Revolutionary Changes in the Atlantic World, 1750–1850
CHAPTER 21
Revolutionary Changes in the Atlantic World,
1750–1850
I.
Prelude to Revolution: The Eighteenth-Century Crisis
A. Colonial Wars and Fiscal Crises 1. Rivalry among the European powers intensified in the early 1600s as the Dutch Attacked Spanish and Portuguese possessions in the Americas and in Asia. In the 1600s and 1700s the British then checked Dutch commercial and colonial ambitions and went on to defeat France in the Seven Years War (1756–1763) and take over French colonial possessions in the Americas and in India. 2. The unprecedented costs of the wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries drove European governments to seek new sources of revenue at a time when the intellectual environment of the Enlightenment inspired people to question and to protest the state’s attempts to introduce new ways of collecting revenue.
B. The Enlightenment and the Old Order 1. The Enlightenment thinkers sought to apply the methods and questions of the Scientific Revolution to the study of human society. One way of doing so was to classify and systematize knowledge; another way was to search for natural laws that was thought to underlie human affairs and to devise scientific techniques of government and social regulation. 2. John Locke argued that governments were created to protect the people; he emphasized the importance of individual rights. Jean Jacques Rousseau asserted that the will of the people was sacred; he believed that people would act collectively on the basis of their shared historical experience. 3. Not all Enlightenment thinkers were radicals or atheists. Many, like Voltaire, believed that monarchs could be agents of change. 4. Some members of the European nobility (e.g. Catherine the Great of Russia, Frederick the Great of Prussia) patronized
Revolutionary Changes in the Atlantic World,
1750–1850
I.
Prelude to Revolution: The Eighteenth-Century Crisis
A. Colonial Wars and Fiscal Crises 1. Rivalry among the European powers intensified in the early 1600s as the Dutch Attacked Spanish and Portuguese possessions in the Americas and in Asia. In the 1600s and 1700s the British then checked Dutch commercial and colonial ambitions and went on to defeat France in the Seven Years War (1756–1763) and take over French colonial possessions in the Americas and in India. 2. The unprecedented costs of the wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries drove European governments to seek new sources of revenue at a time when the intellectual environment of the Enlightenment inspired people to question and to protest the state’s attempts to introduce new ways of collecting revenue.
B. The Enlightenment and the Old Order 1. The Enlightenment thinkers sought to apply the methods and questions of the Scientific Revolution to the study of human society. One way of doing so was to classify and systematize knowledge; another way was to search for natural laws that was thought to underlie human affairs and to devise scientific techniques of government and social regulation. 2. John Locke argued that governments were created to protect the people; he emphasized the importance of individual rights. Jean Jacques Rousseau asserted that the will of the people was sacred; he believed that people would act collectively on the basis of their shared historical experience. 3. Not all Enlightenment thinkers were radicals or atheists. Many, like Voltaire, believed that monarchs could be agents of change. 4. Some members of the European nobility (e.g. Catherine the Great of Russia, Frederick the Great of Prussia) patronized