the art archive/marc charmetalvaradohistory.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/chapter... · 2014. 1....

C H A P T E R

18

The West on the Eve of aNew World Order

CHAPTER OUTLINEAND FOCUS QUESTIONS

Toward a New Heaven and a New Earth: AnIntellectual Revolution in the West

Who were the leading figures of the ScientificRevolution and the Enlightenment, and what weretheir main contributions?

Economic Changes and the Social OrderWhat changes occurred in the European economy inthe eighteenth century, and to what degree were thesechanges reflected in social patterns?

Colonial Empires and Revolution in theAmericas

What colonies did the British and French establish inthe Americas, and how did their methods ofadministering their colonies differ?

Toward a New Political Order and GlobalConflict

What do historians mean by the term enlightenedabsolutism, and to what degree did eighteenth-centuryPrussia, Austria, and Russia exhibit its characteristics?

The French RevolutionWhat were the causes, the main events, and the resultsof the French Revolution?

The Age of NapoleonWhich aspects of the French Revolution did Napoleonpreserve, and which did he destroy?

CRITICAL THINKINGIn what ways were the American Revolution,the French Revolution, and the seventeenth-century English revolutions alike? In what wayswere they different?

The storming of the Bastille

ªTh

eArtA

rchive/M

arcCh

armet

IN PARIS ON THE MORNING of July 14, 1789, a mob of eightthousand men and women in search of weapons streamedtoward the Bastille (bass-STEEL), a royal armory filled witharms and ammunition. The Bastille was also a state prison,and although it held only seven prisoners at the time, in theeyes of these angry Parisians, it was a glaring symbol of thegovernment’s despotic policies. The armory was defended bythe marquis de Launay (mar-KEE duh loh-NAY) and asmall garrison of 114 men. The attack began in earnest in theearly afternoon, and after three hours of fighting, de Launayand the garrison surrendered. Angered by the loss of ninety-eight of their members, the victorious mob beat de Launay todeath, cut off his head, and carried it aloft in triumph throughthe streets. When King Louis XVI was told the news of thefall of the Bastille by the duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt(dook duh lah-RUSH-foo-koh-lee-ahn-KOOR), heexclaimed, ‘‘Why, this is a revolt.’’ ‘‘No, Sire,’’ replied theduc. ‘‘It is a revolution.’’

The French Revolution of 1789 was a key factor in theemergence of a new world order. Historians have often con-sidered the eighteenth century the final phase of an oldEurope that would be forever changed by the violent up-heaval and reordering of society associated with the FrenchRevolution. Before the Revolution, the old order—stilllargely agrarian, dominated by kings and landed aristocrats,

508Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).

Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

and grounded in privileges for nobles, clergy, towns, andprovinces—seemed content to continue a basic pattern thathad prevailed since medieval times. As the century drew to aclose, however, a new intellectual ethos based on rationalismand secularism emerged, and demographic, economic, social,and political patterns were beginning to change in ways thatproclaimed the arrival of a new and more modern order.

The French Revolution demolished the institutions of theold regime and established a new order based on individualrights, representative institutions, and a concept of loyalty tothe nation rather than to the monarch. The revolutionaryupheavals of the era, especially in France, gave rise to newliberal and national political ideals, summarized in the Frenchrevolutionary slogan ‘‘Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!’’ thattransformed France and then spread to other Europeancountries and the rest of the world.

Toward a New Heaven and aNew Earth: An IntellectualRevolution in the West

FOCUS QUESTION:Who were the leading figures ofthe Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, andwhat were their main contributions?

In the seventeenth century, a group of scientists set the West-ern world on a new path known as the Scientific Revolution,which brought to Europeans a new way of viewing the uni-verse and their place in it. The Scientific Revolution affectedonly a small number of Europe’s educated elite. But in theeighteenth century, this changed dramatically as a group ofintellectuals popularized the ideas of the Scientific Revolutionand used them to undertake a dramatic reexamination of allaspects of life. The widespread impact of these ideas on theirsociety has caused historians ever since to call the eighteenthcentury in Europe the Age of Enlightenment.

The Scientific RevolutionThe Scientific Revolution ultimately challenged conceptionsand beliefs about the nature of the external world that hadbecome dominant by the Late Middle Ages.

TOWARD A NEW HEAVEN: A REVOLUTION IN ASTRONOMY

The philosophers of the Middle Ages had used the ideas ofAristotle, Ptolemy (the greatest astronomer of antiquity, wholived in the second century C.E.), and Christianity to form thePtolemaic (tahl-uh-MAY-ik) or geocentric theory of the uni-verse. In this conception, the universe was seen as a series ofconcentric spheres with a fixed or motionless earth at its cen-ter. Composed of material substance, the earth was imperfectand constantly changing. The spheres that surrounded theearth were made of a crystalline, transparent substance andmoved in circular orbits around the earth. The heavenlybodies, which in 1500 were believed to number ten, were

pure orbs of light, embedded in the moving, concentricspheres. Working outward from the earth, the first eightspheres contained the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars,Jupiter, Saturn, and the fixed stars. The ninth sphere impartedto the eighth sphere of the fixed stars its daily motion, whilethe tenth sphere was frequently described as the prime moverthat moved itself and imparted motion to the other spheres.Beyond the tenth sphere was the Empyrean Heaven—thelocation of God and all the saved souls. Thus, God and thesaved souls were at one end of the universe, and humanswere at the center. They had power over the earth, but theirreal purpose was to achieve salvation.

Nicolaus Copernicus (NEE-koh-lowss kuh-PURR-nuh-kuss) (1473–1543), a native of Poland, was a mathematicianwho felt that Ptolemy’s geocentric system failed to accord withthe observed motions of the heavenly bodies and hoped thathis heliocentric (sun-centered) theory would offer a moreaccurate explanation. Copernicus argued that the sun wasmotionless at the center of the universe. The planets revolvedaround the sun in the order of Mercury, Venus, the earth,Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The moon, however, revolvedaround the earth. Moreover, what appeared to be the move-ment of the sun around the earth was really explained by thedaily rotation of the earth on its axis and the journey of theearth around the sun each year. But Copernicus did not rejectthe idea that the heavenly spheres moved in circular orbits.

The next step in destroying the geocentric conception andsupporting the Copernican system was taken by JohannesKepler (yoh-HAHN-us KEP-lur) (1571–1630). A brilliantGerman mathematician and astronomer, Kepler arrived atlaws of planetary motion that confirmed Copernicus’s helio-centric theory. In his first law, however, he contradictedCopernicus by showing that the orbits of the planets aroundthe sun were not circular but elliptical, with the sun at onefocus of the ellipse rather than at the center.

Kepler’s work destroyed the basic structure of the Ptole-maic system. People could now think in new terms of theactual paths of planets revolving around the sun in ellipticalorbits. But important questions remained unanswered. Forexample, what were the planets made of? An Italian scientistachieved the next important breakthrough to a new cosmol-ogy by answering that question.

Galileo Galilei (gal-li-LAY-oh GAL-li-lay) (1564–1642)taught mathematics and was the first European to make sys-tematic observations of the heavens by means of a telescope,inaugurating a new age in astronomy. Galileo turned his tele-scope to the skies and made a remarkable series of discov-eries: mountains on the moon, four moons revolving aroundJupiter, and sunspots. Galileo’s observations seemed todestroy yet another aspect of the traditional cosmology inthat the universe seemed to be composed of material similarto that of earth rather than a perfect and unchangingsubstance.

Galileo’s revelations, published in The Starry Messenger in1610, made Europeans aware of a new picture of the uni-verse. But the Catholic Church condemned Copernicanismand ordered Galileo to abandon the Copernican thesis. Thechurch attacked the Copernican system because it threatened

Toward a New Heaven and a New Earth: An Intellectual Revolution in the West 509Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).


not only Scripture but also an entire conception of the uni-verse. The heavens were no longer a spiritual world but aworld of matter.

By the 1630s and 1640s, most astronomers had come toaccept the new heliocentric conception of the universe.Nevertheless, no one yet had explained motion in the uni-verse and tied together the ideas of Copernicus, Galileo, andKepler. This would be the work of an Englishman who haslong been considered the greatest genius of the ScientificRevolution.

Isaac Newton (1642–1727) taught at Cambridge Univer-sity, where he wrote his major work, Mathematical Principlesof Natural Philosophy, known simply as the Principia (prin-SIP-ee-uh) by the first word of its Latin title. In the first bookof the Principia, Newton defined the three laws of motion thatgovern the planetary bodies, as well as objects on earth. Cru-cial to his whole argument was the universal law of gravita-tion, which explained why the planetary bodies did not go offin straight lines but continued in elliptical orbits about thesun. In mathematical terms, Newton explained that everyobject in the universe is attracted to every other object by aforce called gravity.

Newton had demonstrated that one mathematicallyproven universal law could explain all motion in the universe.At the same time, the Newtonian synthesis created a newcosmology in which the universe was seen as one huge,

regulated machine that operated according to natural laws inabsolute time, space, and motion. Newton’s world-machineconcept dominated the modern worldview until the twenti-eth century, when Albert Einstein’s concept of relativity cre-ated a new picture of the universe.

TOWARD A NEW EARTH: DESCARTES AND RATIONALISMThe new conception of the universe contained in the cosmo-logical revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuriesinevitably had an impact on the Western view of humankind.Nowhere is this more evident than in the work of the Frenchphilosopher Rene Descartes (ruh-NAY day-KART) (1596–1650). The starting point for Descartes’s new system wasdoubt. As Descartes explained at the beginning of his most fa-mous work, Discourse on Method, written in 1637, he decidedto set aside all that he had learned and begin again. One factseemed to Descartes beyond doubt—his own existence:

I immediately became aware that while I was thus disposed tothink that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I whothus thought should be something; and noting that this truthI think, therefore I am, was so steadfast and so assured that the sup-positions of the skeptics, to whatever extreme they might all becarried, could not avail to shake it, I concluded that I might with-out scruple accept it as being the first principle of the philosophyI was seeking.1

Medieval Conception of the Universe. As this sixteenth-centuryillustration shows, the medieval cosmological view placed the earth atthe center of the universe, surrounded by a series of concentric spheres.The earth was imperfect and constantly changing, whereas the heavenlybodies that surrounded it were perfect and incorruptible. Beyond thetenth and final sphere was heaven, where God and all the saved soulswere located. (The circles read, from the center outward: 1. Moon,2. Mercury, 3. Venus, 4. Sun, 5. Mars, 6. Jupiter, 7. Saturn,8. Firmament (of the Stars), 9. Crystalline Sphere, 10. Prime Mover; andaround the outside, Empyrean Heaven—Home of God and All theElect, that is, saved souls.)

The Copernican System. The Copernican system was presented inOn the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, published shortly beforeCopernicus’s death. As shown in this illustration from the first edition ofthe book, Copernicus maintained that the sun was the center of theuniverse and that the planets, including the earth, revolved around it.Moreover, the earth rotated daily on its axis. (The circles read, fromthe center outward: Sun; VII. Mercury, orbit of 80 days; VI. Venus;V. Earth, with the moon, orbit of one year; IIII. Mars, orbit of 2 years;III. Jupiter, orbit of 12 years; II. Saturn, orbit of 30 years; I. ImmobileSphere of the Fixed Stars.)

ªImag

eSe

lect/ArtRe

source

,NY

ªImag

eSe

lect/ArtRe

source

,NY

510 CHAPTER 18 The West on the Eve of a New World OrderCopyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).


With this emphasis on the mind, Descartes asserted that hewould accept only things that his reason said were true.

From his first postulate, Descartes deduced an additionalprinciple, the separation of mind and matter. Descartesargued that since ‘‘the mind cannot be doubted but the bodyand material world can, the two must be radically different.’’From this came an absolute dualism between mind and mat-ter, or what has also been called Cartesian dualism. Usingmind or human reason and its best instrument, mathematics,humans can understand the material world because it is puremechanism, a machine that is governed by its own physicallaws because it was created by God—the great geometrician.

Descartes’s separation of mind and matter allowed scien-tists to view matter as dead or inert, as something that wastotally separate from themselves and could be investigated in-dependently by reason. The split between mind and body ledWesterners to equate their identity with mind and reasonrather than with the whole organism. Descartes has rightlybeen called the father of modern rationalism.

EUROPE, CHINA, AND SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS An inter-esting question that arises is why the Scientific Revolutionoccurred in Europe and not in China. In the Middle Ages,China had been the most technologically advanced civiliza-tion in the world. After 1500, that distinction passed to theWest (see the comparative essay ‘‘The Scientific Revolution’’on p. 512). Historians are not sure why. Some have con-trasted the sense of order in Chinese society with the compet-itive spirit existing in Europe. Others have emphasizedChina’s ideological viewpoint that favored living in harmonywith nature rather than trying to dominate it. One historianhas even suggested that China’s civil service system drew the‘‘best and the brightest’’ into government service, to the detri-ment of other occupations.

Background to the EnlightenmentThe impetus for political and social change in the eighteenthcentury stemmed in part from the Enlightenment. TheEnlightenment was a movement of intellectuals who weregreatly impressed with the accomplishments of the ScientificRevolution. When they used the word reason—one of theirfavorite words—they were advocating the application of thescientific method to the understanding of all life. All institu-tions and all systems of thought were subject to the rational,scientific way of thinking if people would only free them-selves from the shackles of past, worthless traditions, espe-cially religious ones. If Isaac Newton could discover thenatural laws regulating the world of nature, they too, byusing reason, could find the laws that governed human soci-ety. This belief in turn led them to hope that they could makeprogress toward a better society than the one they had inher-ited. Reason, natural law, hope, progress—these were the buzz-words in the heady atmosphere of eighteenth-centuryEurope.

Major sources of inspiration for the Enlightenment wereIsaac Newton and his fellow Englishman John Locke (1632–1704). Newton had contended that the world and everything

in it worked like a giant machine. Enchanted by the granddesign of this world-machine, the intellectuals of the Enlight-enment were convinced that by following Newton’s rules ofreasoning, they could discover the natural laws that governedpolitics, economics, justice, and religion.

John Locke’s theory of knowledge also made a greatimpact. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, writtenin 1690, Locke denied the existence of innate ideas andargued instead that every person was born with a tabula rasa(TAB-yuh-luh RAH-suh), a blank mind:

Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, voidof all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be fur-nished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy andboundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endlessvariety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge?To this I answer, in one word, from experience. . . . Our observa-tion, employed either about external sensible objects or aboutthe internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected onby ourselves, is that which supplies our understanding with allthe materials of thinking.2

By denying innate ideas, Locke’s philosophy implied thatpeople were molded by their environment, by whatever theyperceived through their senses from their surrounding world.By changing the environment and subjecting people toproper influences, they could be changed and a new societycreated. And how should the environment be changed? New-ton had paved the way: reason enabled enlightened people todiscover the natural laws to which all institutions shouldconform.

The Philosophes and Their IdeasThe intellectuals of the Enlightenment were known by theFrench term philosophes (fee-loh-ZAHFS), although theywere not all French and few were philosophers in the strictsense of the term. The philosophes were literary people, pro-fessors, journalists, economists, political scientists, and, aboveall, social reformers. They came from both the nobility andthe middle class, and a few even stemmed from lower-mid-dle-class origins. Although it was a truly international and cos-mopolitan movement, the Enlightenment also enhanced thedominant role being played by French culture; Paris was itsrecognized capital. Most of the leaders of the Enlightenmentwere French. The French philosophes, in turn, affected intel-lectuals elsewhere and created a movement that touched theentire Western world, including the British and Spanish colo-nies in America (see Map 18.1). (The terms British and GreatBritain came to be be used after 1707 when the United King-dom of Great Britain came into existence, uniting the govern-ments of England and Scotland, as well as Wales, which hadbeen joined to England previously.)

To the philosophes, the role of philosophy was not just todiscuss the world but to change it. To the philosophes, reasonwas a scientific method, and it relied on an appeal to facts. Aspirit of rational criticism was to be applied to everything,including religion and politics. Spanning almost a century, theEnlightenment evolved with each succeeding generation,



becoming more radical as new thinkers built on the contribu-tions of their predecessors. A few individuals, however, domi-nated the landscape so completely that we can gain insightinto the core ideas of the philosophes by focusing on thethree French giants—Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Diderot.

MONTESQUIEU Charles de Secondat (SHARL duh suh-KAHN-da), the baron de Montesquieu (MOHN-tess-kyoo)(1689–1755), came from the French nobility. His most famouswork, The Spirit of the Laws, was published in 1748. In thiscomparative study of governments, Montesquieu attemptedto apply the scientific method to the social and political arenato ascertain the ‘‘natural laws’’ governing the social and politi-cal relationships of human beings. Montesquieu distinguishedthree basic kinds of governments: republic, monarchy, anddespotism.

Montesquieu used England as an example of monarchy,and it was his analysis of England’s constitution that led to hismost lasting contribution to political thought—the impor-tance of checks and balances achieved by means of a separa-tion of powers. He believed that England’s system, with itsseparate executive, legislative, and judicial branches thatserved to limit and control each other, provided the greatestfreedom and security for a state. The translation of his workinto English two years after publication ensured that it wouldbe read by American political leaders, who eventually incor-porated its principles into the U.S. Constitution.

VOLTAIRE The greatest figure of the Enlightenment wasFrançois-Marie Arouet (frahn-SWAH-ma-REE ahr-WEH),known simply as Voltaire (vohl-TAYR) (1694–1778). Son of aprosperous middle-class family from Paris, he studied law,

COMPARATIVE ESSAY

The Scientific Revolution

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

When Catholic missionaries arrived in China inthe sixteenth century, they marveled at thesophistication of Chinese civilization and itsmany accomplishments, including woodblock

printing and the civil service examination system. In turn,their hosts were impressed with European inventions such asthe spring-driven clock and eyeglasses.

It is not surprising that visitorsfrom the West were impressedwith what they saw in China, forthat country had long been atthe forefront of human achieve-ment. After the sixteenth century,however, Europe would take thelead in the advance of scienceand technology, a phenomenonthat would ultimately bring aboutthe Industrial Revolution and setin motion a transformation ofhuman society.

Why did Europe suddenlybecome the engine for rapidchange in the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries? One factorwas the change in the Europeanworldview, the shift from a meta-physical to a materialist perspec-tive and the growing inclination among Europeanintellectuals to question first principles. In contrast to China,where, for example, the ‘‘investigation of things’’ proposedby Song dynasty thinkers had been used to analyze andconfirm principles first established by Confucius and hiscontemporaries, empirical scientists in early modern Europerejected received religious ideas, developed a new

conception of the universe, and sought ways to improvematerial conditions around them.

Why were European thinkers more interested in practicalapplications of their discoveries than their counterparts else-where? No doubt the literate mercantile and propertied elitesof Europe were attracted to the new science because itoffered new ways to exploit resources for profit. Some of the

early scientists made it easier for thesegroups to accept the new ideas by show-ing how they could be applied directly tospecific industrial and technologicalneeds. Galileo, for example, consciouslysought an alliance between science andthe material interests of the educatedelite when he assured his listeners thatthe science of mechanics would be quiteuseful ‘‘when it becomes necessary tobuild bridges or other structures overwater, something occurring mainly inaffairs of great importance.’’

Finally, the political changes thatwere beginning to take place in Europeduring this period may also have con-tributed. Many European statesenlarged their bureaucratic machineryand consolidated their governments inorder to collect the revenues and amass

the armies needed to compete militarily with rivals. Politicalleaders desperately sought ways to enhance their wealth andpower and grasped eagerly at whatever tools were availableto guarantee their survival and prosperity.

