil war between the planters, free blacks and the petit blancs. However, all three groups would be challenged by the enslaved black majority which was also influenced and inspired by events in France.
• Led by former slave Toussaint
L’Overture, the enslaved would act
first, rebelling against the planters on August 21, 1791.
• By 1792 they controlled a third of the
island
• Despite reinforcements from France,
the area of the colony held by the rebels grew as did the violence on both sides. Before the fighting ended 100,000 of the 500,000 blacks and 24,000 of the 40,000 whites were killed.
• Nonetheless the former slaves
managed to stave off both the French forces and the British who arrived in 1793 to conquer the colony, and who withdrew in 1798 after a series of defeats by L’Overture’s forces.
• By 1801 L’Overture expanded the
revolution beyond Haiti, conquering the neighboring Spanish colony of Santo Domingo (present-day Dominican Republic.) He abolished slavery in the Spanish-speaking colony and declared himself Governor-General for life over the entire island of Hispaniola.
(after the US) to win its independence from a European power.
The Greek Revolution of 1821
• In 1821 the land that was known as
Greece is controlled by the Turks, except for the Ionian islands which has been occupied by the Venetians, then the French and in 1815 by the British
• The Greeks had been under Ottoman
rule since the mid-1400s
• In Greece, Islamic law applied only to
Muslims
• The Greek Orthodox Church was
allowed to function and Greeks were free to worship as they pleased and to maintain their own culture and language
• The Greeks saw the Ottoman Turks as
inferior, and they looked back at what they considered the glories of ancient Greece.
• In the late 1700s the French Revolution
inspired among the Greeks a greater yearning for liberty.
• A revolt against Ottoman rule gave
Serbia quasi-autonomy beginning in 1813, and this had encouraged the Greeks. There was a tendency among Greeks to believe that it would be their fellow Orthodox Christians, the Russians, who would free them from Roman power.
• Then in 1814, at the center of a
thriving Greek community in Russian- ruled Odessa, Greek exiles laid what they hoped would be the groundwork for an armed uprising inside Greece, and they misleadingly portrayed their group as having the approval of the Russian authorities
• In 1821, Greeks on the Peloponnese
Peninsula rebelled, inspired by news of an uprising in Moldavia, which was also under Ottoman rule. A small group led by a Greek, which included some Russians, had crossed the border into Moldavia where they raised the flag of Greek independence and hoped that the Romanians and Bulgarians of Moldavia would rise with them for their own independence. The revolt in
• Christians across Europe were aware of
the uprising in the Peloponnnese but not of the atrocities of the revolutionaries, and they were shocked by the hanging of Gregorios.
• Common Russians wanted to avenge
the death of the patriarch, but Russia’s Tsar Alexander had other matters to consider and merely withdrew his ambassador from Constantinople. Alexander was still allied with Austria against revolutions, especially nationalist revolutions, and the tsar was not ready to break with that alliance. And neither was Britain’s foreign secretary Lord Castlereagh.
• In April the Greek revolt spread
northward toward central Greece and Athens.
• In May, Muslims in Athens were
defending themselves from the Acropolis. In the Peloponnese various towns and cities fell, including Petras, where all Muslims who did not make it to the safety of the walls of the town’s fortress were killed.
• In August in the Peloponnese, Muslims
of the small town of Monemvasia were besieged and chose to surrender rather than endure more hunger, and when they surrendered they were slaughtered.
• A few days later, between 2,000 and
3,000 Muslims in Navarino were massacred.
• Tripolitsa was a city of 35,000 Turks,
Albanians, Jews and others in the middle of Peloponnese. There the Ottoman governor resided, and there Greeks massacred for two days. An estimated 10,000 people, including women and children, were killed, as were 2,000 who had been taken prisoner. It is reported that Muslim women were raped and that Muslims were tortured for information of the whereabouts of their money. Water wells became polluted and disease spread that caused the death of thousands of Greeks.
• The taking of Tripolitsa in October was
the final Greek success for the year
survivors for sale in the slave markets of Asia Minor.
• The Greeks had the advantage of
superiority at sea. They were experienced mariners. Greek sailors who had been working on Ottoman ships abandoned those ships, leaving the Turks to recruit inexperienced dock-laborers and peasants.
• In 1822 the Greeks captured the
coastal region in the west just north of the Peloponnese Penisula, and farther east they took Athens and Thebes. The Greeks were now in control of west and east-central Greece as well as the Aegean islands.
• In 1822 the Greeks declared
independence
• The military victories of the Greeks led
them to underrate the importance of discipline and to ignore the advice of those who preferred victory accompanied by restraint and mercy.
• The lack of a central organization for
the revolution produced three provisional Greek governments.
• In 1823, rivalries escalated into
violence. Greeks on the Aegean island of Psara were at war with those of the larger island of Samos about 120 kilometers (75 miles) to the south.
• Discipline and cohesion vanished from
the Greek fleet
• A new Ottoman admiral lacked
confidence and failed to regain command of the sea for the Turks.
• In 1824 fighting between Greeks
increased. On the Peloponnese Peninsula were Greek notables who wanted to retain the status they had held during Ottoman rule, and there were leading fighters who wanted some political power as a reward for their military contribution. Ship owners also thought they deserved some political power. Liberal intellectuals wanted a parliament. There were conservatives who tended to see the struggle between the Ottoman Turks and the Greeks as between Islam and Greek Orthodox Christianity, and they tended to want the preservation of an
