Unit 6 (1750-1900) Revolutions Flashcards
Navigation Acts
-Passed by Britain in the 1660s
-Said colonists could only sell their products to Britain and had to pay high taxes on imported French and Dutch goods
-Hard to enforce because so far away
-Many got around this by smuggling
Stamp Act (1765)
-One of many taxes imposed on colonists after the French and Indian War
-First time colonists paid taxes directly to the British
-Violated natural rights (no taxation without representation)
-Protests, boycotting British goods
-Repealed in 1766
Boston Tea Party
-Organized by Samuel Adams in 1773
-Protested the import tax on tea
-George III was mad and ordered the Boston port be closed and the British troops occupy Boston
Continental Congresses
1st:
-Gathered in Philadelphia in 1774 to protest the treatment of Boston
2nd:
-Decided to raise an army under George Washington after Lexington and Concord
-Issued the Declaration of Independence in 1776
Declaration of Independence
-Issued by the Second Continental Congress in July 1776
-Written by Thomas Jefferson
-Used Locke’s ideas about the social contract
-Lists of reasons George III was unjust to rule, said they had rights to cut ties with Britain
Why did America (against the odds) win the Revolutionary War?
-Americans were defending their home (stronger motivation)
-British generals were overconfident and made mistakes
-Every battle Britain fought cost them more and more, people grew tired of funding an overseas war
-Louis XVI helped (to harm Britain), France entered war in 1778
Yorktown
-1781
-American and French soldiers defeat Britain
-Lord Cornwallis surrenders
Articles of Confederation
-Ratified in 1781
-Established the United States as a republic (citizens rule through elected representatives)
-Created a weak central gov because states didn’t want to give up authority
-Only a congress (no other branch), couldl declare war, enter into treaties, and coin money but could NOT collect taxes or regulate trade
-States had one vote, laws needed 9 of 13 to pass (made it very hard)
Economic problems with the Articles
-Gov could only request money from states
-Veterans demanded back pay from the war
-States made their own money and even sometimes put tariffs on things from other states
-Massachusetts war veteran Daniel Shays led debt-ridden farmers in a rebellion against high state taxes and in demand of more use of paper money, attacked courthouses, etc
Constitutional Convention
-1787 meeting to revise the Articles
-55 men were the delegates, well educated in Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, etc
-Debated on issues like how many votes to each state, etc
The Federal System
-Power is divided between the national and state governments
-Legislative, executive, and judicial branches have checks and balances
Bill of Rights
-Federalists agreed to this to get Antifederalists to approve the new Constitution
-First ten amendments to the Constitution
-Protected basic rights like speech, press, assembly, and religion
The Old Regime
-France’s feudalism system left over from the middle ages
-French people were divided into three social classes (called estates)
The Privileged Estates
-Access to high offices, exemption from paying taxes, hated Enlightenment thinking
First Estate: clergy
-Roman Catholic church
-Owned 10% of land
Provided relief services to the poor and contributed 2% of their income to the gov
Second Estate: nobles
-Rich from owning land
-Almost no taxes
-2% of the population but owned 20% of the land
The Third Estate
-Made up 98% of French people
-Three groups
Bourgeoisie:
-Merchants and artisans
-Well educated, believed in Enlightenment ideas
-Many were as rich as the nobles, made them mad that they had to pay taxes
Urban workers:
-Cooks, servants, etc
-Low wages, often out of work, hungry, had to steal bread
Peasants:
-80% of French population
-Had to pay half their income on dues to nobles, tithes to the church, taxes to the king, etc
Enlightenment + the Third Estate
-People in the Third Estate began to question power and authority
-Considered equality, liberty, democracy etc especially after the American Revolution
-Discussed Rousseau, Voltaire
-Also talked about Comte D’antraigues, who said a nation’s power lies in the people
French economic problems
-Heavy burden of taxes
-Rising cost of living, added to the problems with crop failures and starvation in the 1780s
-Louis XVI borrowed lots of money (doubling national debt) to fight with the Americans in their revolution
—–Eventually, banks stopped loaning him money in 1786
Marie Antoinette
-14 when she married 15 year old Louis XVI
-Austrian royal family member, made her instantly unpopular in France