Why did the Scientific Revolution emerge in Europeand not in China?

The telescope—a European invention.

ªIberfoto/The

Imag

eWorks



although he achieved his first success as a playwright. Voltairewas a prolific author and wrote an almost endless stream ofpamphlets, novels, plays, letters, philosophical essays, andhistories.

Voltaire was especially well known for his criticism of tra-ditional religion and his strong attachment to the ideal of reli-gious toleration (see the box on p. 514). As he grew older,Voltaire became ever more strident in his denunciations.‘‘Crush the infamous thing,’’ he thundered repeatedly—theinfamous thing being religious fanaticism, intolerance, andsuperstition.

Throughout his life, Voltaire championed not only reli-gious tolerance but also deism, a religious outlook shared bymost other philosophes. Deism was built on the Newtonian

world-machine, which implied the existence of a mechanic(God) who had created the universe. To Voltaire and mostother philosophes, the universe was like a clock, and Godwas the clockmaker who had created it, set it in motion, andallowed it to run according to its own natural laws.

DIDEROT Denis Diderot (duh-NEE dee-DROH) (1713–1784)was the son of a skilled craftsman from eastern France whobecame a writer so that he could be free to study and read inmany subjects and languages. One of Diderot’s favorite topicswas Christianity, which he condemned as fanatical and unrea-sonable. Of all religions, Christianity, he averred, was theworst, ‘‘the most absurd and the most atrocious in itsdogma.’’

Sea

MMee dd ii tt ee r ranean

EbroR.

LoireR

.

AtlanticOcean

ArA c t i c Ocean

Nor thhSea

Danubbu ee R..

LLLLisisssssssssbbbonbbbbbbbbbbbbonsssssssssbbbbbbbbbbbbb Madrid

GGGlGlaasgogogogogogogogosgogoogoogoowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwgoggogoogogogggggEdiiiiiididdiiiiiiinnbububuuurghrgrgdiiiididiiiiin

CamCamamCamamCamamCamCamCamCamCamammCamamambrbrbrbrrbribrbrbbrbrbbbrbbrbbrrrrrrr dgemamammammmammammmbrbrbrrbrbrbrbrbrbrbbrbrrrrrCamCamaCaCaCaCaCaCamCamCa

GrGreGrGrGreGreGreGreGreGrGrrGGG enwnwenwnwiichiiichiiiiiGrGreGrGreGreGrGreGreGreGrereGrr enwenennnwiiiiiiii

LondddodoonndddddddddddddddAmsterdam

LeidenLeid

CopenhenhnhnhnhnhnhnhhhnhhhhhageagegennnnhnhnhnhnhhnhhhnhC

Uppsala

StStototoockckhckhckhooolmlmSaint PetersburgSainSainSain

Danzig

WarsawWBerlin

ViennaVien

Venice

Boooololoooooooooo ogngnnnnnnnnnnaBooooooooo nnnnnnnnnna

Flooololololooooorerenrrrrrrrr nrrrr ceeceoooolololooorrrrrrrr

RommmmomomRomommmmmmmmmeeomommomomommmmmmm

Napppplesleslelesleslelleslelesleslesesesesslesleslesleslelleseeseses

PisPisP aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Geneva

StrasbourggS ra

Leipzigi

HalleGöttingen

VersaillesParisPar

Turin

CoCoorrrssiciccccccccccccccacccccccccc

Saaarrrdindinnnnnnnd nnnniannnnnnnnnn

SicSSS ilySSBBBaleeaaarrriiiiccc

IIIsssIIII lllaaall nnnndddddsssddddd

POOORRRRRRRRRTTTUGTTTTTT ALRRRRRRTTTTTT

SPAIN

IREREREIRERERREREIREREEEELANDDDDDDDDDDDDIREIREIREIREIREREREEE DDDDDDDD

SCCCOCCCCOCCCC TLATLTLATLATLATLATLATLALALTLALTLATT NDNDDNDNDNDNDDNDNDDAAAAAANDNDNDNDNNDDCCCCCCCCC TLATLTLATLATLATLATLATLATLTT

ENGNGNGNGNGNGNGNGNNNNN LALALLANLANLALANLALALALANND andndndndndndndnndnddd WWALWW ESNNNNNNNNN ndndndndndnddAAANANANANANNGGGGLLLLLLGGGGLLLLLL

NORNONONONONONONONONONO WAYNONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO SWEWEEEWEWEWEEWEEWEW DDDEENWEWEWEEEWEWEE

RUSSIA

FRANCENC

ooiirre

SWITZERLAND

IIIITITAAITIII LIALIAAL NNNNNNNIITITIII NNNNNNNISTSTSTSTASTATASSTSTSTTT TESTESTESTASTATTSTASTATTT

POLANDD

HUNGARY

AUSTRIAA

NETTHHEHERHERLANLANNANANNNNNNNNDSDSDSDSDSDSDSDSDSDSDDSANNANANANNNNNDSDSDSDSDSSDSDSDR

DEENENENNNNNNNNMARMARMARMARMARMARMARMMARMARMARMARMAMARMARMARMARM RMARRKKKKKKKKKKKKNNNNNNNMARMARMARMARMARMARMARMARMARMARRKKKKKKKKMMMMMMMM

PRPRPRPRUUPRURUPRUPRRPRPR SSIARRURURURURRRPRPRPRPRPRPPP

GERMANGESTATESTATE

OTTOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN EMPIRE

0 300 600 Miles

0 300 600 900 Kilometers

Palaces modeledafter Versailles

Important universities

Famous Europeanacademic centers

Publication of scientificor philosophical journals

Location ofobservatories

MAP 18.1 The Enlightenment in Europe. ‘‘Have the courage to use your own intelligence!’’ Thewords of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (i-MAHN-yoo-el KAHNT) epitomize the role of theindividual in using reason to understand all aspects of life—the natural world and the sphere of humannature, behavior, and institutions.

Which countries or regions were at the center of the Enlightenment, and what reasons couldaccount for peripheral regions being less involved?

ªCe

ngag

eLe

arning



Diderot’s most famous contribution to the Enlightenmentwas the Encyclopedia, or Classified Dictionary of the Sciences,Arts, and Trades, a twenty-eight-volume compendium ofknowledge that he edited and referred to as the ‘‘great workof his life.’’ Its purpose, according to Diderot, was to ‘‘changethe general way of thinking.’’ It did precisely that in becom-ing a major weapon of the philosophes’ crusade against theold French society. The contributors included many philo-sophes who attacked religious intolerance and advocated a pro-gram for social, legal, and political improvements that wouldlead to a society that was more cosmopolitan, more tolerant,more humane, and more reasonable. The Encyclopedia was soldto doctors, clergymen, teachers, lawyers, and even militaryofficers, thus spreading the ideas of the Enlightenment.

TOWARD A NEW ‘‘SCIENCE OF MAN’’ The Enlightenmentbelief that Newton’s scientific methods could be used to dis-cover the natural laws underlying all areas of human life ledto the emergence in the eighteenth century of what the philo-sophes called a ‘‘science of man,’’ or what we would call thesocial sciences. In a number of areas, such as economics, poli-tics, and education, the philosophes arrived at natural lawsthat they believed governed human actions.

Adam Smith (1723–1790) has been viewed as one of thefounders of the modern discipline of economics. Smithbelieved that individuals should be free to pursue their owneconomic self-interest. Through the actions of these individu-als, all society would ultimately benefit. Consequently, thestate should in no way interrupt the free play of natural

The Attack on Religious Intolerance

RELIGION &PHILOSOPHY

Although Voltaire’s ideas on religion were notoriginal, his lucid prose, biting satire, and cleverwit caused his works to be widely read and allthe more influential. These two selections pre-

sent different sides of Voltaire’s attack on religious intoler-ance. The first is from his straightforward treatise TheIgnorant Philosopher, and the second is from his only realliterary masterpiece, the novel Candide, where he usedhumor to make the same fundamental point about religiousintolerance.

Voltaire, The Ignorant PhilosopherThe contagion of fanaticism then still subsists. . . . The authorof the Treatise upon Toleration has not mentioned the shock-ing executions wherein so many unhappy victims perished inthe valleys of Piedmont. He has passed over in silence themassacre of six hundred inhabitants of Valtelina, men,women, and children, who were murdered by the Catholicsin the month of September, 1620. I will not say it was withthe consent and assistance of the archbishop of Milan, CharlesBorome, who was made a saint. Some passionate writershave averred this fact, which I am very far from believing;but I say, there is scarce any city or borough in Europe whereblood has not been spilt for religious quarrels; I say, that thehuman species has been perceptibly diminished becausewomen and girls were massacred as well as men; I say, thatEurope would have had a third larger population if there hadbeen no theological disputes. In fine, I say, that so far fromforgetting these abominable times, we should frequently takea view of them, to inspire an eternal horror for them; and thatit is for our age to make reparation by toleration, for this longcollection of crimes, which has taken place through the wantof toleration, during sixteen barbarous centuries.

Let it not then be said, that there are no traces left of thatshocking fanaticism, of the want of toleration; they are still

everywhere to be met with, even in those countries that areesteemed the most humane. The Lutheran and Calvinistpreachers, were they masters, would, perhaps, be as littleinclined to pity, as obdurate, as insolent as they upbraid theirantagonists with being.

Voltaire, CandideAt last [Candide] approached a man who had just beenaddressing a big audience for a whole hour on the subject ofcharity. The orator peered at him and said:

‘‘What is your business here? Do you support the GoodOld Cause?’’

‘‘There is no effect without a cause,’’ replied Candidemodestly. ‘‘All things are necessarily connected and arrangedfor the best. It was my fate to be driven from Lady Cune-gonde’s presence and made to run the gauntlet, and now Ihave to beg my bread until I can earn it. Things could nothave happened otherwise.’’

‘‘Do you believe that the Pope is Antichrist, my friend?’’said the minister.

‘‘I have never heard anyone say so,’’ replied Candide; ‘‘butwhether he is or he isn’t, I want some food.’’

‘‘You don’t deserve to eat,’’ said the other. ‘‘Be off withyou, you villain, you wretch! Don’t come near me again oryou’ll suffer for it.’’

The minister’s wife looked out of the window at thatmoment, and seeing a man who was not sure that the Popewas Antichrist, emptied over his head a chamber pot,which shows to what lengths ladies are driven by religiouszeal.

Compare the two approaches that Voltaire uses toaddress the problem of religious intolerance. Whichdo you think is more effective? Why?



economic forces by government regulations on the economybut should leave it alone, a doctrine that subsequentlybecame known as laissez-faire (less-ay-FAYR) (French for‘‘leave it alone’’).

Smith allotted government only three basic functions: toprotect society from invasion (via an army), defend its citizensfrom injustice (by means of a police force), and keep up cer-tain public works, such as roads and canals, that private indi-viduals could not afford.

THE LATER ENLIGHTENMENT By the late 1760s, a new gen-eration of philosophes who had grown up with the world-view of the Enlightenment began to move beyond theirpredecessors’ beliefs. Most famous was Jean-Jacques Rous-seau (ZHAHNH-ZHAHK roo-SOH) (1712–1778), whosepolitical beliefs were presented in two major works. In hisDiscourse on the Origins of the Inequality of Mankind, Rousseauargued that people had adopted laws and governors in orderto preserve their private property. In the process, they hadbecome enslaved by government. What, then, should peopledo to regain their freedom? In his celebrated treatise TheSocial Contract, published in 1762, Rousseau found an answerin the concept of the social contract, whereby an entire soci-ety agreed to be governed by its general will. Each individualmight have a particular will contrary to the general will, butif the individual put his particular will (self-interest) above thegeneral will, he should be forced to abide by the general will.

‘‘This means nothing less than that he will beforced to be free,’’ said Rousseau, because thegeneral will, being ethical and not just political,represented what the entire community oughtto do.

Another influential treatise by Rousseau washis novel Emile, one of the Enlightenment’smost important works on education. Rousseau’sfundamental concern was that education shouldfoster, rather than restrict, children’s naturalinstincts. Rousseau’s own experiences hadshown him the importance of the emotions.What he sought was a balance between heartand mind, between emotion and reason.

But Rousseau did not necessarily practicewhat he preached. His own children were sentto orphanages, where many children died at ayoung age. Rousseau also viewed women as‘‘naturally different’’ from men. In Emile,Sophie, Emile’s intended wife, was educated forher role as wife and mother by learning obedi-ence and the nurturing skills that would enableher to provide loving care for her husband andchildren. Not everyone in the eighteenth cen-tury agreed with Rousseau, however.

THE ‘‘WOMAN QUESTION’’ IN THE ENLIGHTEN-

MENT For centuries, many male intellectualshad argued that the nature of women madethem inferior to men and made male domina-tion of women necessary and right. In the

Scientific Revolution, however, some women had madenotable contributions. Maria Winkelmann (VINK-ul-mahn)in Germany, for example, was an outstanding practicing as-tronomer. Nevertheless, when she applied for a position asassistant astronomer at the Berlin Academy, for which shewas highly qualified, she was denied the post by the acad-emy’s members, who feared that hiring a woman would set abad precedent (‘‘mouths would gape’’). Winkelmann’s diffi-culties with the Berlin Academy were typical of the obstacleswomen faced in being accepted in scientific work, which wasconsidered a male preserve.

Female thinkers in the eighteenth century disagreed withthis attitude and offered suggestions for improving conditionsfor women. The strongest statement for the rights of womenwas advanced by the English writer Mary Wollstonecraft(WULL-stun-kraft) (1759–1797), viewed by many as thefounder of modern European feminism.

In her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, written in 1792,Wollstonecraft pointed out two contradictions in the views ofwomen held by such Enlightenment thinkers as Rousseau.To argue that women must obey men, she said, was contraryto the beliefs of the same individuals that a system based onthe arbitrary power of monarchs over their subjects or slaveowners over their slaves was wrong. The subjection ofwomen to men was equally wrong. In addition, she argued,the Enlightenment was based on an ideal of reason innate inall human beings. If women have reason, then they should

A London Coffeehouse. Coffeehouses first appeared in the major cities ofthe Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century, where they were often associatedwith antigovernment activity. They spread quickly throughout Europe and bythe beginning of the eighteenth century had become a means for spreadingEnlightenment ideas. In addition to drinking coffee, patrons of coffeehousescould read magazines and newspapers, exchange ideas, play chess, smoke, andeven engage in business transactions. In this scene from a London coffeehousearound 1705, well-attired gentlemen make bids on commodities.

ªBritish

Museum,L

ondo

n/Th

eBridge

man

ArtL

ibrary



have the same rights as men to obtain an education andengage in economic and political life (see the box above).

Culture in an Enlightened AgeAlthough the Baroque style that had dominated the seventeenthcentury continued to be popular, by the 1730s, a new style affect-ing decoration and architecture known as Rococo (ruh-KOH-koh) had spread throughout Europe. Unlike the Baroque, whichstressed power, grandeur, and movement, Rococo emphasizedgrace, charm, and gentle action. Rococo rejected strict geometri-cal patterns and had a fondness for curves; it liked to follow thewandering lines of natural objects, such as seashells and flowers.It made much use of interlaced designs colored in gold with deli-cate contours and graceful arcs. Highly secular, its lightness andcharm spoke of the pursuit of pleasure, happiness, and love.

Some of Rococo’s appeal is evident in the work of AntoineWatteau (AHN-twahn wah-TOH) (1684–1721), whose lyri-cal views of aristocratic life, refined, sensual, and civilized,with gentlemen and ladies in elegant dress, revealed a world

of upper-class pleasure and joy. Underneath that exterior,however, was an element of sadness as the artist revealed thefragility and transitory nature of pleasure, love, and life.

Another aspect of Rococo was that its decorative workcould easily be paired with Baroque architecture. The palaceat Versailles had made an enormous impact on Europe.‘‘Keeping up with the Bourbons’’ became important as Euro-pean rulers built grandiose palaces. While imitating Versaillesin size, they were not so much modeled after the French clas-sical style as they were after the seventeenth-century ItalianBaroque, as modified by a series of brilliant German and Aus-trian sculptor-architects. This Baroque-Rococo architecturalstyle typified eighteenth-century palaces and church build-ings, and often the same architects designed both. This is evi-dent in the work of one of the greatest architects of theeighteenth century, Johann Balthasar Neumann (yoh-HAHNBAHL-tuh-zahr NOI-mahn) (1687–1753). One of Neu-mann’s masterpieces was the pilgrimage church known as theVierzehnheiligen (feer-tsayn-HY-li-gen) (Fourteen Saints)in southern Germany. Secular and spiritual merge in its lavish

The Rights of Women

ART &IDEAS

Mary Wollstonecraft responded to an unhappychildhood in a large family by seeking to lead anindependent life. Few occupations were avail-able for middle-class women in her day, but she

survived by working as a teacher, chaperone, and governessto aristocratic children. All the while, she wrote and devel-oped her ideas on the rights of women. This selection istaken from her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, writtenin 1792. This work led to her reputation as the foremostBritish feminist thinker of the eighteenth century.

Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights ofWomanIt is a melancholy truth—yet such is the blessed effect ofcivilization—the most respectable women are the mostoppressed; and, unless they have understandings far superiorto the common run of understandings, taking in both sexes,they must, from being treated like contemptible beings,become contemptible. How many women thus waste lifeaway the prey of discontent, who might have practiced asphysicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stooderect, supported by their own industry, instead of hangingtheir heads surcharged with the dew of sensibility, thatconsumes the beauty to which it at first gave luster. . . .

Proud of their weakness, however, [women] must alwaysbe protected, guarded from care, and all the rough toils that

dignify the mind. If this be the fiat of fate, if they will makethemselves insignificant and contemptible, sweetly to waste‘‘life away,’’ let them not expect to be valued when theirbeauty fades, for it is the fate of the fairest flowers to beadmired and pulled to pieces by the careless hand thatplucked them. In how many ways do I wish, from the purestbenevolence, to impress this truth on my sex; yet I fear thatthey will not listen to a truth that dear-bought experience hasbrought home to many an agitated bosom, nor willinglyresign the privileges of rank and sex for the privileges ofhumanity, to which those have no claim who do notdischarge its duties. . . .

Would men but generously snap our chains, and be con-tent with rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience,they would find us more observant daughters, more affec-tionate sisters, more faithful wives, and more reasonablemothers—in a word, better citizens. We should then lovethem with true affection, because we should learn to respectourselves; and the peace of mind of a worthy man would notbe interrupted by the idle vanity of his wife.

What picture did Wollstonecraft paint of the womenof her day? Why were they in such a deplorable state?Why did Wollstonecraft suggest that both womenand men were at fault for the ‘‘slavish’’ situation offemales?



and fanciful ornamentation; light, bright colors; and elabo-rate, rich detail.

HIGH CULTURE Historians have grown accustomed to distin-guishing between a civilization’s high culture and its popularculture. High culture is the literary and artistic culture of theeducated and wealthy ruling classes; popular culture is thewritten and unwritten culture of the masses, most of whichhas traditionally been passed down orally.

By the eighteenth century, the two forms were beginningto blend, owing to the expansion of both the reading publicand publishing. Whereas French publishers issued 300 titlesin 1750, about 1,600 were being published yearly in the1780s. Although many of these titles were still intended forsmall groups of the educated elite, many were also directedto the new reading public of the middle classes, whichincluded women and even urban artisans.

