Part Two Debating the Age of Revolutions 1600-1870

1. Part TwoDebating the Age of Revolutions1600-1870

2. What’s is important here: Four Bourgeois and/or National Revolutions?

3. Revolutions of this period • Against the ancien regime (old order) • (Reformation – earlier but a big challenge) • Enlightenment • American Revolution • French Revolution • Haitian Revolution • Mexican Revolution • South American Revolutions • Industrial Revolution

4. Challenging the “master narrative” • Formerly historians adopted a very Eurocentric stance – looked for causes only within Europe and assumed rest of world was left to wither imitate Europe or be left behind.

5. The BIG question for Part Two • What were the origins of the revolutions and reforms of the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries in the Americas, France, the Ottoman and British Empires and elsewhere? • Was global trade central to these transformations? • To what degree did global trade cause variance? • How important were local factors, such as the development of national identity?

6. Rise of the Bourgeois • Wealthy European merchant – entrepreneurs and innovators – profits. • Essential ingredient to Age of Revolution? • Leaders and participants in many of the revolutionary movements – not just political but Enlightenment, Scientific Revolution, capitalism and Industrial Revolution.

7. The “European Miracle”? • Eric Jones (Reading 29, p. 81) – believes in the “miracle” of responsive capitalism. • Culmination of very long term trends – market responds to customer demands. • Add New World bounty – merchants already in place to profit. • In comparison with Zheng He’s voyages – individual merchants di not profit. • “Peace and easy taxes” a necessary prelude.

8. Adam Smith, 1776 • Argues that Europe economic systems not so free and efficient as Jones believes they were. • Mercantilism – belief that there is a fixed amount of wealth – thus look always for a favorable balance of trade. • European countries because of mercantilism insist their colonies only trade with Mother Country – limits profitablity in Smith’s belief.

9. Dependency Cycles • When western Europeans turn to exploiting and importing goods from elsewhere it creates a dependency cycle: • Americas export raw materials to Europe – Africa exports slaves to Americas – Asia exports finished goods to Europe, which Europeans pay for with American silver. • At each stage European shippers profit – profits go into innovations in Europe.

10. Just how important was global trade? • Kenneth Pomeranz (reading 31) argues for the extreme importance of global trade to European development, But Patrick O’Brien, argues that local and inter-regional trade was more important. • Only 4% of Europe’s Gross national output going to export, but profits made from imports and from moving goods around. (e.g. slave trade does not involve Euro export)

11. A European Agent in India 1580 • Reading 33, p. 91, an agent for the powerful banking family, the Fuggers, send back a disappointing report – the only thing he seems to be able to trade for Indian spices, is American silver. • Sixteenth Century Church of St Francis in Cochin – no doubt our agent would have attended services there.

12. Did Local Nationalism cause Atlantic Revolutions? • The Atlantic World – North and South America, Europe and Africa. • Created by movement in goods, people, ideas and species. • Enlightenment Ideas about the most just and natural society spread and caused waves of revolution in the Atlantic world?

13. Timeline • Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth century • Enlightenment • 1775 – American Revolution • 1789 – French Revolution • 1792 – Haitian Revolution • 1810 – Hidalgo’s Mexican Revolution • 1819-1821 – most Latin American countries achieve independence

14. What is the Third Estate • Since the medieval period, France’s parliament had been the Estates General – three estates – clergy, nobility and “everyone else”. • Not called for over a hundred years – French king wanted to rule as absolutists. • But Louis XVI had lent money to American revolutionaries (because they were fighting the British) – now broke. • Needs to call the Estates General – but the Third Estate now includes wealthy but disenfranchised bourgeois – sick of not really being represented because first two estates in cahoots. • Reading 34, Abbe Seyes argues it is only the third estate that work, so they really are the nation, they are “Everything”

15. A generalized sense of national or localized? • Liah Greenfield argues that that there was no generalized spread of nationalism behind these revolutions, but local factors in each revolutionary area were more important. • In terms of France, she argue that the absolutist government created a situation in which the desires of the nobility and the bourgeois temporarily aligned – the nobility wanting to protect their status from further erosion and the bourgeois wanting to attain a status which matched their new found wealth

16. Nationalism in America – “Just say No!” • T. H. Breen argues that nationalism in the thirteenth colonies was expressed by the wide-scale boycotting of popular goods – especially tea. • Increased taxation to pay for the Seven Years War against France (fought in both America and India) – was not matched by an increasing say in colonial affairs. • The Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Document - expresses this colonial anger.

17. Is Nationalism about “Imagined Community”? • Benedict Anderson’s argument, reading 38, on page 105 – argues that nationalism is often and internal creation rather than a really historical unity. • In Spanish America – the Creoles were discriminated against in favor of the peninsulares – this gave them a common sense of cause – an imagined community.

18. Summary • Think about the American revolution in terms of the wave of revolutions in the Atlantic world. • Was revolutions caused by the increase in bourgeois power and wealth as a result of global trade? • How did nationalism develop – was this the root cause of revolutions? • Next time (just chapter 9) – look more closely at the connections between Atlantic Revolutions.