-Spent tons of money on gowns, jewels, etc
-Called “Madame Deficit”
Estates-General
-Assembly of representatives from all three estates
-Called by Louis XVI in 1789 because he wanted to tax aristocrats (needed approval for this)
How had the Estates-General previously worked, what Third Estate wanted to change, what Louis XVI decided
Previous:
-Each estate meets separately, given one vote for each estate (Third Estate always outvoted)
Third Estate Proposal:
-Meet all together, each delegate gets their own vote (favored them)
Louis’s Decision:
-Keep the medieval policy
Abbe Sieyes
-Sympathetic clergy member to the Third Estate cause
-Proposed that the Third Estate delegates should name themselves the National Assembly and pass laws and reforms in the name of the French people
National Assembly
-Third Estate delegates like Abbe Sieyes’s idea and voted to establish the Assembly
-This proclaimed the end of the absolute monarchy and start of a representative gov (first real act of rebellion)
-Louis XVI made the clergy and nobles agree to join this to keep the peace
Tennis Court Oath
-Third Estate was locked out of their meeting room
-Broke down a door into an indoor tennis court
-Pledged to stay until their new constitution was written
What did Louis XVI do out of fear, and what did that start?
-Stationed his mercenary army of Swiss guards in Paris because he didn’t trust the loyalty of French soldiers
-Rumors spread in Paris that foreign troops were coming to massacre French citizens
-People gathered weapons to defend Paris
Fall of Bastille
-July 14th
-Mob tried to get gunpowder form the Bastille (French prison)
-Overwhelmed the king’s soldiers, causing Bastille to fall into the citizens’ control
-Became a symbolic act of revolution
The Great Fear
-Rebellion spread from Paris to the countryside as more rumors circulated that nobles hired soldiers to kill the peasants
-Wave of senseless panic
-Peasants took pitchforks and torches, broke into nobles’ manors, burned them, etc
March to Versailles
-Parisian men and women (after women rioted over the rising price of bread) marched to Versailles
-Took knives and axes, broke into the palace, killed two guards
-Demanded that Louis and Marie come to Paris
-They did and never returned *this signals the change in power and reforms about to happen in France
Nobles support the National Assembly
-Made speeches all through the night of August 4, 1789 about liberty and equality (mainly motivated by fear)
-They swept away feudal privileges, making peasants and commoners equal to clergy and nobles
-The Old Regime was now over
Declaration of Rights of Man
-Statement by the National Assembly on August 27
-Inspired by Enlightenment ideas and the Declaration of Independence
-Equal rights, liberty, property, security, justice, freedom of speech and religion
-“Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” became the slogan of the revolution
Olympe de Gouge
-Mad that the Declaration of the Rights of Man didn’t apply to women
-Wrote her own declaration of the rights of women, but her ideas were rejected
-Later beheaded as an enemy to the revolutionary cause
State-controlled church
-National Assembly took over the church’s lands and said church officials/priests were now elected by property owners and paid as state officials
-Done so help pay off France’s debt (selling church land was better than taxing the bourgeoisies more)
-Many peasants and priests were conservative catholics and hated this (believed pope should rule over the church independent of the state)
-Drove a wedge between peasants and bourgeoisie, peasants now opposed revolution ideas
Louis XVI tries to escape
-Advisors warned him that he might be in danger
-June 1791, Louis and family try to escape to the Austrian Netherlands, but are stopped near the French boarder by a postmaster who recognizes him from his portrait on paper money
-Royal family returned to Paris under guard
Legislative Assembly
-Created by the new constitution (1791) that Louis reluctantly agreed to
-Meant that France was now a limited constitutional monarchy (king could only enforce laws, not create them)
-They could create laws and approve/prevent wars the king declared on other countries
Legislative Assembly splits
-Due to problems like debt and food shortages, made them turn on each other
-Split into three groups referred to as where they sat in the meeting hall
-Radicals (left-wing) opposed the king and monarchy, wanted the people to have full power in a republic
-Moderates (centrists) wanted a few gov. changes
-Conservatives (right-wing) wanted to stick with the limited monarchy and limited changes to the gov