An important aspect of the growth of publishing and read-ing in the eighteenth century was the development of maga-zines for the general public. Great Britain saw 25 different

Antoine Watteau, Return from Cythera. Antoine Watteau was one of the most gifted painters ineighteenth-century France. His portrayal of aristocratic life reveals a world of elegance, wealth, andpleasure. In this painting, which is considered his masterpiece, Watteau depicts a group of aristocraticlovers about to depart from the island of Cythera, where they have paid homage to Venus, the goddessof love. Luxuriously dressed, they move from the woodlands to a golden barge that is waiting to takethem from the island.

Vierzehnheiligen. Pictured here is the interior of the Vierzehnheiligen,the famous pilgrimage church in Bad Staffelstein, Bavaria, designed byJohann Balthasar Neumann. Elaborate detail, blazing light, rich colors, andopulent decoration were brought together to create a work of stunningbeauty. The pilgrim in search of holiness is struck by an incredible richnessof detail. Persuaded by joy rather than fear, the believer is lifted towardheaven on a cloud of rapture.

Louvre,P

aris//ª

Reunionde

sMusee

sNationaux/ArtRe

source

,NY

ªErichLe

ssing/ArtR

esou

rce,

NY



periodicals published in 1700, 103 in 1760, and 158 in 1780.Along with magazines came daily newspapers. The first wasprinted in London in 1702, but by 1780, thirty-seven otherEnglish towns had their own newspapers.

POPULAR CULTURE The distinguishing characteristic of pop-ular culture is its collective nature. Group activity was espe-cially common in the festival, a broad name used to cover avariety of celebrations: community festivals in CatholicEurope that celebrated the feast day of the local patron saint;annual festivals, such as Christmas and Easter, that went backto medieval Christianity; and the ultimate festival, Carnival,which was celebrated in the Mediterranean world of Spain,Italy, and France as well as in Germany and Austria.

Carnival began after Christmas and lasted until the start ofLent, the forty-day period of fasting and purification leadingup to Easter. Because people were expected to abstain frommeat, sex, and most recreations during Lent, Carnival was atime of great indulgence, when heavy consumption of foodand drink was the norm. It was a time of intense sexual activ-ity as well. Songs with double meanings that would ordinarilybe considered offensive could be sung publicly at this time ofyear. A float of Florentine ‘‘keymakers,’’ for example, sangthis ditty to the ladies: ‘‘Our tools are fine, new and useful.We always carry them with us. They are good for anything.If you want to touch them, you can.’’3

Economic Changes and theSocial Order

FOCUS QUESTION:What changes occurred in theEuropean economy in the eighteenth century, and towhat degree were these changes reflected in socialpatterns?

The eighteenth century in Europe witnessed the beginning ofeconomic changes that ultimately had a strong impact on therest of the world.

New Economic PatternsEurope’s population began to grow around 1750 and contin-ued to increase steadily. The total European population wasprobably around 120 million in 1700, 140 million in 1750, and190 million in 1790. A falling death rate was perhaps the mostimportant reason for this population growth. Of great signifi-cance in lowering death rates was the disappearance of bu-bonic plague, but so was diet. More plentiful food and bettertransportation of food supplies led to improved nutrition andrelief from devastating famines.

More plentiful food was in part a result of improvementsin agricultural practices and methods in the eighteenth cen-tury, especially in Britain, parts of France, and the Low Coun-tries. Food production increased as more land was farmed,yields per acre increased, and climate improved. Climatolo-gists believe that the ‘‘little ice age’’ of the seventeenth cen-tury waned in the eighteenth, especially evident in moderate

summers that provided more ideal growing conditions. Alsoimportant to the increased yields was the cultivation of newvegetables, including two important American crops, thepotato and maize (Indian corn). Both had been brought toEurope from the Americas in the sixteenth century.

Textiles were the most important product of Europeanindustry in the eighteenth century. Most were still producedby master artisans in guild workshops, but in many areas, tex-tile production was beginning to shift to the countryside wherethe ‘‘putting-out’’ or ‘‘domestic’’ system was used. A merchant-capitalist entrepreneur bought the raw materials, mostly wooland flax, and ‘‘put them out’’ to rural workers who spun theraw material into yarn and then wove it into cloth on simplelooms. The capitalist entrepreneurs sold the finished product,made a profit, and used it to purchase materials to manufac-ture more. This system became known as the cottage industrybecause the spinners and weavers worked at spinning wheelsand looms in the cottages where they lived.

In the eighteenth century, overseas trade boomed. Somehistorians speak of the emergence of a true global economy,pointing to the patterns of trade that interlocked Europe,Africa, the East, and the Americas (see Map 18.2). In onetrade pattern, gold and silver flowed into Spain from its colo-nial American empire. Much of this gold and silver made itsway to Britain, France, and the Netherlands in return formanufactured goods. The British, French, and Dutch mer-chants then used their profits to buy tea, spices, silk, and cot-ton goods from China and India to sell in Europe. Theplantations of the Western Hemisphere were another impor-tant source of trading activity. The plantations produced cof-fee, tobacco, sugar, and cotton, which were shipped toEurope. In a third pattern of trade, British merchant shipscarried British manufactured goods to Africa, where theywere traded for cargoes of slaves, which were then shippedto Virginia and paid for with tobacco, which was in turnshipped back to Britain, where it was processed and then soldin Germany for cash.

Commercial capitalism resulted in enormous prosperityfor some European countries. By 1700, Spain, Portugal, andthe Dutch Republic, which had earlier monopolized overseastrade, found themselves increasingly overshadowed byFrance and England, which built hugely profitable colonialempires in the course of the eighteenth century. After theFrench lost the Seven Years’ War in 1763, Britain emerged asthe world’s strongest overseas trading nation, and Londonbecame the world’s greatest port.

European Society in the EighteenthCenturyThe patterns of Europe’s social organization, first establishedin the Middle Ages, continued well into the eighteenth cen-tury. Society was still divided into the traditional orders orestates determined by heredity.

Because society was still mostly rural in the eighteenthcentury, the peasantry constituted the largest social group,about 85 percent of Europe’s population. There were ratherwide differences within this group, however, especially



IIIIIInIIIIII dian

Ocean

Atlantnttntntntttntntntttntttnttttnnttnticiciciciciciciciciciciciciciciciciciciccic

Ocean

Pacific

Ocean

QuebQuebececQuebQuebecec

BBaBahihiBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB aB

MoMommbbbMombMombbmbbbmbmbmbMombMombbbmbmbbmbmbbbbbbbmbMMM mbmbmbbMMombbbMMombbmbMMomM mbmbmbM mmbbbmbbMM mbMM mbbM bmbm asaasaasasasasasasasasasasasssaasasasaaaaaMMMMMM

MozaMozaMMMMMMozozozozozozMozaaaMozaMMozozozozozaaMMMoozozaMMMMozaMMMM aMMMo aozaaaoozaaaoooo aoMM aaMooMMMo ambmmmmmbiqqmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ueueeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Diuiuiiuiuiuiuiuuuiuuuuiuiuiuiuiuiuiuiuuu

BombBombBBBBBBBBBBBBomBBBBBBBBBBBB ayayayyayyyyyyyyyyyayyyayyyayyyy

DamaDamann

GoaGoaoGooaooooooooooooooMMMaMadrMadrdadrMadrMadMaMaadrMaMMadrMadrMMMMMMMMMMadMadrMadradradrM ddradrdrdrM ddrMMMMMM rMMMMMMMMMM rrMMM asaaasasasasasasaaaaaasaasaasa

CalalaalcalcCCalCalalaaalaa uttauttaCalCalalaalaCCCCaalalaa

MMalaMMaMalMMaMaMaMalalaMalMallMaMalMaMaMaalMalMalMalalallMaMMMalaaaMaMaMaMaaMMalaMaaalaaMaaMaaalaMaMaMaMaMMaMMa aMMMa aaaaccacacacaaaaaccacaacccccaacaacccccccaacccccaaacccaaccccacaccccccccccccacccccccccaacccccacccaacacacacaacaaacccacccccccccc

BatBatatattttaataataatataatatataatatatataaaaviaiaiaviiiiavivviviavivivvivvvvvvvivvviiiTimTimoTTTTimoTTTTTT moTTTimTTimoomomoomomommooomomomomoomooooorrrrmomomommmmmmmmoooooooooooooooorrrrTTTT mmmmmmm

CantCantonon

MananiniM laaaaRangRangRRRR oooooooononnoonoooonnnnoooononoooooRRRR

TaTaiwiwiaiiiiaiiaiaiiaiiTaiTaiTTTaTTTaiTaa annnTTTTTTTTT

SSSSaSainainSSS tt Piiiierreerrererererererererererererereerrereeeree &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&MMiquMiqueloelonelol nnnnnnnn

MontMontMoMontMontMontMontMontMMontMontMontMontMontMontMonMonMoMoooM realrealMontMontMontMonMontMontMontMontMontMonMontMontMontMooMoMoMoMoMoMoMoMMoMoMoMoMoMMQQ

BBBBBosBostB tBBBBosBBBosBB sBBostBos ononnBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBosttosososossosNewew YYorkYork

PhiPhihihihhiililililililhihihiililililhiiiililiiliillilliilililladeladeleleleleleleleleleleeelphiaphiaphiaphiaphiahiahiaphiahiaahiahiahiahiahiahiahiahiaiahiahiahiahiahiahiahiahiahiahihiahiahiaaeelelelelelelelelelelelll hhiphihihihhihihhihiaiaJamJamammmmmmmememmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm stowstowstowstostowtostowstowstowtowstowstowstowstowstowstowstotowstowstowoostows nnstowstowstowstow

NewNew OrleOrleansansrlea

NNNNewNeNewffNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN oundundddddddddduundlandlandlandandlanddlanddlandlandlandlandlandlandndlandlandandlandndndandandlananndanNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

AcaAcapapulcolcolcolcolcolcollcolcollcolcolcolcocu coocooolcolcolcolcolcolcolcollcolcolcollclcocococoVeraV cccruzcruzccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc

BeliBeliBelBelBeBellBelBBBelBelBelBeeBelBelBBelelBeeBell zezezeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeBelBeleBelBelBelBelBelBelBelBBelBelBelBeeBelBelee

PortPoPo o BBeo llollolloloooooooooooooooooooooooloooloooooCuraCuraurauraurauraurauraurauraurauraururarrarauraurauraurararaururarurraraaracaocaoaocaocaoaoaocaocaoaocaoocaocaocaoaocaoaaaooaacaoc oocaocaocaoocaocaocaocaoaoaocaocaoaoaooaacaoc LessLessLeLessLesLessLLessLessLessLessLessLessLLLeLessLessLeLLeLessseesssssser Aer Aer Ar Aer Aer Aerer Aer Aeeereererer Aer ntilles (Fr. & BBB& Br.))))))))r.)))))))))))))

SantSantSaSantntntSaSaaSaSaSaSaaSaSaSaantntnntntntnannnnnana ta ttiagoiagoii gogogooooi googogoi gooooooooagogogogogoooogogogoogogooiiiiiiiaSaSaaSaSaSaaaSaSaSaaSaSaaSaSantantttttttnttttttttttttttttttoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooDDomDommmDommimmmmDommmDomimmmommmommmmommimmmommmmmmommomomDoomDDoomDDDomDoDDom ngonnnnggogonDoDDDDDDDDDDoDDD

JamaJJamJamaJamaamaJamaJamaJamaJamaJamJamaJamJamaamaJamaJaJJamaJamaJamaJamaJJamamaJamaJamJamaJamJamaamJJJamaaJa icaicacacacaaicaaaacaaaaaaaaaaaaaJJ

BBahBahahahhahaaahaBahaaBaaaBaBaaaBBaaaaa mammaIslaIslaaIsIIsIsIIsIsIsIsIsIsIsIIII ndssndIIIIIIIIIsIsIII

CCCayeCayeCCCCCCCCCCCCCCaCCCCCCCCCCCCCC nnennenCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC

TrinTrinTTTTrTrTTrTrTrTrTrTTTrTrTTrrTrTrTrr idadidaddddddddddddddTTTrTTrTrTTrrTrTTTrTTrrr ddddddddddd

RReReccReciecRecRececiRReReciRRecRReciRR ciciicicciciecicRecRecciReceReeReRReR fefefefefefefefeffefeffefffefefffeeffffeffR

RRRRiRioRioRioRioRRioRRioRioRioRioioRRRioRRRioRioRRioioRRRRRRRioRiRioooiRiRiRioRRiRiiRRiiRR dde JJJJananeiroRRRRiRiRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

BBBBBBBuenBu nBBBBBBBBB osos AAAAiiresBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

FaFalkalklanaanand Islands(F(Fr.r.r. 117611 3–65,Br.BrBr. 1765–70,Sp. 1770)

St.St. LouiLouiss

ForFortororJameameeJameJaJamJamJaJaJJaJamJaJamamJJamJJamaaa ssss

GGoGorééoG eooG

AccrAccrAccrAAccrAccrAccAccrAccrAccrAAccrAccAAccAAcAcAAccAcAccAccAccAcAcAccAccAAcAccAccAccAc aaaaaAccrAccrAccrAccrAccrAccrAccrAccrAccrA aaaaa LLagogoagoagoagoagoLLagagoagoagoLLagoagoagoagoagoooogggggggggggggggggggg ssoooooooagoagoagoagoagoagoagoagoagogos

CapeCapCapeapeapeapapeCapeCapapeappCapapeapapeapeapapapapepeppppeC pCC ppp towtownownownwnwnowownownwnwnowownwnwnwownowwnownwnownwownwnownwwwnownwnwowwo nnnownnwnow

eiBeiBeireireeieireirBeBeBeiBeieireieireireireieireeeieieieiireeeireeiee aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

MMMogaMogMogaMogMogMMogogMogMMMMogMogogMMogMogMogMogMogMogMMogMMM ggMMMMoMMMoMMMoMMMMoMoMMM dishishsishisdishdishhshshhishdishishisshishishshdishdishishshshishhhhshishhhshdishdishsshsdishhshhdishshssisssididissiisisssis uMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

CCádiididiiidididdidididddididididddidd zzzzzzzzzzzSevSeveevievieevevevevvveveeeeeeeee llellllevilleveveveveveeveveveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeLisLisbbbbbbbbbbbbbbiL onooooononononoonononononoonnnonnonnnooo

Bo ddddBordrdddddddddeauxeaueauxeaueaueaueaueaueauxeaueauxeauxauxeaueauxueauueaaeeeauxeauxeauxeeeeauxeaeauaaueaueauxeauxeauauxxxxxxxxxddeeeeeeeeeeauxxxeauxxxeaueauxeeaueauxeauauaueauxeauxeauxeauauxuxxxxxxxxxxxx

SainSainnaainSSainainainSainSainSainSainSaiSainSSSaaiSaiSa t MaMaMMaMt Mat MaMatt MaMat MaMat Mat Mt Mat Mat MaMt MaMat MaMaaMaMaMMMMMMaMMaMMMMaaalolooolloloooooloooooooolooooooooloooooooBrisBrisissssssssssssisssssssissstoltoltoololololtolololoolootoooltootooottttoottt llllllllllissisissisississsisissssssstootoototoootttt

AmbAmbAmbmbombombobAmboooAAAAmbAmbAmbmbmbmbbooAAAAAmbmmbmmmbbooAAAAA bmboAmbAmbbbAAAmAmAAAmAAAmAAmAAAmmmmmbbbbbobbooiinainaiiiiiiiiiiiiiAAmbmbmmbobombobAmbmbmbmbAmbAmbombmbmbmbAmbmbmmbA bmbA bmbmbobbmmmmmmmbmbbbbbooAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMoluMoluMMoluMMoMoluMoluMolMoMoMoMoluMMMMMoMMMMMMMMMMoluMMolMoMMolMoluMMMMoluoMMoluooMoooMolluMMoloollllMoooolllMoluulluuuccasccascccccccccccccccccccccccooooooooooooooooooooMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM lulluullllluuulllluuuuuullluu

MacaMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMaMacMacMacMacacaMacMaMaaMaMaaMaMMaMMaMMMMaaMaMMMMMaMMaMMMaccaccccaccaccacc ssarsarsarsarsarrrsarsarrrrrrrrrsarrrrsarsarrsss rrssssssssss rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrsssssssssssssssssssssscacccacccccacaacccacacaccMMMMMMMMJavaJava

BBBBBBBBenkkkkknkkBBBB nknknkBBenBBBBB kkBBe kkkBB kkkB kkkkkulenenennuleneneneeneneneneneeenenenennnnulenuu nuuu nuuuu nnuuuu nuuuuu nuSumSuSumaSumSuSumSSuSummaamamaSuSSSuSuSSumSumaaamaaamaSuSumamaaamauummamauumummamaumauuumummaamamaamaammammammmatratratttrtrararatttttrttrrtratttrttrratrarraatraaattt aaa

FoForortt DaDauD phinRéRRéunRRRRRRR ion

MMauritiusMadaMM aMadaMadaMadaMMadaMadaMMadaMMMMadaMadaaMMadaMadaMadaM ggascga cgg ararrMadaMadaMadaMadaMadMadaMadaMadaMadaMadaMMadagggg

MM

CanCanaanCa arryryyryryryryryryryryyryryryryryyryyryryyryrryryyIs.s.Is.s.Is.s.sIsIs.Is.Is.IsIsIssIssIsIsIssI

SpannishishishshTranscontinenenentalalnn

Route

PPPPPORTPORTRTTPPPP RRORORTRTTRORRRRRRTRTORR UGGAGALLLLLLGALLLLLLLLUGALLLLLALLLLLLLLLLLLLUGUGGUGUG LUGAUUGUGG LUUUUUGGGUGGAGGALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL SPAISPAIPAIPAIPAPAIPAIPAIAAAIAAAAAAAAIIAIAIPAIAAAAAAIAIAIAIIAAAIIIIIIAIIAIAIIIIAIIAAAAAAA NNNNNIIIIAIIIIIIAIAIIAIIAIIAIAIAIAIAIAIIAIAAAAA

FRANFRANFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF CECE

PERSPERSIAIACHICHINANA

CEYCEYLEYLYYEYLYLEYLCEYLEYEYLEYLEYEYLYLCECEEEYEYEYYCCCECECCEEYYEYYCECECEEEYEYYYYEEEYEEEEEEEEEECEYEYEE ONONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

PHPHPHPHILPHILPHILPHPHPHPHPHPHPHILPHPHILPHPHHPPHPHPHHPHPPPHPHPHPHPHPPPPPPPPHPPHPPPHIHHHHPPH IIPPPIPIPIPIIIIIIPPIIIIIIIPPINESNNNESNESHHHHHPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHPHPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPHPHPHHPHHPHPHPPPHPHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH NN

INDIINDIIIDIIIIIDIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDIIIIIDIIIDDIIDDIIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIAAAAAAAA

JAPAJAPAAPAAPAAPAAAPAAPAAPAAPAPAAPAAPAAPAJAPAPAPAAPAPAPAAAPAPPAAPAPPPPPPPPA ANNAPAPAPAAPAAAPAAPAAPAPAAPAAPPAAPAPAAPAAPAPAPAPAAPAPPAPPP

CUBAUBAUUUUUCUBAUUUUUBUUUBAAUUBABABABABAUUUUBABABABABABABAUUBAUUUUUUBABAAAUU AUBABBBAACUBACCUUBABABABABABABABABABAABABABABAABAABBAAA

HAITHAHAIHAIHAIHHAIHAIHAIHAHAHAIHAIHAHAHAHAHHAHAIHAIHAIHAHHAIAAIAIHAAAHAHAHAHAHAIHAIHAIHAHAHAHAHAHAIHAIHAIHAIHAIHAHAHHHHAHAHHHHAHHHAHAAAAAIHAAAAA I

