The Enlightenment
In the late eighteenth century, many people changed their minds about what made authority legitimate. Rather than basing political authority on divine right, some advocated new ideas about how the right to rule was bestowed. Many Enlightenment thinkers wanted broader participation in government and leaders who were more responsive to their people. This led to rebellions and independence movements against existing governments and the formation of new nations around the world. No longer content to be subjects of a king, new forms of group identity were formed around concepts such as culture, religion, shared history, and race. Colonized people developed identities separate from the European societies from which they emerged.
The rise and diffusion of Enlightenment thought that questioned established traditions in all areas of life often preceded the revolutions and rebellions against existing governments.
During the previous era (1450-1750) Europeans grew more willing to challenge established authorities on matters of culture, science, and religion. Borrowing the methods of science, the new ways of understanding the world began with one’s direct observations or experience, organizing the data of that experience, and only then evaluating political and social life. In a movement known as the Enlightenment, European intellectuals applied these methods to human relationships around them. They did not hesitate to question assumptions about government and society that had gone unquestioned for centuries. Dismissing all inherited beliefs about social class and religion, they began from direct experience and asked why things had to be the way they were.
Since the middle ages, religion formed the basis of almost every aspect of life in Europe. The Church sanctioned a hierarchical class system, supported the divine right of kings, and claimed to be the supreme authority on all knowledge claims. It did so by claiming to be the custodians of divine revelations which formed the basis of all that was true and were taken without question. During the Enlightenment, thinkers doubted the church’s claim to possess a source of divinely revealed absolute truth. They instead emphasized the capacity of human reason and experience to arrive at knowledge. They despised all dogma–the belief in propositions given by authorities that are not open to being challenged or examined for one’s self–and waged war against intolerance. In this regard, the most prominent figure is the French philosopher Voltaire. After wars of religion and the intolerance Catholics and Protestants demonstrated toward each other, Voltaire sought to destroy dogma and struggle against the power of the Catholic Church in European society.
The most profound influence of the Enlightenment was in political thought. New and radical ideas emanated from philosophers that challenged accepted notions of power. The English philosopher John Locke believed that all knowledge arises through experience, a belief that implies that experience rather than birth makes individuals who they are, thus calling into question the basis for the class system of Europe. He went on to argue that every individual has inalienable rights–rights that cannot be taken away without a grievous violation of natural law. For Locke, the most fundamental inalienable rights were life, liberty, and the right to own property.
The French philosopher Rousseau argued that the relationship between a government and its people was similar to a contract. This assumes that both parties are on equal footing and either side could violate the contract. Another English philosopher named Thomas Hobbes said that the only legitimate role of a government was to protect people from each other and anything beyond that was oppressive.
The French philosopher Montesquieu also argued for a limited government. He believed the best way to limit the power of a government was to divide its most fundamental powers–the power to make laws, execute laws, and interpret laws in specific instances– into three distinct and separate locations of government. This had a strong influence on the American system of dividing government into legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government with checks and balances between them. The net effect of all these philosophers was to deny the legitimacy of a government with absolute power supported by religion rather than the general will of the people.
The philosophers of the Enlightenment used the same assumptions about knowledge as the Scientific Revolution but used methods to change how life was lived.
The philosophies of the Enlightenment influenced several important political documents that were used to challenge traditional forms of political authority and call for radical changes in society and independence from political regimes.
- The Declaration of Independence The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 is a fundamental document of the French Revolution and in the history of human rights written by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence set forth a justification for the independence of Britain’s colonies in North America by claiming the actions of the English government violated the inalienable rights of the colonists as British subjects. It evoked John Locke’s ideas of the contractual relationship between a government and its people and made the case that King George III had overstepped his legitimate political power thus giving the colonists the right to separate from England. See the text of the Declaration of Independence HERE.
- The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen The Declaration of the Rights of Man was a product of the French Revolution. It was drafted by Lafayette, who was instrumental in the American Independence movement. This document proclaims the rights of all humans, regardless of social status. It effectively tore down the rights and privileges of the feudal class system and claimed that its concept of social equality and liberty was true of all people at all times and in all places. As an abstract declaration of rights for all people, it claimed universal and abstract liberty and was a permanent gain of the French Revolution. See the text of the Declaration of the Rights of Man HERE.
- Letter From Jamaica This is another document motivated by the political ideas of the Enlightenment. Written by Simon Bolivar in 1815, it justifies Spanish America’s independence from Spain. The document outlines the grievance the colonies have against Spain and speculates about the future of Latin America. Bolivar repeats his conviction that unity, rather than a US-style confederation, is necessary for the states of northern South America. See the English translation of the text HERE.
