Political Ideas In France And Haiti During The Enlightenment

A major cause of revolutionary eagerness throughout America, France, and Haiti was the impact of political ideas from the Enlightenment. Although most Enlightenment writers are cautious about political reform, their confidence in reason and progress inspired a new generation to fight for greater freedom from oppressive governments. The contradiction between slavery and the Enlightenment ideals of liberty and equality was all too evident to the enslaved and the free people of color. The two most important Enlightenment references for late-eighteenth-century liberals were John Locke and the baron de Montesquieu. Locke maintained that England’s long political tradition rested on “the rights of Englishmen” and on representative government through Parliament.
He argued that if a government oversteps its proper function of protecting the natural rights of life, liberty, and private property, it becomes a tyranny. Montesquieu was inspired by English constitutional history and the Glorious Revolution. He also believed that powerful judicial nobility offered the best defense of liberty against absolutism. Therefore, revolutions begin with aspirations for equality and liberty among the social elite. Depending on location, their demands included universal male suffrage, political rights for women and free people of color, the emancipation of slaves, and government regulations to reduce economic inequality.
Financial crises generated by the expenses of imperial warfare crippled European states.
This allowed realistic reforms to occur. The high cost of the Seven Years’ War doubled the British national debt. Anticipating further expenses to defend the half a billion acres in new territory granted by the Treaty of Paris, the government in London imposed bold new administrative measures. Financial crisis struck a monarchy that had lost much of its mantle of royal authority. Louis XV scandalized the country with a series of mistresses of low social origins. To make things worse, he refused to take communion because his adultery placed him in a state of sin. France had no central bank and no paper currency. Therefore, when a depressed economy and a lack of public confidence made it increasingly difficult for the government to obtain new loans, the government could not respond simply by printing more money. It had no alternative but to try increasing taxes. Because France’s tax system was unfair and out-of-date, increased revenues were possible only through fundamental reforms. Such reforms, which would affect all groups in France’s complex and fragmented society, were guaranteed to create social and political
unrest.
Fundamental social and economic changes and political crises that eroded throughout America, France, and Haiti. In 1773 disputes over taxes and representation flared up again. Under the Tea Act of that year, the British government permitted the financially hard-pressed East India Company to ship tea from China directly to its agents in the colonies, rather than through London middlemen, who sold to independent merchants in the colonies. Thus the company secured a profitable monopoly on the tea trade, and colonial merchants were excluded. The price on tea was lowered for colonists, but the act generated a great deal of opposition because of its impact on local merchants. For enslaved people, who constituted approximately 90 percent of the population, news of abolitionist movements in France led to hopes that the mother country might grant them freedom. Free people of color looked to reforms in Paris as a means of gaining political enfranchisement and reasserting equal status with whites. The Creole elite were infuriated by talk of abolition and were determined to protect their way of life. They looked to revolutionary ideals of representative government for the chance to gain control of their own affairs, as had the American colonists before them.