FFFFFLOFLORF ORFLOOFFFFFF IDAIDADADAADADAADDADADADADADIDDDAADDAOOOOOO DADADDADAADADADDAADADADAADAAADFFFFFFFFFFFFF(Br. 1766777777 3-833-838383883838838888888833 83)))))))))))))))))33))33))))))))))))))))))))838383883838883838838888(

CUUUUUUUBAUUU

GEOGEOGGGGGEORGEORGEORGEORGGGGGEOGEORGGGGGEGEORGGGGEEEGGEOEEEGEEGEGGEGGGGEEEGEEEEEEEEGEOEOOOEOEOEOOORGIAGIAGIAIAGIAGIAGIAAGIAGIAGIAGIGIGIGIAGIIGIIIGGGGG AIAAIAIAAAAIAAIAIAIIIIGIGGIGIGIGIGIGIGIGIIGGGGGGGEEEE

VVVICICCEEV ROYROYROROYAROYARORROROROYOROYROYOROROYOROYROROROROROROROOYROYYRRROORR LTYLTYROYROYROROYROYROROROROYROROYROYROROYROYROROROROROYRROOFF NNOO EW SEW SWW SW SW SW SW SW SW SWW SWW SW SWW SW SW SW SWW SW SEWW SW SSSW SW SPAINPAINSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSW SW SWW SW SW SWW SW SWW SWWWWWWWWWW

VICEVICEROROOYAAAAAYAAYAAROYAOYAAOROYAROYAROYAROYAROOROYAYAOYAAROOO AROYAOOOOO ALTYLTYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAYAAAAAAAAYAAAOFOF NF NEW GEW GWW GWWWWWW GGWWW GGGWWW GGWW GWWW GGGGRRRRAARAANANAANARRAARRRARAANRRRARRRRRRRAAA DADAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW AANANAAAANAAAAAA

VICEVICEROYAROYALTYLTYOF BOF BOO RAZIRAZILL

VVICCEVI ROOOOYAOYAAAAAAO AAAAOOOOOOOOO AAO AAAAAO AAAAAOO LTYLTYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOFF RRO IIOO DO DDDI DDIIOIIIIIO EEEEE LAE LAE LAEE LAEEEEEEEEEE LAEEEEE LAEE AEIIOOOIIOOIIOIIO

PLATPLATATATATATTATATAATATTTATATTTTTTTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

VICVICEICEIC RROYOYYYYAYAAAAAAAAYYAAAAAYYYAYYAYYYYYYYYAYYY LTYLTYLTYLTYTTLLLLLLLLLLLLLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYOOF PF PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPERUERUERUEREERERERERUEREEREREERURURRUERRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEF PF PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPEEEEEEEE

SURURIRINAMAMAMMMMMMMMMAMN

DUDUTCUTCHHHHHHHHHHHHHBRAZRAZZRRBRBBRRBBBBBBBBBBRBRBRBRRRRRRRRRRRRRR ILLLLLILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLBRRBRBRBRBRBBBRRBRBRBBRBBRBBRBRBBRBBRRRRR

(163(16333333(16(1633(16(16(16(163((16 0–5–5454544545–54545440–5454545454540–54545440 545440–0–0 4540–0–00–000–54–54––55 )33333333330–0–0–0–00–0–00–0–0–000000–––

BENIBENIBBBBBBBBBBBB NNBBBBBBB

AANANGOOAAANGAAANAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA LALAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

CANACANACACACACACACACACACACACACACACCACACCACACACACACACACACAACACCACACACCAAAAAA DADADADADAADADAADADADDADADADDDDADADADADADADAADAADADAADAA

GREEGREENLANNLANDD(Den(Denmarkmark))

ICCELLLC AANDNDNDNDI(De(DenDenDDe(De(De(DeD(DeD(Dee(De(DeD(DeDeee mmarkk))(DeDeDeD(De(DeDe(De(DeDeD

GREAGREAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTEATTAAAAAAAAATTTBRIBRITRITITTTTTTITTTTTITITAIAIAIAIAIAINAIAIAAAAIAIAAAAAIAIATTTTTTTTTAAAIAIAIAIAIAIAAATITITITIITIITTTTTTTT DENMENMENMENMENMENMENMENMENMENMNMNMENENNNNMNNMARARRRRRKRKRKRKRKRRRRKRKRAARARRRKAARAARRRRKRKRKARKARARRRKRKRKRKKARARKARRRRRKKRRRKRKRKKKANMNMNNMNMNNNMMNMNNNNNNNNNMENMENMENMNMNMENMENMENMENNMNN ARRRRRRRRARARRRARARARARRRARRRRRAARRRMMMMMA

SWESWESWEDSWEDSWEDSWSWEDSWESWEDEDSWSWEDSWEDWEDSWEWWW EEEENENENEENEEENEEEENENNNNENEENNNNNNWEWW NNNEEEEEEEEEEESWESWEWESWESWSWESWESWES ESWE

POLAPOLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANDNDNDNDNDNDD

OTTOOTTOOTTOOTTOOTTOOTTOOTTOOTTOOTTOTTOTOTOOTTOOTTOTTOOTTOTOOTTOTOTTT OO MANMANMANMANANMANMANMANMANMANMANMAMANMANMAMANNNTTOTOTOTTOTTOTOTOTOTOTTOOT MAMAMAMAMAMMMAMAMAANANANANANANANANNANOTTOTTOTTOTTTTOTTOOTTOOEMEMMMEMPEMPIEMPIMPIMPIMMPIEMPIEEEMPEMM RERERERERERMEME I EREREREEMMPMPIMPMPMPMPIMPIMPIMMPEEEEEEEEEE

R U S SR U S SR U S SR U S SR U S SR U S SR U S S I A NI A NI A NI A NI A NI A NI A N E M P IE M P IE M P IE M P IE M P IE M P IE M P I R ER ER ER ER ER ER E

ANNANNNNNANANAAAAAANANNAAANNAAAAAAANNAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMNNNNNNNNNN

BENGBENGNNGENNENGENGENGNNNNENENGNGNNNNENGENNNNGNNNGGGGGNNNGNGGNGNNENNNENGENGGGGGENGENGNGGENGENGEENNEENEEENGENGGEENGEENGENGE ALAL

AUSTAUSTRALIRALIAA

NEWNEWNEWNEWNEWNEWNEWNEWNEWNEWNEWNEWWNEWNEWNEWNENEWNEWNEWNEWNEWN WWNEWWNEEWWWWWWEWEWWWWEWWWWEWWEWWWWWEWEWWEWEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWEWEWWWWWWWWWWWWNENENENENENENENENENENENENNENNENNNEEEEGUINGUINGUINGUINGUINGUINUGUINUINGUUGUGUIUINUGUIGUINGUINGUINUGUINGUIGUUGUINUGUINGUININGUINNNGUINNIGUIG NIIGGG EAEAEAAAAAINUINGUINGUINGUINUINGUINUUGUINGUINGUINGUINUGGUINGUINGGUINUINGGU NNNUIIGUIIGUING EEEAAAAA

LLOOUU

IISSIIAANN

AA

ETHIETHIOPIAOPIA

0 1,500 3,000 Miles

0 1,500 3,000 4,500 Kilometers

Portuguese, c. 1770

Dutch, c. 1770

Russian Empire in 1763

Far East trading factories

Homeward trade

British, c. 1770

French, c. 1770

Spanish, c. 1770

Boundaries of French Louisiana before 1763

Outgoing trade

MAP 18.2 Global Trade Patterns of the European States in the Eighteenth Century. New patterns of trade interlockedEurope, Africa, the East, and the Americas. Dutch, English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies had been established inNorth and South America, and the ships of these nations followed the trade routes across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.

With what regions did Britain conduct most of its trade?

ªCe

ngag

eLe

arning

The Aristocratic Way of Life. The desire among British aristocratsfor both elegance and greater privacy was fulfilled by the eighteenth-century country house. The painting on the right, by Richard Wilson,shows a typical English country house of the eighteenth century,surrounded by a simple and serene landscape. Thomas Gainsborough’sConversation in the Park, shown at the left, captures the relaxed life oftwo aristocrats in the park of their country estate.

ªLo

uvre,P

aris//Pe

terW

illi/The

Bridge

man

ArtL

ibrary

ªCo

llectionof

theEa

rlof

Pembroke,

Wilton

House,

Wiltshire

,/Th

eBridge

man

ArtL

ibrary

Economic Changes and the Social Order 519Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).


between free peasants and serfs. In eastern Germany, easternEurope, and Russia, serfs remained tied to the lands of theirnoble landlords. In contrast, peasants in Britain, northernItaly, the Low Countries, Spain, most of France, and someareas of western Germany were largely free.

The nobles, who constituted only 2 to 3 percent of the Eu-ropean population, played a dominating role in society. Beingborn a noble automatically guaranteed a place at the top ofthe social order, with all its attendant special privileges andrights. Nobles, for example, were exempt from many formsof taxation. Since medieval times, landed aristocrats had func-tioned as military officers, and eighteenth-century nobles heldmost of the important offices in the administrative machineryof state and controlled much of the life of their local districts.

Townspeople were still a distinct minority of the totalpopulation except in the Dutch Republic, Britain, and parts ofItaly. At the end of the eighteenth century, about one-sixth ofthe French population lived in towns of two thousand peopleor more. The biggest city in Europe was London, with a mil-lion inhabitants; Paris was a little more than half that size.

Many cities in western and even central Europe had a longtradition of patrician oligarchies that continued to control theircommunities by dominating town and city councils. Just belowthe patricians stood an upper crust of the middle classes: nonno-ble officeholders, financiers and bankers, merchants, wealthyrentiers (rahn-TYAYS) who lived off their investments, and im-portant professionals, including lawyers. Another large urbangroup was the lower middle class, made up of master artisans,shopkeepers, and small traders. Below them were the laborersor working classes and a large group of unskilled workers whoserved as servants, maids, and cooks at pitifully low wages.

Colonial Empires andRevolution in the Americas

FOCUS QUESTION:What colonies did the British andFrench establish in the Americas, and how did theirmethods of administering their colonies differ?

In the sixteenth century, Spain and Portugal had establishedlarge colonial empires in the Americas (see Chapter 14). Por-tugal continued to profit from its empire in Brazil. The Span-ish also maintained an enormous South American empire,but Spain’s importance as a commercial power declined rap-idly in the seventeenth century because of a drop in the out-put of the silver mines and the poverty of the Spanishmonarchy. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, bothPortugal and Spain found themselves facing new challengesto their American empires from the Dutch, English, andFrench, who increasingly sought to create their own colonialempires in the Western Hemisphere, both within the WestIndies and on the North American continent.

The West IndiesBoth the French and British colonial empires in the Americasultimately included large parts of the West Indies. The British

held Barbados, Jamaica, and Bermuda, and the French pos-sessed Saint-Dominique, Martinique, and Guadeloupe. Onthese tropical islands, both the British and the French devel-oped plantations, worked by African slaves, which producedtobacco, cotton, coffee, and sugar, all products increasingly indemand in Europe.

The ‘‘sugar factories,’’ as the sugar plantations in the Ca-ribbean were called, played an especially prominent role. Bythe last two decades of the eighteenth century, Jamaica, oneof Britain’s most important colonies, was producing 50,000tons of sugar annually with the slave labor of 200,000 blacks.The French colony of Saint-Dominique (later Haiti) had500,000 slaves working on three thousand plantations duringthe same period. This colony produced 100,000 tons of sugara year, but at the expense of a high death rate from the brutaltreatment of the slaves. It is not surprising that Saint-Dominiquesaw the first successful slave uprising in 1793.

British North AmericaAlthough Spain had claimed all of North America as part ofits American overseas empire, other nations largely ignoredits claim, following the English argument that ‘‘prescriptionwithout possession availeth nothing.’’ The Dutch had beenamong the first to establish settlements on the North Americancontinent. Their activities began after 1609 when Henry Hud-son, an English explorer hired by the Dutch, discovered theriver that bears his name. Within a few years, the Dutch hadestablished the mainland colony of New Netherland, whichstretched from the mouth of the Hudson River as far north asAlbany, New York. Present-day names such as Staten Islandand Harlem remind us that it was the Dutch who initially set-tled the Hudson River valley. In the second half of the seven-teenth century, competition from the English and French andyears of warfare with those rivals led to the decline of theDutch commercial empire. In 1664, the English seized the col-ony of New Netherland and renamed it New York.

In the meantime, the English had begun to establish theirown colonies in North America. The first permanent Englishsettlement in America was Jamestown, founded in 1607 inwhat is now Virginia. The settlers barely survived, making itclear that colonizing American lands was not necessarily con-ducive to quick profits. But the desire to practice one’s ownreligion, combined with economic interests, could lead tosuccessful colonization, as the Massachusetts Bay Companydemonstrated. The Massachusetts colony had 4,000 settlers inits early years, but by 1660 their numbers had swelled to40,000. By the end of the seventeenth century, the Englishhad established control over most of the eastern seaboard ofthe present United States.

British North America came to consist of thirteen colonies.They were thickly populated, containing about 1.5 millionpeople by 1750, and were also prosperous. Supposedly run bythe British Board of Trade, the Royal Council, and Parlia-ment, these thirteen colonies had legislatures that tended toact independently. Merchants in such port cities as Boston,Philadelphia, New York, and Charleston resented and resistedregulation from the British government.



Both the North American and the West Indian colonies ofBritain were assigned roles in keeping with mercantilisttheory. They provided raw materials for the mother countrywhile buying the latter’s manufactured goods. Navigationacts regulated what could be taken from and sold to the colo-nies. Theoretically, the system was supposed to provide a bal-ance of trade favorable to the mother country.

French North AmericaThe French also established a colonial empire in NorthAmerica. In 1534, the French explorer Jacques Cartier (ZHAHKkar-TYAY) had discovered the Saint Lawrence River and laidclaim to Canada as a French possession. Not until Samuel deChamplain (sa-my-ELL duh shahm-PLAN or SHAM-playn)established a settlement at Quebec in 1608, however, did theFrench began to take a serious interest in Canada as a colony. In1663, Canada was made the property of the French crown andadministered by a French governor like a French province.

French North America was run autocratically as a vasttrading area, where valuable furs, leather, fish, and timberwere acquired. The inability of the French state to persuadeits people to emigrate to its Canadian possessions, however,left the territory thinly populated. In the mid-eighteenth cen-tury, there were only about 15,000 French Canadians, mostof whom were hunters, trappers, missionaries, or explorers.The French also failed to provide adequate men or money forthe venture, allowing their wars in Europe to take precedenceover the conquest of the North American continent. Alreadyin 1713, by the Treaty of Utrecht, the French began to cedesome of their American possessions to their British rival. Asa result of the Seven Years’ War, they surrendered the restof their Canadian lands to Britain in 1763 (see ‘‘ChangingPatterns of War: Global Confrontation’’ later in this chapter).

The American RevolutionBy the mid-eighteenth century, increasing trade and industryhad led to a growing middle class in Britain that favoredexpansion of trade and world empire. These people found aspokesman in William Pitt the Elder (1708–1778), whobecame prime minister in 1757 and began to expand the Brit-ish Empire. In North America, after the end of the SevenYears’ War in 1763, Britain controlled Canada and the landseast of the Mississippi.

The Americans and the British had different conceptionsof how the empire should be governed, however. Ineighteenth-century Britain, the king or queen and Parliamentshared power, with Parliament gradually gaining the upperhand. The monarch chose ministers who were responsible tothe crown and who set policy and guided Parliament. Parlia-ment had the power to make laws, levy taxes, pass budgets,and indirectly influence the monarch’s ministers. The Britishenvisioned that Parliament would be the supreme authorityperforming these functions throughout the empire. But theAmericans had their own representative assemblies. Theybelieved that neither king nor Parliament should interfere intheir internal affairs and that no tax could be levied withoutthe consent of their own assemblies. After the Seven Years’War, when British policymakers sought to obtain new reve-nues from the colonies to pay for British army expenses indefending the colonies, the colonists resisted. An attempt tolevy new taxes by the Stamp Act of 1765 led to riots and thelaw’s quick repeal.

Crisis followed crisis in the 1770s until 1776, when the col-onists decided to declare their independence from the BritishEmpire. On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congressapproved a declaration of independence written by ThomasJefferson (1743–1826). A stirring political document, the

A Sugar Mill in the WestIndies. Cane sugar was one of themost valuable products produced inthe West Indies. By 1700, sugar wasreplacing honey as a sweetener forincreasing numbers of Europeans.This seventeenth-century Frenchillustration shows the operation of asugar mill in the French WestIndies.

ªTh

eArtA

rchive/N

avyHistoricalSe

rvice,

Vincennes/GianniD

agliOrti

Colonial Empires and Revolution in the Americas 521Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).


Declaration of Independence affirmed the Enlightenment’snatural rights of ‘‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’’and declared the colonies to be ‘‘free and independent statesabsolved from all allegiance to the British crown.’’ The warfor American independence had formally begun.

Of great importance to the colonies’ cause was the supportof foreign countries that were eager to gain revenge for ear-lier defeats at the hands of the British. French officers andsoldiers served in the American Continental Army underGeorge Washington (1732–1799), the commander in chief.When the British army of General Cornwallis was forced tosurrender to a combined American and French army andFrench fleet under Washington at Yorktown in 1781, the Brit-ish decided to call it quits. The Treaty of Paris, signed in1783, recognized the independence of the American coloniesand granted the Americans control of the territory from theAppalachians to the Mississippi River.

BIRTH OF A NEW NATION The thirteen American colonieshad gained their independence, but a fear of concentratedpower and concern for their own interests caused them tohave little enthusiasm for establishing a united nation with astrong central government, and so the Articles of Confedera-tion, ratified in 1781, did not create one. A movement for adifferent form of national government soon arose. In thesummer of 1787, fifty-five delegates attended a convention inPhiladelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation. The con-vention’s delegates—wealthy, politically experienced, andwell educated—rejected revision and decided instead todevise a new constitution.

The proposed United States Constitution established acentral government distinct from and superior to the govern-ments of the individual states. The central or federal govern-ment was divided into three branches, each with some powerto check the functioning of the others. A president wouldserve as the chief executive with the power to execute laws,veto the legislature’s acts, supervise foreign affairs, and directmilitary forces. Legislative power was vested in the secondbranch of government, a bicameral legislature composed ofthe Senate, elected by the state legislatures, and the House ofRepresentatives, elected directly by the people. A supremecourt and other courts ‘‘as deemed necessary’’ by Congressprovided the third branch of government. They wouldenforce the Constitution as the ‘‘supreme law of the land.’’

The Constitution was approved by the states—by a slimmargin. Important to its success was a promise to add a bill ofrights to the Constitution as the new government’s first pieceof business. Accordingly, in March 1789, the new Congressenacted the first ten amendments to the Constitution, knownever since as the Bill of Rights. These guaranteed freedom ofreligion, speech, press, petition, and assembly, as well as theright to bear arms, protection against unreasonable searchesand arrests, trial by jury, due process of law, and protection ofproperty rights. Many of these rights were derived from thenatural rights philosophy of the eighteenth-century philo-sophes and the American colonists. Is it any wonder that manyEuropean intellectuals saw the American Revolution as theembodiment of the Enlightenment’s political dreams?

Toward a New Political Orderand Global Conflict

FOCUS QUESTION:What do historians mean by theterm enlightened absolutism, and to what degreedid eighteenth-century Prussia, Austria, and Russiaexhibit its characteristics?