All of these Enlightenment-inspired documents imply a radically different arrangement of society than what was practiced at the time. For most of human history, varying levels of rights and privileges were assigned to groups in society rather than to individuals. Such groups were differentiated hierarchically by caste, race, religion, ownership of land, or some other criteria, and laws were different for each of them; inequality between groups was taken as a given. Enlightenment thought explicitly contradicted these assumptions. Lifting group designations completely, at least in theory, society was viewed as a collection of individuals who deserved to be treated in a uniform fashion. This new concept of the individuality and universal rights initiated struggles to bring equality to women, dissolve feudal class systems, emancipate slaves, and expand suffrage to a wider range of people. But social reform was not without challenges. The mulattoes in Haiti who claimed equality with the creoles did not think for a moment that those same rights belonged to slaves; landowning planters fought the emancipation of serfs and other groups of coerced laborers; and in Europe, Pope Pious IX referred to universal suffrage as a “horrible plague which affected human society.”
The American Revolution
If the Enlightenment thinkers all got in a room together and said “What is the best representation of our writings, goals, and ideals?” They would surely have answered, “The American Revolution“. The first state to gain independence in the New World, the USA was built on the Enlightenment. It’s written into our Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. We the People stood up for our rights and fought a war to gain them. Locke, Montesquieu, and the boys would certainly be proud of how far their ideas have taken us. For most of you, APUSH (AP United States History) will cover this in greater detail next year. For now, you should view the American Revolution as a key part of the 1750-1900 AP World era in which colonies in the Western Hemisphere gain their independence.
Key Vocabulary Terms for American Independence
- ENLIGHTENMENT
- STAMP ACT
- TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION
- DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
- THOMAS JEFFERSON
- GEORGE WASHINGTON
- BATTLE OF SARATOGA
- BATTLE OF YORKTOWN
- CONSTITUTION
- BILL OF RIGHTS
Nationalism and Revolutions
Beginning in the eighteenth century, people around the world developed a new sense of commonality based on language, religion, social customs, and territory. These newly imagined national communities linked this identity with the borders of the state, while governments used this idea to unite diverse populations.
Since the dawn of human societies, people have been inclined to identify themselves as part of a group, whether it be a tribe or clan, Caliphate or kingdom. Enlightenment ideas, particularly those emanating from the French Revolution, created a modern way of establishing group identity. Previous identities usually centered around the leader who possessed some kind of mandate–religious or otherwise–to exercise authority over the people. Before the revolution in France, for example, people thought of themselves as subjects of the king who ruled by divine right. When they went to war, they marched for the monarch. However, after the French demoted–and then executed–their king during the Revolution, this concept of identity necessarily ended. They were no longer subjects of the king, but citizens of the nation of France. Nations are human constructs based on commonalities, usually language, ethnicity, territorial claims, religious bonds, or shared history, whether real or imagined. This cohesive force is called nationalism, and most nations seek to be politically autonomous on a specific territory (a nation-state). Thus it can be deadly to empires as it encourages different ethnic or religious groups to break away to form independent states. As a powerful force in uniting and motivating people, politicians can exploit nationalist feelings for their own objectives. At its worst, nationalism marginalizes groups of people who do not fit the ethnic or religious identity of the nation, which can lead to persecution and violence.
In order to understand how the French Revolution changed France, one must first understand the way France was under the Old Regime. Although Louis XIV had done a great deal to build a French nation, France still remained in many ways a patchwork of regions dominated by clerics and aristocrats who made up the First and Second Estates. Due in part to tax exemptions enjoyed by the privileged classes, France found itself in a major financial crisis in the late 1780s, forcing the monarchy to call a meeting of the Estates General. When the Estates General was convened in 1789, it was convened under antiquated rules that Third Estate delegates found to be offensive. The failure of the Estates General was a watershed event in the French Revolution, opening the door for changes that were far more radical than any that had been proposed by the Third Estate delegates in 1789.
After the failure of the Estates General, the National Assembly convened and began swiftly enacting liberal reforms. Following the Great Fear and the storming of the Bastille in the summer of 1789, the National Assembly passed the August 4 Decrees and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. While the Declaration of the Rights of Man was heavily influenced by the classical liberal philosophy found in the writings of Thomas Jefferson and John Locke, it was also heavily influenced by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose idea of the social contract subordinated individualism to the “general will” of the nation. When seen as a dialogue between Jefferson and Rousseau, the Declaration of the Rights of Man both articulates the goals of the liberal revolution of 1789 while also foreshadowing the radical revolution of 1792-1794.
Women and the French Revolution
While the French Revolution was not a feminist revolution, the upheaval it created had a hand in bringing about the modern feminist movement. In the 18th century, women were still barred from the public sphere and the Enlightenment did little to change this; in fact, Rousseau defended traditional views of women in his educational treatise, Emile.
The Radicalization of the French Revolution
Starting in 1791, the French Revolution began a period of radicalization, as the initial idea of a constitutional monarchy on the British model was abandoned in favor of a French Republic. The increasing influence of the Jacobin clubs led to the execution of Louis XVI and the election of the National Convention that would authorize the Reign of Terror.
The Reign of Terror
The Reign of Terror (1793-1794) was the most radical phase of the French Revolution and the most memorable in spite of its brevity. The National Convention and Robespierre presided over this short period when the blade of the guillotine severed heads on a regular basis.
The French Directory
After the Thermidorian Reaction and the fall of Robespierre, the bourgeoisie reasserted control and limited the participation of the radical Parisian mobs that had been so influential during the Reign of Terror. Executive authority was wielded by five directors, from which this period from 1794-1799 got its name.
