Impact of early-modern European Empires

French and Indian Wars (1754-63)• expensive, extensive• overlapped with Seven Years’ War (1756-1763)

• conflict in Europe, India• British victory ensured global dominance

North American prosperity

To pay: increased taxation in 1760s

on the British side• tax burden falls to the colonies

• Sugar Act (1764)

• Stamp Act (1765)

• Quartering Act (1765) (Housing British Troops)

• Tea Act (1773)

The American RevolutionColonies:

•logistic advantage•popular support•support of British rivals•imaginative military leadership

1776 Independence

Britain:

•strong central govt.•navy, army•loyalist population

• treaty at Peace of Paris, 1783• recognition of American independence

• 1787 US constitution drafted•political and legal equality for men of property

The French Revolution (1789-179-)• 18C maturity pains not limited to France

• religious struggles• struggles because of modernizing states• agricultural growth, economic growth• urban/rural divide and business• growth of educated middle classes or

bourgeoisie – desire new rights

• traditional elites resist change:landowners [land, arms, monies]institution of the church

• cycles of crop failures and economic stress

• terrible downturn in 1780s• indirect taxes; new taxes on nobility

The Three Estates

Terms, Events, Results• The Estates General

process to call; these brought cahiers de doléances King not absolute – nobility had the right to resist taxation Third estate demanded sweeping political and social reform

• The National Assembly - formed the National Assembly, June 17, 1789

• demanded a written constitution and popular sovereignty – King prognosticated Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen

• only about 50 000 of 2.5 million eligible to be elected as electors [not modern democracy]

power transferred from aristocrats to propertied people

Then the world went mad• suppressed guilds • peasants had to PAY to escape from old feudal

dues• forbid worker groups• confiscated church lands and sold them (to…)• new money assignats• religious divisions because of loyalty oath (RC

church)• threatened relations with outside countries

and Pope condemned

caught escaping to Germany (emigres) and returned to Paris; King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette executed, 1793

Opportunity knocks• sans culottes • levee en masse - armies, against all expectations,

started to be successful

• Committee of Public Safety – rule by terror• Maximillion Robespierre executed, 1794 • in the end The Directory, consisting of conservative

men of property, controlled France

• used their army and General Napoleon Bonaparte to do so - to turn against the people

• return to political reform to re-establish calm

• so the result: a re-ordering but only within set parameters:

liberal, limited change

The Napoleonic Era• Corsican; minor nobility• top military academy but outsider - provincial accent• marriage to gain place in society

• peace within France: administrative geniusgeneral amnestysupport of army; conscriptionConcordat w. Catholic ChurchNapoleonic Code (merit)banking laws/industrial growth

• once peace in France – turned to opportunistic enemies and invasions

• between 1804 and 1815 (Waterloo) conquered most of Europe

• Nationalism: inspired by the French nation the revolution, and against France

Napoleon in

Alps

Napoleonic Europe

How was Napoleon so successful?

• could field an army of 700 000 conscripts; 100 000 in a single battle

• committed citizen soldiers: professional innovative tactics

• no other country could match that• coalitions against him were not successful

• only by over-reaching his command capability was he defeated

• by sea: 1805 defeated at the Battle of Trafalgar (with Spanish)

ended hopes of invading Britain; Britain controlled the sea

• on land: militarily successful and deft propagandistdiplomatically canny - married d. of Austrian EmperorContinental system

Niemen R. to Moscow [422 000->100 000]

• but: failed invasion of Russia

survived uprising in Paris and raised new army of 350 000 1813 final coalition successful at Battle of Waterloo

Revolutionary Americas - by 1830

Revolution in Haiti

• owners, freed society and slaves

• independent in 1804• François-Dominique Toussaint

Brazilian Independence

Mexican Independence

Nelson’s pigtail/queue (1805)

(removed by ship’s surgeon Beatty for Lady Hamilton as dying wish)

Britain Triumphant for the 19C • only country to emerge relatively

unscathed

• Nelson monument• centre of Trafalgar Square

• surrounded by Heroes of Empire: George IV, Napier and Havelock

• in London, surrounded by what defines GB: art

Churchfinancelearningcoloniesfinancepeople =

modernity