There is no doubt that Enlightenment thought had someimpact on the political development of European states in theeighteenth century. The philosophes believed in naturalrights, which were thought to be privileges that ought not tobe withheld from any person. These natural rights includedequality before the law, freedom of religious worship, free-dom of speech and press, and the right to assemble, holdproperty, and seek happiness.

But how were these natural rights to be established andpreserved? Most philosophes believed that people needed tobe ruled by an enlightened ruler. What made rulers enlight-ened? They must allow religious toleration, freedom ofspeech and press, and the rights of private property. Theymust foster the arts, sciences, and education. Above all, theymust obey the laws and enforce them fairly for all subjects.Only strong monarchs seemed capable of overcoming vestedinterests and effecting the reforms society needed. Reformsthen should come from above (from absolute rulers) ratherthan from below (from the people).

Many historians once assumed that a new type of mon-archy emerged in the later eighteenth century, which theycalled enlightened despotism or enlightened absolutism. Mon-archs such as Frederick II of Prussia, Catherine the Great ofRussia, and Joseph II of Austria supposedly followed theadvice of the philosophes and ruled by enlightened principles.Recently, however, scholars have questioned the usefulnessof the concept of enlightened absolutism. We can determinethe extent to which it can be applied by examining the major‘‘enlightened absolutists’’ of the late eighteenth century.

Prussia: The Army and theBureaucracyFrederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740–1786), wasone of the best-educated and most cultured monarchs of theeighteenth century. He was well versed in Enlightenmentthought and even invited Voltaire to live at his court for sev-eral years. A believer in the king as the ‘‘first servant of thestate,’’ Frederick the Great was a conscientious ruler whoenlarged the Prussian army (to 200,000 men) and kept a strictwatch over the bureaucracy. The Prussian army, because ofits size and excellent reputation, was the most important insti-tution in the state. Its officers, who were members of the no-bility or landed aristocracy, had a strong sense of service tothe king or state. As Prussian nobles, they believed in duty,obedience, and sacrifice. The bureaucracy also had its owncode in which the supreme values were obedience, honor,and service to the king as the highest duty.

For a time, Frederick seemed quite willing to makeenlightened reforms. He abolished the use of torture except



in treason and murder cases and also granted limited freedomof speech and press, as well as complete religious toleration.At the same time, however, he kept Prussia’s rigid socialstructure and serfdom intact and avoided any additionalreforms.

The Austrian Empire of theHabsburgsThe Austrian Empire had become one of the great Europeanstates by the beginning of the eighteenth century. Yet it wasdifficult to rule because it was a sprawling conglomerate ofnationalities, languages, religions, and cultures (see Map18.3). Empress Maria Theresa (1740–1780) managed to makeadministrative reforms that helped centralize the AustrianEmpire, but they were done for practical reasons—tostrengthen the power of the Habsburg state—and wereaccompanied by an enlargement and modernization of thearmed forces. Maria Theresa remained staunchly conservativeand was not open to the wider reform calls of the philo-sophes. But her successor was.

Joseph II (1780–1790) believed in the need to sweep awayanything standing in the path of reason. As he said, ‘‘I havemade Philosophy the lawmaker of my empire; her logicalapplications are going to transform Austria.’’ Joseph’s reformprogram was far-reaching. He abolished serfdom, abrogatedthe death penalty, and established the principle of equality ofall before the law. Joseph carried out drastic religious reformsas well, including complete religious toleration.

Joseph’s reform program proved overwhelming for Aus-tria, however. He alienated the nobility by freeing the serfsand alienated the church by his attacks on the monastic estab-lishment. Joseph realized his failure when he wrote the epi-taph for his own gravestone: ‘‘Here lies Joseph II, who wasunfortunate in everything that he undertook.’’ His successorsundid many of his reforms.

Russia Under Catherine the GreatCatherine II the Great (1762–1796) was an intelligent womanwho was familiar with the works of the philosophes andseemed to favor enlightened reforms. She invited the Frenchphilosophe Diderot to Russia and, when he arrived, urged

M e d i t e r r a n e a n

S e a

PPo RR..

EEbbEE rrooRRR.

DDouoo roo RR.

SSSSeeiine R.

DanubeeRR.

DoD netstt R.

Dniepee er R.

ViVV stutt lla RR.

B lack Sea

At lant icOcean

North

Sea Balt ic

Sea

Rhhhhhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiine

ElE be

RRR

R.

Baalalleareare cicic IsIslIslandsBalal

Coorrsicsicccccccccccccccaiciccccccccc

KKIINNNNNNGNGNNNNNNNNGDDDDDDDODOODDDDDDD MMNNNNNNNN DDDDDDDOF SSAAAAAAARAAAAAAAA DDDDDDIDIDDDDDDDD NNIAAAAAAAAAA DDDDDDDD

Sicily

CreCretete CypCypprurus

LLPORRTTUTUUUUUGUUUUUU ALUGU ALUUUUUUUUUU LL

SPAIN

KIKIKIK NGNGNGNGNGNGNGNGNGNGNGNGNGNGNGGDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMNNNNNNNN OOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMNGNGNGNGNGNGNGNG OOOOOOOMMMMMMOFOFOFF TTTTTTTTTTTTTTHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEEETTTTTTTTTHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE

TWTWTWTWOOOO SISIIIIIIIIIIIIIICICICICICICICCICICICICIICCCILLLLILLILLLLIESESIIIIIIIIICICICICICICICICIC LLLLLL

PAPALLLLLLLLSTS ATESS

ALGERIA

OTTOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMAMAMMMMMMMMM NN EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEMPMMMMMMMMMMMMMM IREOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM EEEEEEEEEMMMMMMMMMN EEEEEEEEEANATOLIA

KinKinKinKinKinKinKinKinKinKinKinKinKKinKinKingdoooooooooooooomofofffffofffoffoff PruPruPruPruPruPruPruPruPruPruPruPruPruuussssisss a

IREIREIREEREIREIREREIREIREREIREIREIREIREIR LLLLLLLALANLLLLLLLLL DIREIREIREIREIREIREIREIRI LLLLLLALLLLLLGGGGGREGGGGGGGGGGGG ATTTTTTTTTTTTTGGGGGGGGGG TTTTTTTT

BRIB TAINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

NORWAY

SWEDEN FINLAND

RUSSIAA

FRANCESWITZEZEZEZEZEZEZEZEZEZZEZEZEZEERLANDTZ RLAND

LORRAINELO

NBUNBNBNBNBNBNBNB RG-BBUBB RGBRARARARARARAAARARARARAARAAANDENBNBRAARARARARARARARARAARARAA NNNNNBNBNBBNNPRUPRUPRUPRUPRUPRUPRUPRUPRUPRUPRUPRUPRURUPRUPRURUSSISSISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS AAAPPPPPPPPRPRPPP IAAAAAAAAAA

HOLLLLLLLLLLLYYYYYYYYYYYYYROMRRRRRRRRR ANNNNNNNNNNROMRRRRR ANEEEEEMPEEEEEEE IREREREREREREREREREREERE

SILESIESISESIESISESIIAESESSSESSESIESIESIESI

HUNGARY

SERBIA

UKRAINEUK

LITTLE POLAND

POLAND

LITHUANIA

KIKIKIKIKIKIKIKIIKIKIKIKIKIKKIKIINNNNNNNNGNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN DOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMKIKIKIKIKIKIKIKIK NNNNNNNNNNNNNN DOMMMMMMMMMMMMKKKKKKKKKKOFOFFF DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDENENENENENENENENENENENENEENNENNNMMMMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMMMMM RKRKDDDDDDDDDDENENENENENENEENENENENMMMAMAMAMAMAMAMMANDD NONONORWRWWRWRWRWWWRWWWWRWWWRWWWWWWAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYYAAAAAAARWRWRWWRWRWWWRWRWWAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAAA

DUTDUTTDUTDUTUTUTUTDUTUTDUTDUTTTTTCHCHCHHHCHHCHCHCHCHHCHCHCHUTUTUTUTTTTTTCHCHCHCHHCHCHCHCHUTUTUTUUUDUDUUDUDUDUDUUUUUU HHHHHREREREEEPEPEPPPEEPEEPPPPEPPPEEEPUBUBUBUBUBUUBUBUBLUBUUBUBU ICEEPEEPPEEEEEEEEEEEEEPPPPPPPPPPUBUBUBUBUBUBUUBUBPPPPP CCC

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiii

DENDENDENENENNENENENNENEENENENENMARARARARARRARRRRRRARRRKKKKKKKKKKENENENENENENENEN RRRARARRRARRKKKKKKRRRRRK

BaBarBarrcecelona

Seville

Cadiz

Lisbonon

Madrid

Avignon

MarMarMarMarMMMMMMMMM seseseseseiseiseseseseseseseseises llelleessMarMMMMMM eseseiseiseseseseeseil

GenoaenoaGG Floooooooooooorrrrrrenrenrrrrrr ceeeeeeeeeeceeFlooooooorrrrrrr eeeeeeeeeee

omeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeRooNaplesesesesesesesesesesesesesessesesesesesess

VenennnennnniceeececececeeceeceVenennnennnn cececeecececeeBordeeaaauxuxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

ConCon tstastantintiiiiiiiinononononononononopnonononnn letiiiiiinonononononon

FrankfurtColColColColColoColColCololColCooColColoCoo ognogoogogogogooggogogoogoog eC

BruBruBruBrBruBruBruBruBruBruBruBBruBr sssssssssess lsBruBruBruBruBruBruBruBruB ssssssssPlyymmmoumouuththtththththththththththththuuuththththththththh

Lononnonnnnnnnnnnnnddddddodondonddddddddnnnnnnnnnnddddddddd

Dublin

EdiEdiiEEEEEEEEEEEE nbnbun rghEEEEEEEE

HamHamHamHamamHamamamamburburbuburburubbub gggHamHamamamamHamHammbuburburburbb gaamaa baaaamamamHamHamamamambubububububuuamamambububuHHHHHE

NanNanNanNNanNNNaNaNaNNNNNNa tesNaNaNNaNNNNNN

Paris

Stockhkhhkhhkhkhhhhhkholmolmolmolmlmolmolmolmolmolmolmolmolmolmkhkhkhhhhhhk lmolmolmolmolmmolmolmolmolmlm SaiSaiSaiSaiSaiSaiSaSaiSaiSaiSaSaiSaiSaintntntnnntnntntntnntntt PetPettPetePetPetPetetetPetPetPetetersburgSaiSaiSaiSaiSaiSaiSaSaintntntntnntntntn PetPetPetPetPetPetPetPe

Orléansléa

Prague

iennaeViViiee

TriesteTriesteBudaB

Bucharararrrrrrarrrarrrrrrrrrrrestestch rrrarrararrrrrre

WarsawW

Vina

Moscow

KievKKKKK

AUSTRIAA

Alllpps

PyP rer nees

CCCCCCCCCCCCCaaaaaaaaaaaarrrpppppppppppppprr aattthhhhhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnMMMMMMMMMMMM

tsssss.

CRICRICRICRIRIRIRICRICRIRIRIRIRIIRIC MEAMMMMMMMMMMMMM ACRICRIRIRCRIRIRIRIRIR MMMMMM

0 250 500 Miles

0 250 500 750 Kilometers

Habsburg dominions

Kingdom of Prussia

Boundary of the HolyRoman Empire

MAP 18.3 Europe in 1763. By the middle of the eighteenth century, five major powers dominatedEurope—Prussia, Austria, Russia, Britain, and France. Each sought to enhance its power both domestically,through a bureaucracy that collected taxes and ran the military, and internationally, by capturing territoryor preventing other powers from capturing territory.

Given the distribution of Prussian and Habsburg holdings, in what areas of Europe were they mostlikely to compete for land and power?

ªCe

ngag

eLe

arning

Toward a New Political Order and Global Conflict 523Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).


him to speak frankly ‘‘as man to man.’’ He did, outlining afar-reaching program of political and financial reform. ButCatherine was skeptical about impractical theories, which,she said, ‘‘would have turned everything in my kingdomupside down.’’ She did consider the idea of a new law codethat would recognize the principle of the equality of all peo-ple in the eyes of the law. But in the end she did nothing,knowing that her success depended on the support of theRussian nobility. In 1785, she gave the nobles a charter thatexempted them from taxes.

Catherine’s policy of favoring the landed nobility led toeven worse conditions for the Russian peasants and a rebel-lion. Incited by an illiterate Cossack, Emelyan Pugachev(yim-yil-YAHN poo-guh-CHAHF), the rebellion began in1773 and spread across southern Russia. But the rebellionsoon faltered. Pugachev was captured, tortured, and exe-cuted. The rebellion collapsed completely, and Catherineresponded with even stronger measures against thepeasantry.

Above all, Catherine proved a worthy successor to Peterthe Great in her policies of territorial expansion westwardinto Poland and southward to the Black Sea. Russia spreadsouthward by defeating the Turks. Russian expansion west-ward occurred at the expense of neighboring Poland. In threepartitions of Poland, Russia gained about 50 percent of Polishterritory.

Enlightened AbsolutismReconsideredOf the rulers we have discussed, only Joseph II sought trulyradical changes based on Enlightenment ideas. Both FrederickII and Catherine II liked to talk about enlightened reforms,and they even attempted some. But the policies of neitherseemed seriously affected by Enlightenment thought. Neces-sities of state and maintenance of the existing system tookprecedence over reform. Indeed, many historians maintainthat Joseph, Frederick, and Catherine were all primarilyguided by a concern for the power and well-being of theirstates. In the final analysis, heightened state power was usedto create armies and wage wars to gain more power.

It would be foolish, however, to overlook the fact that theability of enlightened rulers to make reforms was also limited

by political and social realities. Everywhere in Europe, the he-reditary aristocracy was still the most powerful class in soci-ety. Enlightened reforms were often limited to administrativeand judicial measures that did not seriously undermine thepowerful interests of the European nobility. As the chief ben-eficiaries of a system based on traditional rights and privilegesfor their class, they were not willing to support a political ide-ology that trumpeted the principle of equal rights for all. Thefirst serious challenge to their supremacy would come inthe French Revolution, an event that blew open the door tothe modern world of politics.

Changing Patterns of War: GlobalConfrontationThe philosophes condemned war as a foolish waste of lifeand resources in stupid quarrels of no value to humankind.Despite their words, the rivalry among states that led tocostly struggles remained unchanged in the European worldof the eighteenth century. Europe consisted of a number ofself-governing, individual states that were largely guided bythe self-interest of the ruler. And as Frederick the Great ofPrussia said, ‘‘The fundamental rule of governments is theprinciple of extending their territories.’’

By far the most dramatic confrontation occurred in theSeven Years’ War. Although it began in Europe, it soonturned into a global conflict fought in Europe, India, andNorth America. In Europe, the British and Prussians fought

CHRONOLOGY Enlightened Absolutism in Eighteenth-CenturyEurope

Prussia

Frederick II the Great 1740–1786

Austrian Empire

Maria Theresa 1740–1780

Joseph II 1780–1790

Russia

Catherine II the Great 1762–1796

Pugachev’s rebellion 1773–1775

Charter of the Nobility 1785

Robert Clive in India. Robert Clive was the leader of the army of theBritish East India Company. He had been commanded to fight the rulerof Bengal in order to gain trading privileges. After the Battle of Plasseyin 1757, Clive and the East India Company took control of Bengal. Inthis painting by Edward Penny, Clive is shown receiving a grant ofmoney for his injured soldiers from the local nabob or governor ofBengal.

British

Library,Lo

ndon

//ª

ErichLe

ssing/ArtR

esou

rce,

NY



the Austrians, Russians, and French. With his superb armyand military skill, Frederick the Great of Prussia was able forsome time to defeat the Austrian, French, and Russianarmies. Eventually, however, his forces were gradually worndown and faced utter defeat until a new Russian tsar with-drew Russian troops from the conflict. A stalemate ensued,ending the European conflict in 1763.

The struggle between Britain and France in the rest of theworld had more decisive results. In India, local rulers alliedwith British and French troops fought a number of battles.Ultimately, the British under Robert Clive won out, notbecause they had better forces but because they were morepersistent (see the box above). By the Treaty of Paris in 1763,the French withdrew and left India to the British.

The greatest conflicts of the Seven Years’ War took placein North America, where it was known as the French and In-dian War. British and French rivalry led to a number of con-frontations. The French had more troops in North Americabut less naval support. The defeat of French fleets in 1759 leftthe French unable to reinforce their garrisons. That year, Brit-ish forces under General Wolfe defeated the French under

General Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham, outside Que-bec. The British went on to seize Montreal, the Great Lakesarea, and the Ohio valley. The French were forced to makepeace. In the Treaty of Paris, they ceded Canada and thelands east of the Mississippi to Britain. Their ally Spain trans-ferred Spanish Florida to British control; in return, the Frenchgave their Louisiana territory to the Spanish. By 1763, GreatBritain had become the world’s greatest colonial power. Theloss of France’s empire was soon followed by an even greaterinternal upheaval.

The French RevolutionFOCUS QUESTION:What were the causes, the mainevents, and the results of the French Revolution?

The year 1789 witnessed two far-reaching events, the begin-ning of a new United States of America under its revampedconstitution and the eruption of the French Revolution. Com-pared to the American Revolution a decade earlier, the

British Victory in India

The success of the British against the French inIndia was due to Robert Clive, who, in thisexcerpt from one of his letters, describes hisfamous victory at Plassey, north of Calcutta, on

June 23, 1757. This battle demonstrated the inability ofnative Indian soldiers to compete with Europeans and signi-fied the beginning of British control in Bengal. Clive claimedto have a thousand Europeans, two thousand sepoys (localsoldiers), and eight cannons available for this battle.

Robert Clive’s Account of His Victory at PlasseyAt daybreak we discovered the [governor’s army] movingtoward us, consisting, as we since found, of about fifteenthousand horse and thirty-five thousand foot, with upwardsof forty pieces of cannon. They approached apace, and by sixbegan to attack with a number of heavy cannon, supportedby the whole army, and continued to play on us very brisklyfor several hours, during which our situation was of theutmost service to us, being lodged in a large grove with goodmud banks. To succeed in an attempt on their cannon wasnext to impossible, as they were planted in a manner roundus and at considerable distances from each other. We there-fore remained quiet in our post, in expectation of a successfulattack upon their camp at night. About noon the enemy drewoff their artillery and retired to their camp. . . .

On finding them make no great effort to dislodge us, weproceeded to take possession of one or two more eminences

lying very near an angle of their camp, from whence, and anadjacent eminence in their possession, they kept a smart fireof musketry upon us. They made several attempts to bringout their cannon, but our advanced fieldpieces played sowarmly and so well upon them that they were always drivenback. Their horse exposing themselves a good deal on thisoccasion, many of them were killed, and among the rest fouror five officers of the first distinction; by which the wholearmy being visibly dispirited and thrown into some confu-sion, we were encouraged to storm both the eminence andthe angle of their camp, which were carried at the sameinstant, with little or no loss; though the latter was defended(exclusively of blacks) by forty French and two pieces of can-non; and the former by a large body of blacks, both horse andfoot. On this a general rout ensued, and we pursued theenemy six miles, passing upwards of forty pieces of cannonthey had abandoned, with an infinite number of carts and car-riages filled with baggage of all kinds. . . . It is computed thereare killed of the enemy about five hundred.

Our loss amounted to only twenty-two killed and fiftywounded, and those chiefly blacks.

In what ways, if any, would Clive’s account likely havebeen different if the Battle of Plassey had occurred inEurope? According to the letter, what role did nativeIndians seemingly play in the battle? Why does Clivegive them such little mention?

POLITICS &GOVERNMENT

The French Revolution 525Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).


French Revolution was more complex, more violent, and farmore radical in its attempt to reconstruct both a new politicalorder and a new social order.

Background to the FrenchRevolutionThe root causes of the French Revolution must be sought inthe condition of French society. Before the Revolution,France was a society grounded in privilege and inequality. Itspopulation of 27 million was divided, as it had been since theMiddle Ages, into three orders or estates.

SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF THE OLD REGIME The First Estateconsisted of the clergy and numbered about 130,000 peoplewho owned approximately 10 percent of the land. Clergywere exempt from the taille (TY), France’s chief tax. Clergywere also radically divided: the higher clergy, stemming fromaristocratic families, shared the interests of the nobility, whilethe parish priests were often poor and from the class ofcommoners.

The Second Estate consisted of the nobility, composed ofabout 350,000 people who owned about 25 to 30 percent ofthe land. The nobility had continued to play an importantand even crucial role in French society in the eighteenth cen-tury, holding many of the leading positions in the govern-ment, the military, the law courts, and the higher churchoffices. The nobles sought to expand their power at theexpense of the monarchy and to maintain their control overpositions in the military, church, and government. Moreover,the possession of privileges remained a hallmark of the nobil-ity. Common to all nobles were tax exemptions, especiallyfrom the taille.

The Third Estate, or the commoners of society, consti-tuted the overwhelming majority of the French population.They were divided by vast differences in occupation, level ofeducation, and wealth. The peasants, who constituted 75 to80 percent of the total population, were by far the largest seg-ment of the Third Estate. They owned 35 to 40 percent of theland, although their landholdings varied from area to areaand more than half had little or no land on which to survive.Serfdom no longer existed on any large scale in France, butFrench peasants still had obligations to their local landlordsthat they deeply resented. These ‘‘relics of feudalism,’’ or aris-tocratic privileges, had survived from an earlier age andincluded the payment of fees for the use of village facilities,such as the flour mill, community oven, and winepress.

Another part of the Third Estate consisted of skilled crafts-people, shopkeepers, and other wage earners in the cities. Inthe eighteenth century, these urban groups suffered a notice-able decline in purchasing power as consumer prices rosefaster than wages. Their daily struggle for survival led manyof these people to play an important role in the Revolution,especially in Paris.

About 8 percent of the population, or 2.3 million people,constituted the bourgeoisie or middle class, who ownedabout 20 to 25 percent of the land. This group includedmerchants, industrialists, and bankers who controlled the

resources of trade, manufacturing, and finance and benefitedfrom the economic prosperity after 1730. The bourgeoisiealso included professional people—lawyers, holders of publicoffices, doctors, and writers. Many members of the bourgeoi-sie had their own set of grievances because they were oftenexcluded from the social and political privileges monopolizedby nobles.

Moreover, the new political ideas of the Enlightenmentproved attractive to both the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie.Both elites, long accustomed to a new socioeconomic realitybased on wealth and economic achievement, were increas-ingly frustrated by a monarchical system resting on privilegesand on an old and rigid social order based on the concept ofestates. The opposition of these elites to the old order ledthem ultimately to take drastic action against the monarchicalold regime. In a real sense, the Revolution had its origins inpolitical grievances.

OTHER PROBLEMS FACING THE FRENCH MONARCHY

Although France had enjoyed fifty years of economic expansionin the first half of the eighteenth century, in the late 1780s badharvests in 1787 and 1788 and the beginnings of a manufactur-ing depression had resulted in food shortages, rising prices forfood and other goods, and unemployment in the cities. Thenumber of poor, estimated at almost one-third of the popula-tion, reached crisis proportions on the eve of the Revolution.

The French monarchy seemed incapable of dealing withthe new social realities. Louis XVI (1774–1792) had becomeking in 1774 at the age of twenty; he knew little about theoperations of the French government and lacked the energy todeal decisively with state affairs. His wife, Marie Antoinette(ma-REE ahn-twahn-NET), was a spoiled Austrian princesswho devoted much of her time to court intrigues (see the Film& History feature on p. 527). As France’s crises worsened, nei-ther Louis nor his queen seemed able to fathom the depths ofdespair and discontent that soon led to violent revolution.

The immediate cause of the French Revolution was thenear collapse of government finances. Costly wars and royalextravagance drove French governmental expenditures everhigher. On the verge of a complete financial collapse, the gov-ernment of Louis XVI was finally forced to call a meeting ofthe Estates-General, the French parliamentary body that hadnot met since 1614. The Estates-General consisted of repre-sentatives from the three orders of French society. In the elec-tions for the Estates-General, the government had ruled thatthe Third Estate should get double representation (it did,after all, constitute 97 percent of the population). Conse-quently, while both the First Estate (the clergy) and the Sec-ond Estate (the nobility) had about three hundred delegateseach, the Third Estate had almost six hundred representa-tives, most of whom were lawyers from French towns.

From Estates-General to NationalAssemblyThe Estates-General opened at Versailles on May 5, 1789. Itwas troubled from the start with the question of whether vot-ing should be by order or by head (each delegate having one



vote). Traditionally, each order would vote as a group andhave one vote. That meant that the First and Second Estatescould outvote the Third Estate two to one. The Third Estatedemanded that each deputy have one vote. With the assis-tance of liberal nobles and clerics, that would give the ThirdEstate a majority. When the First Estate declared in favor ofvoting by order, the Third Estate responded dramatically. On

June 17, 1789, the Third Estate declared itself the ‘‘NationalAssembly’’ and decided to draw up a constitution. This wasthe first step in the French Revolution because the ThirdEstate had no legal right to act as the National Assembly. Butthis audacious act was soon in jeopardy, as the king sidedwith the First Estate and threatened to dissolve the Estates-General. Louis XVI now prepared to use force.

FILM & HISTORY

Marie Antoinette (2006)

The filmMarie Antoinette (2006), directed by SofiaCoppola, is based on Antonia Fraser’s interpretationof the early life of Marie Antoinette in her book,Marie Antoinette: A Journey (2001). The film beginswith the marriage of Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst),the daughter of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria(Marianne Faithful), to the dauphin Louis (JasonSchwartzman), the heir to the French throne. Fouryears later, in 1774, Marie Antoinette became queenof France; in 1793, she went to the guillotine.Although the Revolution and financial troubles of themonarchy briefly enter the film toward the end, themajority of the film focuses on the experiences of ayoung woman thrust into the court of Versailleswhere she faces increasing suspicion, frustration, andisolation.

Perhaps the best part of the film is the por-trayal of court life at Versailles. The film depictsdays filled with courtly ceremonies, daily mass,and attendance of the public at meals. Underintense scrutiny due to her Austrian heritage andunfamiliar with the protocol of life at Versailles,Marie Antoinette makes several early missteps. She refusesto speak to Louis XV’s mistress, the comtesse du Barry (AsiaArgento), because the comtesse threatens Marie Antoi-nette’s position as the highest-ranking woman at court.Ignoring the king’s mistress, however, places the youngdauphine in the precarious position of appearing to insultthe king.

In addition to her troubles at court, Marie Antoinette facesan even greater challenge: the need to secure her place byproducing an heir to the French throne. But her young hus-band, whose interests include hunting, lock making, and read-ing, creates problems for the young couple. Their marriage isnot consummated for seven years. During these years, MarieAntoinette faces increasing pressure from her mother, whohas produced sixteen children while ruling the AustrianEmpire. Bored but aware that she must remain chaste, theyoung dauphine turns to frivolous pursuits including games,plays, outings in Paris, decorating, gambling, and, above all,purchasing clothes. Marie Antoinette’s desire for elaborategowns is encouraged by her role as the taste maker for theFrench court. In 1782, she commissions ninety-three gowns

made of silk and other expensive fabrics. The scene of MarieAntoinette’s twenty-first birthday is particularly effective inconveying how her frustration and boredom have led her to alife of frivolity and luxury. Sitting in her finery, she plays cardsand eats sweets until the early hours of the morning.

After the birth of her children, the first in 1777, MarieAntoinette begins to withdraw from the scrutiny of the court.In 1783, she is given the keys to the Petit Trianon, a small pal-ace on the grounds of Versailles, where she spends most ofher days. Although she is spending more time with her chil-dren and less on the frivolity of her earlier days at Versailles,her increasing estrangement from the court only worsens herreputation with the French public.

Filmed at Versailles, the film captures the grandeur andsplendor of eighteenth-century royal life. But the movie didnot receive favorable reviews when it opened in France, inpart because of its use of contemporary music by artists suchas The Cure and The Strokes and the inclusion of modernproducts such as Converse sneakers. Although the flurry ofcostumes and music can be distracting, they also convey therebelliousness of a young woman, frustrated and bored, iso-lated, and yet always on display.

Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst) at Versailles.

Columbia/Am

erican

Zoetrope

/Son

y/Th

eKo

balC

ollection



The common people, however, saved the Third Estatefrom the king’s forces. On July 14, a mob of Parisians stormedthe Bastille, a royal armory, and proceeded to dismantle it,brick by brick. Louis XVI was soon informed that the royaltroops were unreliable. Louis’s acceptance of that reality sig-naled the collapse of royal authority; the king could no longerenforce his will.

At the same time, popular revolts broke out throughoutFrance, both in the cities and in the countryside (see the com-parative illustration above). Behind the popular uprising was agrowing resentment of the entire landholding system, with itsfees and obligations. The fall of the Bastille and the king’s appa-rent capitulation to the demands of the Third Estate now ledpeasants to take matters into their own hands. The peasantrebellions that occurred throughout France had a great impacton the National Assembly meeting at Versailles.

Destruction of the Old RegimeOne of the first acts of the National Assembly was to abolishthe rights of landlords and the fiscal exemptions of nobles,clergy, towns, and provinces. Three weeks later, the National

Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man andthe Citizen (see the box on p. 529). This charter of basic liber-ties proclaimed freedom and equal rights for all men andaccess to public office based on talent. All citizens were tohave the right to take part in the legislative process. Freedomof speech and the press were coupled with the outlawing ofarbitrary arrests.

The declaration also raised another important issue. Didits ideal of equal rights for ‘‘all men’’ also include women?Many deputies insisted that it did, provided that, as one said,‘‘women do not hope to exercise political rights and func-tions.’’ Olympe de Gouges (oh-LAMP duh GOOZH), aplaywright, refused to accept this exclusion of women frompolitical rights. Echoing the words of the official declaration,she penned the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and theFemale Citizen, in which she insisted that women shouldhave all the same rights as men (see the box on p. 529). TheNational Assembly ignored her demands.

Because the Catholic Church was seen as an important pil-lar of the old order, it too was reformed. Most of the lands ofthe church were seized. The new Civil Constitution of theClergy was put into effect in 1790. Both bishops and priests


COMPARATIVE ILLUS-TRATIONRevolution and Revolt inFrance and China. BothFrance and China experienced

revolutionary upheaval at the end of the eigh-teenth century and well into the nineteenth. Inboth countries, common people often played animportant role. At the right is a scene from thestorming of the Bastille in Paris in 1789. Thisearly action by the people of Paris ultimately ledto the overthrow of the French monarchy. Atthe top is a scene from one of the struggles dur-ing the Taiping Rebellion, a major peasantrevolt in the mid-nineteenth century in China.An imperial Chinese army is shown recapturingthe city of Nanjing from Taiping rebels in 1864.

What role did common people play in revolutionary upheavals in France andChina in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?

ªTh

eArtA

rchive/S

choo

lofO

rientalandAfric

anStud

ies,

Lond

on/

Eileen

Twee

dy

ªMusee

delaRe

volutio

nFranca

ise,

Vizille/The

Bridge

man

ArtL

ibrary

International



OPPOSING VIEWPOINTS

The Natural Rights of the French People: Two Views


One of the important documents of the FrenchRevolution, the Declaration of the Rights of Manand the Citizen was adopted on August 26,1789, by the National Assembly. The declaration

affirmed that ‘‘men are born and remain free and equal inrights,’’ that government must protect these natural rights,and that political power is derived from the people.

Olympe de Gouges (the pen name used by Marie Gouze)was a butcher’s daughter who wrote plays and pamphlets.She argued that the Declaration of the Rights of Man andthe Citizen did not apply to women and composed her ownDeclaration of the Rights of Woman and the FemaleCitizen in 1791.

Declaration of the Rights of Manand the Citizen

1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Socialdistinctions can only be founded upon the general good.

2. The aim of all political association is the preservationof the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. Theserights are liberty, property, security, and resistance tooppression.

3. The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in thenation. No body or individual may exercise any authoritywhich does not proceed directly from the nation.

4. Liberty consists in being able to do everything whichinjures no one else. . . .

6. Law is the expression of the general will. Every citizen hasa right to participate personally or through his representa-tive in its formation. It must be the same for all, whetherit protects or punishes. All citizens being equal in the eyesof the law are equally eligible to all dignities and to allpublic positions and occupations according to their abil-ities and without distinction except that of their virtuesand talents.

7. No person shall be accused, arrested, or imprisoned except inthe cases and according to the forms prescribed by law. . . .

10. No one shall be disturbed on account of his opinions,including his religious views, provided their manifestationdoes not disturb the public order established by law.

11. The free communication of ideas and opinions is oneof the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizenmay, accordingly, speak, write and print with freedom,being responsible, however, for such abuses of thisfreedom as shall be defined by law.

12. The security of the rights of man and of the citizenrequires public military force. These forces are, therefore,

established for the good of all and not for the personaladvantage of those to whom they shall be entrusted.

14. All the citizens have a right to decide either personally orby their representatives as to the necessity of the publiccontribution, to grant this freely, to know to what uses itis put, and to fix the proportion, the mode of assessment,and of collection, and the duration of the taxes.

15. Society has the right to require of every public agent anaccount of his administration.

16. A society in which the observance of the law is not assurednor the separation of powers defined has no constitutionat all.

17. Property being an inviolable and sacred right, no one shallbe deprived thereof except where public necessity, legallydetermined, shall clearly demand it, and then only on con-dition that the owner shall have been previously and equi-tably indemnified.

Declaration of the Rights of Woman and theFemale CitizenMothers, daughters, sisters and representatives of the nationdemand to be constituted into a national assembly. Believingthat ignorance, omission, or scorn for the rights of womanare the only causes of public misfortunes and of the corrup-tion of governments, the women have resolved to set forth ina solemn declaration the natural, inalienable, and sacredrights of woman in order that this declaration, constantlyexposed before all the members of the society, will cease-lessly remind them of their rights and duties. . . .

Consequently, the sex that is as superior in beauty as it isin courage during the sufferings of maternity recognizes anddeclares in the presence and under the auspices of theSupreme Being, the following Rights of Woman and ofFemale Citizens.

1. Woman is born free and lives equal to man in her rights.Social distinctions can be based only on the commonutility.

2. The purpose of any political association is theconservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights ofwoman and man; these rights are liberty, property, secu-rity, and especially resistance to oppression.

3. The principle of all sovereignty rests essentially with thenation, which is nothing but the union of woman andman; no body and no individual can exercise any authoritywhich does not come expressly from [the nation].

4. Liberty and justice consist of restoring all that belongs toothers; thus, the only limits on the exercise of the natural

(continued)



were to be elected by the people and paid by the state. TheCatholic Church, still an important institution in the life ofthe French people, now became an enemy of the Revolution.

By 1791, the National Assembly had completed a new con-stitution that established a limited constitutional monarchy.There was still a monarch (now called ‘‘king of the French’’),but the new Legislative Assembly was to make the laws. TheLegislative Assembly, in which sovereign power was vested,was to sit for two years and consist of 745 representatives, ordeputies, chosen by an indirect system of election that pre-served power in the hands of the more affluent members ofsociety. A small group of 50,000 electors chose the deputies.

By 1791, the old order had been destroyed. The neworder, however, had many opponents—Catholic priests,nobles, lower classes hurt by a rise in the cost of living, peas-ants who remained opposed to dues that had still not beenabandoned, and political clubs like the Jacobins (JAK-uh-binz) that offered more radical solutions to France’s prob-lems. The king also made things difficult for the new govern-ment when he sought to flee France in June 1791 and almostsucceeded before being recognized, captured, and broughtback to Paris. In this unsettled situation, under a discreditedand seemingly disloyal monarch, the new Legislative Assem-bly held its first session in October 1791. France’s relationswith the rest of Europe soon led to Louis’s downfall.

On August 27, 1791, the monarchs of Austria and Prussia,fearing that revolution would spread to their countries,invited other European monarchs to use force to reestablishmonarchical authority in France. The French fared badly inthe initial fighting in the spring of 1792, and a frantic searchfor scapegoats began. As one observer noted, ‘‘Everywhereyou hear the cry that the king is betraying us, the generalsare betraying us, that nobody is to be trusted; . . . that Pariswill be taken in six weeks by the Austrians. . . . We are on avolcano ready to spout flames.’’4 Defeats in war coupled witheconomic shortages in the spring led to renewed politicaldemonstrations, especially against the king. In August 1792,radical political groups in Paris attacked the royal palace, tookthe king captive, and forced the Legislative Assembly to sus-pend the monarchy and call for a national convention, chosenon the basis of universal male suffrage, to decide on thefuture form of government. The French Revolution wasabout to enter a more radical stage.

The Radical RevolutionIn September 1792, the newly elected National Conventionbegan its sessions. Dominated by lawyers and other professio-nals, two-thirds of its deputies were under the age of forty-five, and almost all had gained political experience as a result

rights of woman are perpetual male tyranny; these limitsare to be reformed by the laws of nature and reason. . . .

6. The law must be the expression of the general will; allfemale and male citizens must contribute either personallyor through their representatives to its formation; it mustbe the same for all: male and female citizens, being equalin the eyes of the law, must be equally admitted to all hon-ors, positions, and public employment according to theircapacity and without other distinctions besides those oftheir virtues and talents.

7. No woman is an exception; she is accused, arrested, anddetained in cases determined by law. Women, like men,obey this rigorous law. . . .

10. No one is to be disquieted for his very basic opinions;woman has the right to mount the scaffold; she mustequally have the right to mount the rostrum, providedthat her demonstrations do not disturb the legally estab-lished public order.

11. The free communication of thought and opinions is one ofthe most precious rights of woman, since that libertyassured the recognition of children by their fathers. . . .

12. The guarantee of the rights of woman and the femalecitizen implies a major benefit; this guarantee must beinstituted for the advantage of all, and not for the particu-lar benefit of those to whom it is entrusted. . . .

14. Female and male citizens have the right to verify, eitherby themselves or through their representatives, the neces-

sity of the public contribution. This can only apply towomen if they are granted an equal share, not only ofwealth, but also of public administration, and in the deter-mination of the proportion, the base, the collection, andthe duration of the tax.

15. The collectivity of women, joined for tax purposes to theaggregate of men, has the right to demand an accountingof his administration from any public agent.

16. No society has a constitution without the guarantee ofrights and the separation of powers; the constitution is nullif the majority of individuals comprising the nation havenot cooperated in drafting it.

17. Property belongs to both sexes whether united orseparate; for each it is an inviolable and sacred right; no onecan be deprived of it, since it is the true patrimony of na-ture, unless the legally determined public need obviouslydictates it, and then only with a just and prior indemnity.

What ‘‘natural rights’’ does the first documentproclaim? To what extent was this documentinfluenced by the writings of the philosophes? Whatrights for women does the second documentenunciate? Given the nature and scope of thearguments in favor of natural rights and women’srights in these two documents, what key effects onEuropean society would you attribute to the FrenchRevolution?

(Opposing Viewpoints continued)



of the Revolution. Almost all distrusted the king. As a result,the convention’s first step on September 21 was to abolish themonarchy and establish a republic. On January 21, 1793, theking was executed, and the destruction of the old regime wascomplete. But the execution of the king created new enemiesfor the Revolution both at home and abroad.

In Paris, the local government, known as the Commune,whose leaders came from the working classes, favored radicalchange and put constant pressure on the convention, pushingit to ever more radical positions. Meanwhile, peasants in thewest and inhabitants of the major provincial cities refused toaccept the authority of the convention.

A foreign crisis also loomed large. By the beginning of1793, after the king had been put to death, most of Europe—an informal coalition of Austria, Prussia, Spain, Portugal, Brit-ain, the Dutch Republic, and even Russia—aligned militarilyagainst France. Grossly overextended, the French armiesbegan to experience reverses, and by late spring, France wasthreatened with invasion.

A NATION IN ARMS To meet these crises, the conventiongave broad powers to an executive committee of twelveknown as the Committee of Public Safety, which came to bedominated by Maximilien Robespierre (mak-see-meel-YENH ROHBZ-pyayr). For a twelve-month period, from1793 to 1794, the Committee of Public Safety took controlof France. To save the Republic from its foreign foes, thecommittee decreed a universal mobilization of the nation onAugust 23, 1793:

Young men will fight, young men are called to conquer. Marriedmen will forge arms, transport military baggage and guns andwill prepare food supplies. Women, who at long last are to taketheir rightful place in the revolution and follow their true des-tiny, will forget their futile tasks: their delicate hands will work atmaking clothes for soldiers; they will make tents and they willextend their tender care to shelters where the defenders of the

Patrie [nation] will receive the help that their wounds require.Children will make lint of old cloth. It is for them that we arefighting: children, those beings destined to gather all the fruits ofthe revolution, will raise their pure hands toward the skies. Andold men, performing their missions again, as of yore, will beguided to the public squares of the cities where they will kindlethe courage of young warriors and preach the doctrines of hatefor kings and the unity of the Republic.5

In less than a year, the French revolutionary government hadraised an army of 650,000 and by 1795 had pushed the alliesback across the Rhine and even conquered the AustrianNetherlands.

The French revolutionary army was an important step inthe creation of modern nationalism. Previously, wars hadbeen fought between governments or ruling dynasties by rel-atively small armies of professional soldiers. The new Frencharmy was the creation of a ‘‘people’s’’ government; its warswere now ‘‘people’s’’ wars. The entire nation was to beinvolved in the war. But when dynastic wars became people’swars, warfare increased in ferocity and lack of restraint. Thewars of the French revolutionary era opened the door to thetotal war of the modern world.

REIGN OF TERROR To meet the domestic crisis, the NationalConvention and the Committee of Public Safety launched the‘‘Reign of Terror.’’ Revolutionary courts were instituted toprotect the Republic from its internal enemies. In the courseof nine months, 16,000 people were officially killed under theblade of the guillotine—a revolutionary device designed forthe quick and efficient separation of heads from bodies (seethe box on p. 532).

Revolutionary armies were set up to bring recalcitrantcities and districts back under the control of the NationalConvention. The Committee of Public Safety decided tomake an example of Lyons (LYOHNH), which had defied theauthority of the National Convention. By April 1794, some

Citizens in the New French Army. To save the Republic from its foreign enemies, the National Conventioncreated a revolutionary army of unprecedented size. This illustration, from a book of paintings on the FrenchRevolution by the Lesueur brothers, shows three citizens learning to drill, while a young volunteer is beingarmed and outfitted by his family.

ªTh

eArtA

rchive/M

usee

Carnavalet,P

aris/G

ianniD

agliOrti



1,880 citizens of Lyons had been executed. When the guillo-tine proved too slow, cannon fire was used to blow con-demned men into open graves. A German observed:

Whole ranges of houses, always the most handsome, burnt. Thechurches, convents, and all the dwellings of the former patricianswere in ruins. When I came to the guillotine, the blood of thosewho had been executed a few hours beforehand was still runningin the street. . . . I said to a group of [radicals] that it would bedecent to clear away all this human blood. Why should it becleared? one of them said to me. It’s the blood of aristocrats andrebels. The dogs should lick it up.6

EQUALITY AND SLAVERY: REVOLUTION IN HAITI Early inthe French Revolution, the desire for equality led to a discus-sion of what to do about slavery. A club called Friends of theBlacks advocated the abolition of slavery, which was achievedin France in September 1791. However, French planters inthe West Indies, who profited greatly from the use of slaves

on their sugar plantations, opposed the abolition of slavery inthe French colonies. When the National Convention came topower, the issue was revisited, and on February 4, 1794,guided by ideals of equality, the government abolished slav-ery in the colonies.

In one French colony, slaves had already rebelled for theirfreedom. In 1791, black slaves in the French sugar colony ofSaint-Domingue (san doh-MAYNG) (the western third ofthe island of Hispaniola), inspired by the ideals of therevolution occurringin France, revoltedagainst French planta-tion owners. Slavesattacked, killing plan-tation owners andtheir families andburning their build-ings. White plantersretaliated with equal

Justice in the Reign of Terror


The Reign of Terror created a repressive envi-ronment in which revolutionary courts oftenacted quickly to condemn traitors to the revolu-tionary cause. In this account, an English visitor

describes the court, the procession to the scene of execu-tion, and the final execution procedure.

J. G. Milligen, The Revolutionary Tribunal (Paris,October 1793)In the center of the hall, under a statue of Justice, holdingscales in one hand, and a sword in the other, sat Dumas, thePresident, with the other judges. Under them were seated thepublic accuser, Fourquier-Tinville, and his scribes. . . . To theright were benches on which the accused were placed in sev-eral rows, and gendarmes with carbines and fixed bayonetsby their sides. To the left was the jury.

Never can I forget the mournful appearance of these fune-real processions to the place of execution. The march wasopened by a detachment of mounted gendarmes—the cartsfollowed; they were the same carts as those that are used inParis for carrying wood; four boards were placed across themfor seats, and on each board sat two, and sometimes threevictims; their hands were tied behind their backs, and the con-stant jostling of the cart made them nod their heads up anddown, to the great amusement of the spectators. On the frontof the cart stood Samson, the executioner, or one of his sonsor assistants; gendarmes on foot marched by the side; thenfollowed a hackney, in which was the reporting clerk, whoseduty it was to witness the execution, and then return to the

public accuser’s office to report the execution of what theycalled the law.

The process of execution was also a sad and heart-rendingspectacle. In the middle of the Place de la Revolution waserected a guillotine, in front of a colossal statue of Liberty, rep-resented seated on a rock, a cap on her head, a spear in herhand, the other reposing on a shield. On one side of the scaffoldwere drawn out a sufficient number of carts, with large basketspainted red, to receive the heads and bodies of the victims.Those bearing the condemned moved on slowly to the foot ofthe guillotine; the culprits were led out in turn, and if necessary,supported by two of the executioner’s assistants, but their assis-tance was rarely required. Most of these unfortunates ascendedthe scaffold with a determined step—many of them looked upfirmly on the menacing instrument of death, beholding for thelast time the rays of the glorious sun, beaming on the polishedaxe: and I have seen some young men actually dance a fewsteps before they went up to be strapped to the perpendicularplane, which was then tilted to a horizontal plane in a moment,and ran on the grooves until the neck was secured and closedin by a moving board, when the head passed through what wascalled, in derision, ‘‘the republican toilet seat’’; the weighty knifewas then dropped with a heavy fall; and, with incredible dexter-ity and rapidity, two executioners tossed the body into the bas-ket, while another threw the head after it.

How were the condemned taken to the executioner?How did this serve to inflame the crowds? How werepeople executed? Why?

AtlanticOcean

SanSSSSSSSSSSantototototttottttotototooooSSSSSSSSSSSSSS totottototototototttoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooDommDomDomDo ingiinginginggooo

Weesssttttt IIIIndies

PPuPuePueertorto RiRi Ricoococ

Cuba

HispaniolaaSSAISAISAINT–NT––NT–NT–T–NTNT–NT–T–NT–NT–NT–NT–NT–T–NTTNT–NNTNTNTNTNTNTT–TNTTNTNTNTTTNNTT––––––––––––

DDOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMINGINGINGINGGINGINGINGINGININGNINGNINGINGI GGGUEEUEUEUEUEUEUEUEUUEUUEUEMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMINGINGINGINGINGINGINGINGINGINGNGNGNGINGINGINGINGGGUEEUEUEUEEUEEUEEUEUEUUEUUUE(Fr(Fr( ).))

(Sppp )))).)))pp ))))))))

0 150 300 Miles

0 200 400 Kilometers

Revolt in Saint-Domingue

ªCe

ngag

eLe

arning



brutality. One wealthy French settler reported, ‘‘How can westay in a country where slaves have raised their hands againsttheir masters?’’

Eventually, leadership of the revolt was taken over by Tous-saint L’Ouverture (too-SANH loo-vayr-TOOR) (1746–1803), ason of African slaves, who seized control of all of Hispaniola by1801. Although Napoleon, the French leader, had accepted therevolutionary ideal of equality, he did not reject the reports ofwhite planters that the massacres of white planters by slavesdemonstrated the savage nature of blacks. In 1802, he reinstatedslavery in the French West Indian colonies and sent an armythat captured L’Ouverture, who died in a French dungeonwithin a year. But the French soldiers, weakened by disease,soon succumbed to the slave forces. On January 1, 1804, thewestern part of Hispaniola, now called Haiti, announced its free-dom and became the first state in Latin America to win its inde-pendence. Despite Napoleon’s efforts to the contrary, one of theFrench revolutionary ideals had triumphed abroad.

Reaction and the DirectoryBy the summer of 1794, the French had been successful onthe battlefield against their foreign foes, making the Reign ofTerror less necessary. But the Terror continued becauseRobespierre, who had become a figure of power and author-ity, became obsessed with purifying the body politic of all thecorrupt. Many deputies in the National Convention werefearful, however, that they were not safe while Robespierrewas free to act and gathered enough votes to condemn him.Robespierre was sent to the guillotine on July 28, 1794.

After the death of Robespierre, a reaction set in as moremoderate middle-class leaders took control. The Reign of Terrorcame to a halt, and the National Convention reduced the powerof the Committee of Public Safety. In addition, in August 1795 anew constitution was drafted that reflected the desire for a stabil-ity that did not sacrifice the ideals of 1789. Five directors—known as the Directory—acted as the executive authority.

Government under the Directory (1795–1799) was character-ized by stagnation and corruption. The Directory faced politicalenemies on both the left and the right. On the right, royalistswho wanted to restore the monarchy continued their agitation.On the left, radical hopes of power were revived by continuingeconomic problems. Battered from both sides, unable to solvethe country’s economic problems, and still carrying on the warsinherited from the Committee of Public Safety, the Directoryincreasingly relied on the military to maintain its power. Thisled to a coup d’etat in 1799 in which a popular military general,Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821), seized power.

The Age of NapoleonFOCUS QUESTION:Which aspects of the FrenchRevolution did Napoleon preserve, and which did hedestroy?

Napoleon dominated both French and European history from1799 to 1815. The coup that brought him to power occurredexactly ten years after the outbreak of the French Revolution. In

a sense, Napoleon brought the Revolution to an end, but he wasalso its child; he even called himself the Son of the Revolution.The French Revolution had made possible his rise first in themilitary and then to supreme power in France. Even beyond this,Napoleon had once said, ‘‘I am the Revolution,’’ and he neverceased to remind the French that they owed to him the preserva-tion of all that was beneficial in the revolutionary program.

The Rise of NapoleonNapoleon was born in Corsica in 1769, only a few months af-ter France had annexed the island. The son of an Italian law-yer whose family stemmed from the Florentine nobility,Napoleone Buonaparte (his birth name) grew up in the coun-tryside of Corsica, a willful and demanding child who never-theless developed discipline, thriftiness, and loyalty to hisfamily. His father’s connections in France enabled him tostudy first at a school in the French town of Autun, where helearned to speak French, and then to obtain a royal scholar-ship to study at a military school. At that time, he changedhis first name to the more French-sounding Napoleon (he didnot change his last name to Bonaparte until 1796).

Napoleon’s military education led to his commission as alieutenant in 1785, although he was not well liked by his fel-low officers because he was short, spoke with an Italianaccent, and had little money. For the next seven years, Napo-leon spent much of his time reading the works of the philo-sophes, especially Rousseau, and educating himself inmilitary matters by studying the campaigns of great militaryleaders from the past, including Alexander the Great, Charle-magne, and Frederick the Great. The French Revolution andthe European war that followed broadened his sights andpresented him with new opportunities.

Napoleon rose quickly through the ranks. In 1794, at theage of only twenty-five, he was made a brigadier general bythe Committee of Public Safety. Two years later, he com-manded the French armies in Italy, where he won a series ofvictories and returned to France as a conquering hero (see

CHRONOLOGY The French Revolution

Meeting of the Estates-General May 5, 1789

Formation of the NationalAssembly

June 17, 1789

Fall of the Bastille July 14, 1789

Declaration of the Rights of Manand the Citizen

August 26, 1789

Civil Constitution of the Clergy July 12, 1790

Flight of the king June 20–21, 1791

Attack on the royal palace August 10, 1792

Abolition of the monarchy September 21, 1792

Execution of the king January 21, 1793

Universal mobilization August 23, 1793

Execution of Robespierre July 28, 1794

Adoption of the Constitution of1795 and the Directory

August 22, 1795

The Age of Napoleon 533Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).


the box above). After a disastrous expedition to Egypt,Napoleon returned to Paris, where he participated in the coupthat gave him control of France. He was only thirty years old.

After the coup of 1799, a new form of the Republic, calledthe Consulate, was proclaimed in which Napoleon, as first con-sul, controlled the entire executive authority of government.He had overwhelming influence over the legislature, appointedmembers of the administrative bureaucracy, commanded thearmy, and conducted foreign affairs. In 1802, Napoleon wasmade consul for life, and in 1804, he returned France to mon-archy when he crowned himself Emperor Napoleon I.

Domestic PoliciesOne of Napoleon’s first domestic policies was to establishpeace with the oldest and most implacable enemy of the Rev-olution, the Catholic Church. In 1801, Napoleon arranged aconcordat with the pope that recognized Catholicism as thereligion of a majority of the French people. In return, thepope agreed not to raise the question of the church lands con-fiscated in the Revolution. As a result of the concordat, theCatholic Church was no longer an enemy of the French gov-ernment, and Frenchmen who had acquired church landsduring the Revolution were assured that they would not bestripped of them, an assurance that made them supporters ofthe Napoleonic regime.

Napoleon’s most enduring domestic achievement was hiscodification of the laws. Before the Revolution, France hadsome three hundred local legal systems. During the Revolu-tion, efforts were made to prepare a single code of laws forthe entire nation, but it remained for Napoleon to bring thework to completion in the famous Civil Code. This preservedmost of the revolutionary gains by recognizing the principleof the equality of all citizens before the law, the abolition ofserfdom and feudalism, and religious toleration. Propertyrights were also protected.

At the same time, the Civil Code strictly curtailed therights of some people. During the radical phase of the FrenchRevolution, new laws had made divorce an easy process forboth husbands and wives and allowed sons and daughters toinherit property equally. Napoleon’s Civil Code undid theselaws. Divorce was still allowed but was made more difficultfor women to obtain. Women were now ‘‘less equal thanmen’’ in other ways as well. When they married, their prop-erty came under the control of their husbands.

Napoleon also developed a powerful, centralized adminis-trative machine and worked hard to develop a bureaucracy ofcapable officials. Early on, the regime showed that it cared lit-tle whether the expertise of officials had been acquired inroyal or revolutionary bureaucracies. Promotion, whether incivil or military offices, was to be based not on rank or birthbut on ability only. This principle of a government career

Napoleon and Psychological Warfare


In 1796, at the age of twenty-seven, NapoleonBonaparte was given command of the Frencharmy in Italy, where he won a series of stunningvictories. His use of speed, deception, and sur-

prise to overwhelm his opponents is well known. In this selec-tion from a proclamation to his troops in Italy, Napoleon alsoappears as a master of psychological warfare.

Napoleon Bonaparte, Proclamation to FrenchTroops in Italy (April 26, 1796)Soldiers:

In a fortnight you have won six victories, taken twenty-one standards [flags of military units], fifty-five pieces of artil-lery, several strong positions, and conquered the richest partof Piedmont [in northern Italy]; you have captured 15,000prisoners and killed or wounded more than 10,000 men. . . .You have won battles without cannon, crossed rivers withoutbridges, made forced marches without shoes, camped with-out brandy and often without bread. Soldiers of liberty, onlyrepublican troops could have endured what you haveendured. Soldiers, you have our thanks! The grateful Patrie[nation] will owe its prosperity to you. . . .

The two armies which but recently attacked you with au-dacity are fleeing before you in terror; the wicked men wholaughed at your misery and rejoiced at the thought of the tri-umphs of your enemies are confounded and trembling.

But, soldiers, as yet you have done nothing compared withwhat remains to be done. . . . Undoubtedly the greatestobstacles have been overcome; but you still have battles tofight, cities to capture, rivers to cross. Is there one amongyou whose courage is abating? No. . . . All of you are con-sumed with a desire to extend the glory of the French people;all of you long to humiliate those arrogant kings who dare tocontemplate placing us in fetters; all of you desire to dictate aglorious peace, one which will indemnify the Patrie for theimmense sacrifices it has made; all of you wish to be able tosay with pride as you return to your villages, ‘‘I was with thevictorious army of Italy!’’

What themes did Napoleon use to play on theemotions of his troops and inspire them to greaterefforts? Do you think Napoleon believed thesewords? Why or why not?



open to talent was, of course, what many bourgeois hadwanted before the Revolution.

In his domestic policies, then, Napoleon both destroyedand preserved aspects of the Revolution. Although equalityand the opening of careers to talent were retained in the lawcode, the creation of a new aristocracy, the strong protectionaccorded to property rights, and the use of conscription forthe military make it clear that much equality had been lost.Liberty had been replaced by an initially benevolent des-potism that grew increasingly arbitrary. Napoleon shut downsixty of France’s seventy-three newspapers and insisted thatall manuscripts be subjected to government scrutiny beforethey were published. Even the mail was opened by govern-ment police.

Napoleon’s EmpireWhen Napoleon became consul in 1799, France was at warwith a second European coalition of Russia, Great Britain,and Austria. Napoleon realized the need for a pause andmade a peace treaty in 1802. But war was renewed in 1803with Britain, which was soon joined by Austria, Russia, andPrussia in the Third Coalition. In a series of battles from 1805to 1807, Napoleon’s Grand Army defeated the Austrian, Prus-sian, and Russian armies, giving Napoleon the opportunity tocreate a new European order.

THE GRAND EMPIRE From 1807 to 1812, Napoleon was themaster of Europe. His Grand Empire was composed of threemajor parts: the French Empire, dependent states, and alliedstates (see Map 18.4). Dependent states were kingdoms underthe rule of Napoleon’s relatives; these came to include Spain,the Netherlands, the kingdom of Italy, the Swiss Republic,the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, and the Confederation of theRhine (a union of all German states except Austria and Prus-sia). Allied states were those defeated by Napoleon and forcedto join his struggle against Britain; these included Prussia,Austria, Russia, and Sweden.

Within his empire, Napoleon sought acceptance of certainrevolutionary principles, including legal equality, religioustoleration, and economic freedom. In the inner core and de-pendent states of his Grand Empire, Napoleon tried todestroy the old order. Nobility and clergy everywhere inthese states lost their special privileges. He decreed equalityof opportunity with offices open to talent, equality before thelaw, and religious toleration. This spread of French revolu-tionary principles was an important factor in the developmentof liberal traditions in these countries.

Napoleon hoped that his Grand Empire would last for cen-turies; it collapsed almost as rapidly as it had been formed. Aslong as Britain ruled the waves, it was not subject to militaryattack. Napoleon hoped to invade Britain, but he could notovercome the British navy’s decisive defeat of a combined

The Coronation of Napoleon. In 1804, Napoleon restored monarchy to France when he crowned himself emperor.In the coronation scene painted by Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon is shown crowning his wife, the empress Josephine,while the pope looks on. The painting shows Napoleon’s mother seated in the box in the background, even though shewas not at the ceremony.

Chateaux

deVe

rsailleset

deTriano

n,Ve

rsailles//ª

Reunionde

sMuseesNationaux/ArtRe

source,N

Y

The Age of Napoleon 535Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).


French-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar in 1805. To defeat Britain,Napoleon turned to his Continental system. An alliance putinto effect between 1806 and 1808, it attempted to preventBritish goods from reaching the European continent in orderto weaken Britain economically and destroy its capacity towage war. But the Continental system failed. Allied statesresented it; some began to cheat and others to resist.

Napoleon also encountered new sources of opposition.His conquests made the French hated oppressors and arousedthe patriotism of the conquered peoples. A Spanish uprisingagainst Napoleon’s rule, with British support, kept a Frenchforce of 200,000 pinned down for years.

THE FALL OF NAPOLEON The beginning of Napoleon’sdownfall came in 1812 with his invasion of Russia. The re-fusal of the Russians to remain in the Continental system leftNapoleon with little choice. Although aware of the risks ininvading such a huge country, he also knew that if the

Russians were allowed to challenge the Continental systemunopposed, others would soon follow suit. In June 1812, heled his Grand Army of more than 600,000 men into Russia.Napoleon’s hopes for victory depended on quickly defeatingthe Russian armies, but the Russian forces retreated andrefused to give battle, torching their own villages and coun-tryside to keep Napoleon’s army from finding food. Whenthe Russians did stop to fight at Borodino, Napoleon’s forceswon an indecisive and costly victory. When the remainingtroops of the Grand Army arrived in Moscow, they found thecity ablaze. Lacking food and supplies, Napoleon abandonedMoscow late in October and made a retreat across Russia interrible winter conditions. Only 40,000 of the original 600,000men managed to arrive back in Poland in January 1813.

This military disaster led other European states to rise upand attack the crippled French army. Paris was captured inMarch 1814, and Napoleon was sent into exile on the islandof Elba, off the coast of Italy. Meanwhile, the Bourbon

Atlant iccOcean

Bllacackk SeSeaa

NorthhSeSeaa

Meedidi teterrrrananeaeann SSea

BaB

ltic

SeSa

Ebbbbbrro

R.

Rhine R.

Po R.Danuuuuuuuubbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeebbbbbb

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR..

DDDnnniieeppppe eeerrr RR..Dniieessteeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrr

R.

R.

LeipeipipipLeipipzigggggggggggggggggggg 18131813

BoroBorodinood 1811 22

FF iFrieFrieFFrieFrieFrieFFrieFFrieF eFFrieeeeeeeeddddlanddddddlandd d 18d 18070707077Eylau 18118188181818888007

AustA terlierlir tz 1tz 1805

Auererrrrererrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreerrrstadstastaddstadstadstatstastadstaddddstadstadstadsstastaststadstaddstadssstadsttadstastadstadstadstastadstadstadst ttttt 18ttttttttttttttt 060618066JJJJeJeJJeJenaJenaJenaJJenaJJJeJJJJJ naJJJJJ 180180808080666666

Waterloo 18155

UlmUlmUlmUlmUlmUlmUlmUl 18055555555

TrafTrafTrafTrafTrafTraraTraTrafTrafTrarafrafTrafraffafrrafff llalgalgalalalgaalgaalgaalgaalglgallg r 1818r 18188181818188818181818111880505050505050500505050505050505055555TrarafTrafTrafTrafTrTraTrTrafTrTrTrr llalgllall 1818181818181881818180505050505005055050555

CorCorororrrrrsrsrrrrrrrorrrrr icaiccacacacaacaacaaacaccacccccccororororrrorrrororrrrrr cacacacaacc

SarSaraarararardardardardrdarararaaardrarrdrdr iniainiainiiniinininiaaaaain aaaaaaaaaaaarararararararararararar iaaaaaaa

CretCCC tCretCretCrettCreCretCretCretCCCCrCrCretCretCrCrCC eeeeeeCretCretCretCretCrCr tCrCrettCCrCr tC CyprCyprCyprCyprCyprCyprCyprCyprCypCyprCyprCyprCyprCCyprCyprCypCypyCC prprp uuuuususususuuuuuuuuuCCCyprCyprprppCyprCypCCyprCypyppp uuuuuuuuu

MMalMaltaa

PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPyyyyyyyyPPPPrrrrrrrreeeeerrrrrrr nnnnnnneeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssss

AAAAAAAAAAAAAlllllllllllllllpppppppppppppppppppppplll ssssssssssssssssssssss

TTTTTTTaaaaaTTTTTT uuuuuuuurrrrrrrruuuuuuuussssssss MMMMMMMMttttttM ssssss..

BBaallleearriicc IIIssIIII llaanndddssdd

Marsrsssrsrsrrrsrssrrrrr eilllleillleilleilleilleilleilleilleilleilleilleilleilleeeieileillee esesarsarssrsssrrsssrrr eilllleilleilllleilleilleilleeeile

BerlerlBBeBeBeBBBeBBBBBeBBBBBBBBeBB inin

MoscMoooo oww

SmolSmolenskeSmolenTilsTilssssssiiiiiiiiiitiitititiiiiiiiiiiii

DanzDanzanzanzanzanznznzanzanzanzzanzanznzanzznzanznznzznnzannnanna iiiiigigiggiigigigigiiiigigigianzanzanznzanzanzanzzanzzanzanzzzanzanzanannnnn igiiigigigigiigigii

KievKievKievKiev

PresPresPresPresPressreseee sbursbursbursbursbursbursbursburburb ggggggggg

ZüriZüriZüriZüriZüriZüriZüriZüriZüriZüriZüriZüriZüZZZZZZZZZZZZ cchchchchchchchchchhh

CopeCopeCopeCopeCopeCopeeeeCopeCopeCopeCopeCopeCopeCCopenhagnhagnhagnhagnhagnhagnhagnhagnhagnhahnhagnhagnhagnhagnhagnhanhagnhagnhagnhagagnn enenenenCopeCopeeCopeCCCCopeCopenhagnhagnnhagnhagagnhagnhaghnhagnhagnhagnhagagn

LondLondLondL ono

BBrusBrusBBrusrusruusussusususssssselsBBBBruBruBruBrruusruusuuss

Parisis

MMiMilaM n

GGGGGenoG aG

RoRRRoomomomomomeomeRRoomeRRoRRoomRRoRRoRoRRooRRRoRRoRo eeeElbElbaaaaaaaaaElbaaaaaaaaaaaabaaaaaaaaaaaaaMadrMadrMadrMadrMadrMadrrididididididi

Lisbononnnnnnn

VVVVVienVVVVVVVVVV na

CairoC

Warsaw

FREENCHNCHHHHNEMPEM IREREERRRIR

RUSRUSUU SIASIANNSISIEMPEMPMPMPM IREIREIRRMPMPP

AUSA TRIRIIANANANANANNANNNEMPIREIREREREEE

OTTOTTOTTOTTOTTOTTOTTOTTOTTOTTOMAOMAOMOMOMAMOMOMOM NNNN

EMPEMPEMPEMPEMPEMPMPMPMPMPIREIREIRIREIRIRIRIREIRIR

KKINKININNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGDOGDOGDGDOGDOGGDOGDOGDOGDOGDOGDGGDOGGGDOGDOGDOGDOGDOGDOGDOGDOGDGGDODDOGDODOOGD MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGDOGDOGDOGGDOGDOGDOGDOGDGDOGDGDGGDOGDOGDGDGDOGDOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMOFOFF SICSISICSISISICSICSICICCCCCSICSICSICSISISICICSICSISIIIICCILYILILYILYILYILYYYYYYYILILYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYSICSICSISICSICSSICSICSICSISSICICICC YYYYYYYYYYYYYY

KINKINKINKINKINKINNNGDGDGDGGGDGDGGDGDOGDOOGDGGDGGGDGGDDDD MMGDGDGDGDDDGDDGGDDDOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFFFFFFF NANNANANANAPNA LESLESESSESESESESEESESESESESEESESLESLESESESESLESESESEEEESOFOFOFOFOFFOFOFOFFOFOOF

KKKKKKINKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKINK NK GDDDDDODODDDDDDDDDDD MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMKKKKKINKK GDDDDDDDDDDDDDD MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMOOOOOOFOOOOOOOOOFOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

ITITITITITAITAITITITITITITTTTTTITIITTT LYLYLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYIIIIIIII YYYYYYYYYYYITITITTTITITTTTTTT YYYYYYYYYYYYYY

EGYEGYEGYPT

SPASPASPASPAINNN

POPORPOPORRTTUTUUUGUGUGUGGUGUUUGUGUGUUUGUUUUUUGGALALALALAUUUUUGUUGGGUUGUUGGUU

GREGREGREGREGREGGG ATATATATATBRIBRIBRIBRIBRIBRITAITAITAITAITAIT NNNNNNN

NONONONONONONOORORORORRNONONOORNNNNONOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONOOO WWWAWAYWAWAWAYAYWAYAYAYWAYAYAYAYWAAWAWAYWAAAAWAAAAAWAAWAAWAAAWWWWNONONONOORNONONONONOONOOOOOOOOOOOO WAYAWAYWAYWAYWAYAWAWAAWAAAWOOO W

SWESWESWESWESWEW EDEDENEN

DENDDEENENNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNMARMARMARMARAMARAAMARMARMARMARMARARMARMARMARMARMMARMARARMARMARMAMAARMARMARMARARMARMARMARMAAMAMAMARMAMAAMAMARMMARARMARARMARMARRARM KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNMMMMMMMMMMMMMM RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKMARMAAMARMARMARMARMARMARARARARMAARARMARARARAMAARMAMAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMM RRNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

SAXONY

PRPRPRPRPRPRPRUPRURURURURURURUUURURURUPRPRRUUUUPRPRPRPRPRPRRUUUURUPRRUURURRRRUUUUUPRUPRRUUUUPRP UP UURUPPPPPRP SSISSIIIIIIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARUUURURURURUUURURURUURUUURUURUUUUUU

ILLILLILLLLL YRIYRIYRIYRYRYYRYRR ANANANANNNNPPRPRPRPRPRRPRPROROPROROROPRPRPRPRPRPPRPRPRPPRPRPRPPRPRRPRRRRRRRRRR VVIVINVINVINVINVINVINCESCESCESCESCESCESCESSCES

SWIW TZEZEZEZEZEZZEEZEZEZEZEZEZEZEZZZEZZZEZEZEZEZEEEZEZEEZEZEZZEEZEEEEEEEEEEEEEERLARLARLARLARLARLARLARLARLARLARLARLALALAANDNDNDNDNDNDNDNDNDNDNNNDS DD

GRAND DUCDD HYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

OOOOOOFOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO WARSAWWWA

CCCCONCCCCCCC FEDDDDDEEREREERAERARERREEEREREREREEREEREREREEREEREEEREEREEREEEREEERRRERRR TION ON ON ON ON ON OOFFFFFFTHETHEHEH RHRHRRHHHHHHHHHHRHHHRHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHINEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEE

0000 25050500 555500000000 MilMiles

0000 250250250250 555555500000000 77777555505 KilKilKilKillomeomeomeomeomememm tertertertertertersssss

French Empire

Under French control

Allied to France

Napoleon’s route, 1812

Battle site

MAP 18.4 Napoleon’s Grand Empire. Napoleon’s Grand Army won a series of victories against Austria,Prussia, and Russia that gave the French emperor full or partial control over much of Europe by 1807.

On the Continent, what is the overall relationship between distance from France and degree ofFrench control, and how can you account for this?

ªCe

ngag

eLe

arning



monarchy was restored in the person of Louis XVIII, thecount of Provence, brother of the executed king. (Louis XVII,son of Louis XVI, had died in prison at age ten.) Napoleon,bored on Elba, slipped back into France. When troops weresent to capture him, Napoleon opened his coat and addressedthem: ‘‘Soldiers of the 5th regiment, I am your Emperor. . . .If there is a man among you would kill his Emperor, here Iam!’’ No one fired a shot. Shouting ‘‘Vive l’Empereur! Vivel’Empereur!’’ the troops went over to his side, and Napoleonentered Paris in triumph on March 20, 1815.

The powers that had defeated him pledged once more tofight him. Having decided to strike first at his enemies, Napo-leon raised yet another army and moved to attack the alliedforces stationed in what is now Belgium. At Waterloo onJune 18, Napoleon met a combined British and Prussian armyunder the duke of Wellington and suffered a bloody defeat.This time, the victorious allies exiled him to Saint Helena, asmall, forsaken island in the South Atlantic. Only Napoleon’smemory continued to haunt French political life.

CHAPTER SUMMARYIn the Scientific Revolution, theWestern world overthrew the medi-eval, Ptolemaic worldview andarrived at a new conception of theuniverse: the sun at the center, theplanets as material bodies revolvingaround the sun in elliptical orbits,and an infinite rather than finiteworld. With the changes in the con-

ception of ‘‘heaven’’ came changes in the conception of‘‘earth.’’ The work of Descartes left Europeans with the sepa-ration of mind and matter and the belief that by using onlyreason they could, in fact, understand and dominate theworld of nature.

Highly influenced by the new worldview created by theScientific Revolution, the philosophes of the eighteenth cen-tury hoped that they could create a new society by using rea-son to discover the natural laws that governed it. Theybelieved that education could create better human beings anda better human society. They attacked traditional religion asthe enemy and created the new ‘‘sciences of man’’ in econom-ics, politics, and education. Together, the Scientific Revolu-tion of the seventeenth century and the Enlightenment of theeighteenth century constituted an intellectual revolution thatlaid the foundations for a modern worldview based on ration-alism and secularism.

Everywhere in Europe at the beginning of the eighteenthcentury, the old order remained strong. Nobles, clerics,towns, and provinces all had privileges. Everywhere in theeighteenth century, monarchs sought to enlarge theirbureaucracies to raise taxes to support large standing armies.The existence of these armies led to wars on a worldwidescale. Indeed, the Seven Years’ War could be viewed as the

first world war. Although the warsresulted in few changes in Europe,British victories enabled Great Brit-ain to emerge as the world’s greatestnaval and colonial power. Mean-while, in Europe increased demandsfor taxes to support these wars led toattacks on the old order and a desirefor change not met by the rulingmonarchs. At the same time, a growing population as well aschanges in finance, trade, and industry created tensions thatundermined the foundations of the old order. Its inability todeal with these changes led to a revolutionary outburst at theend of the eighteenth century that marked the beginning ofthe end for the old order.

The revolutionary era of the late eighteenth century was atime of dramatic political transformations. Revolutionaryupheavals, beginning in NorthAmerica and continuing inFrance, spurred movements forpolitical liberty and equality. Thedocuments promulgated by theserevolutions, the Declaration of In-dependence and the Declarationof the Rights of Man and the Citi-zen, embodied the fundamental ideas of the Enlightenmentand created a liberal political agenda based on a belief in pop-ular sovereignty—the people as the source of politicalpower—and the principles of liberty and equality. Libertymeant, in theory, freedom from arbitrary power as well asthe freedom to think, write, and worship as one chose. Equal-ity meant equality in rights, although it did not include equal-ity between men and women.

Chapter Summary 537Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).


CHAPTER TIMELINE

1600 1650 1700 1750 1800 1850

Reign of Terror in France

Storming of the Bastille

Seven Years’ War

Reign of Frederick the Great

Napoleon becomes emperor

American Declaration of Independence

Work of Watteau Reform program of Joseph II

Battle of Waterloo

Rousseau, The Social Contract

Work of Isaac NewtonWork of Descartes Diderot,Encyclopedia

CHAPTER REVIEW

Upon ReflectionQ What was the impact of the intellectual revolution of theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries on European society?

Q How was France changed by the revolutionary eventsbetween 1789 and 1799, and who benefited the most fromthese changes?

Q In what ways did Napoleon’s policies reject theaccomplishments of the French Revolution? In what ways didhis policies strengthen those accomplishments?

Key TermsScientific Revolution (p. 509)geocentric theory (p. 509)heliocentric theory (p. 509)world-machine (p. 510)Cartesian dualism (p. 511)rationalism (p. 511)Enlightenment (p. 511)scientific method (p. 511)philosophes (p. 511)separation of powers (p. 512)deism (p. 513)laissez-faire (p. 515)feminism (p. 515)Rococo (p. 516)high culture (p. 517)popular culture (p. 517)cottage industry (p. 518)patrician (p. 520)rentiers (p. 520)

natural rights (p. 522)enlightened absolutism (p. 522)old order (p. 526)old regime (p. 526)nationalism (p. 531)Continental system (p. 536)

Suggested ReadingINTELLECTUAL REVOLUTION IN THE WEST Two general

surveys of the Scientific Revolution are J. R. Jacob, The Scientific Revolu-

tion: Aspirations and Achievements, 1500–1700 (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.,

1998), and J. Henry, The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern

Science, 2nd ed. (New York, 2002). Good introductions to the Enlighten-

ment can be found in U. Im Hof, The Enlightenment (Oxford, 1994), and

D. Outram, The Enlightenment, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 2005). See also

P. H. Reill and E. J. Wilson, eds., Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment,

rev. ed. (New York, 2004). On women in the eighteenth century, see

M. E. Wiesner-Hanks, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe

(Cambridge, 2000).

THE SOCIAL ORDER On the European nobility in the eighteenth

century, see J. Dewald, The European Nobility, 1400–1800, 2nd ed.

(Cambridge, 2004).

ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM AND GLOBAL CONFLICT

On enlightened absolutism, see D. Beales, Enlightenment and Reform in

Eighteenth-Century Europe (New York, 2005).

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION A well-written, up-to-date introduc-

tion to the French Revolution can be found in W. Doyle, The Oxford

History of the French Revolution, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 2003). On the entire



revolutionary and Napoleonic eras, see O. Connelly, The French Revolu-

tion and Napoleonic Era, 3rd ed. (Fort Worth, Tex., 2000). For interesting

insight into Louis XVI and French society, see T. Tackett, When the

King Took Flight (Cambridge, Mass., 2003). An important work on the

radical stage of the French Revolution is D. Andress, The Terror: The

Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France (New York, 2005).

The importance of the revolutionary wars in the radical stage of the Rev-

olution is underscored in T. C. W. Blanning, The French Revolutionary

Wars, 1787–1802 (New York, 1996).

THE AGE OF NAPOLEON The best biography of Napoleon is

S. Englund, Napoleon: A Political Life (New York, 2004). See A. I. Grab,

Napoleon and the Transformation of Europe (New York, 2003), on

Napoleon’s Grand Empire. On Napoleon’s wars, see D. A. Bell, The

First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know

It (Boston, 2007).

Go to the CourseMatewebsite atwww.cengagebrain.comfor additional study toolsand review materials—including audio and videoclips—for this chapter.

Chapter Summary 539Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).


the art archive/marc charmetalvaradohistory.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/chapter... · 2014. 1....

Documents