Napoleon
In 1799, Napoleon overthrew the Directory and dominated French politics until his final overthrow and exile in 1815. Napoleon’s rule can be divided into the Consulate (1799-1804) and the French Empire (1804-1815). Some of his key political accomplishments were the Napoleonic Code, which gave France a uniform code of laws based on Roman Law, and the Concordat of 1801, which established Catholicism as the “majority religion” after a period of de-Christianization in the 1790s.
Industrial Revolution Begins
Like the Neolithic Revolution that occurred 10,000 years before it, the Industrial Revolution dramatically transformed the way humans lived their lives to a degree that is hard to exaggerate. It is not difficult to define industrialization; it is simply the use of machines to make human labor more efficient and produce things much faster. As simple as this sounds, however, it brought about such sweeping changes that it virtually transformed the world, even in areas in which industrialization did not occur. The change was so basic that it could not help but affect all areas of people’s lives in every part of the globe.
See the Crash Course video on the Industrial Revolution HERE.
The Industrial Revolution began in England in the late 18th century and spread during the 19th century to Belgium, Germany, Northern France, the United States, and Japan. Almost all areas of the world felt the effects of the Industrial Revolution because it divided the world into “have” and “have not” countries, with many of the latter being controlled by the former. England’s lead in the Industrial Revolution translated into economic prowess and political power that allowed colonization of other lands, eventually building a worldwide British Empire. See the short VIDEO here.
I. Industrialization fundamentally changed how goods were produced.
A variety of factors led to the rise of industrial production:
- Geography – Europe’s location on the Atlantic, with its numerous harbors and ports, gave it access to natural resources and markets outside its borders. Industrial production occurred at such a dramatic rate—machines require massive amounts of raw materials and produce huge quantities of products—that access to foreign resources and markets was a necessity for industrial growth.
- Natural resources – Britain had large and accessible supplies of coal and iron – two of the most important raw materials used to produce the goods for the early Industrial Revolution. Also available was water power to fuel the new machines, harbors for its merchant ships, and rivers for inland transportation. Industrial growth also depended on an abundant supply of navigable rivers and canals, especially in the early stages before the railroads came.
- Social Changes – Factories require large investments of money (capital), so a thriving bourgeois class with wealth to invest was a basis for industrialization. The hereditary wealth of the aristocracy was less relevant. In fact, societies without a solid bourgeoisie had to rely on foreign investment to industrialize (think of the British investment in Ottoman and Russian industrial development). Because factories concentrate labor in small areas, urbanization was a requirement for industrialization.
- Large agricultural surpluses – The Industrial Revolution would not have been possible without a series of improvements in agriculture first in England, then spreading to other areas. Beginning in the early1700s, wealthy landowners began to enlarge their farms through the enclosure, fencing, or hedging of large blocks of land for experiments with new techniques of farming. These scientific farmers improved crop rotation methods, which carefully controlled nutrients in the soil. The larger the farms and the better the production the fewer farmers were needed. Farmers pushed out of their jobs by enclosure either became tenant farmers or they moved to cities. Better nutrition boosted England’s population, creating the first necessary component for the Industrial Revolution: labor.
- Advanced financial practices – During the previous era, Britain had already built many of the economic practices and structures necessary for economic expansion, as well as a middle class (the bourgeoisie) that had experience with trading and manufacturing goods. Banks were well established, and they provided loans for businessmen to invest in new machinery and expand their operations.
- A cooperative government – In Western Europe, particularly Britain, governments supported the interests of the business class and developing industries (think of England’s support of the East India Company). They gave legal protection for contracts and private property, a move that took some of the risk out of investing capital. Political stability also allowed for industrial growth. Britain’s political development during this period was fairly stable, with no major internal upheavals occurring, and industrialization only occurred in earnest in the United States until after the turmoil of the Civil War. Even then, the government facilitated immigration to feed to need for industrial labor in the U.S.
The transformation of labor, power, and machines In a factory, the entire production process took place under one roof. Whereas agricultural societies worked together as families around the place they lived, industrial workers had to leave home to go to work each day. In agricultural settings, a person had to learn many different things and performed a variety of tasks year-round. In factories jobs became specialized and a worker usually did the same repetitive thing all day in front of a machine. Labor no longer revolved around the rising and setting of the sun or seasons, but was ordered by the clock. Days became organized mathematically.
The first factories emerged near rivers and streams for water power, but with the discovery of the energy stored in fossil fuels such as coal and oil, location on rivers was not as important. Coal transformed power by allowing for steam engines. During the Second Industrial revolution gas engines and electricity emerged.
Industrialization Spreads
The Industrial Revolution occurred exclusively in Britain for about 50 years, but it eventually spread to other countries in Europe, the United States, Russia, and Japan. British entrepreneurs and government officials forbade the export of machinery, manufacturing techniques, and skilled workers to other countries but the technologies spread by luring British experts with lucrative offers, and even smuggling secrets into other countries. By the mid-19th century, industrialization had spread to France, Germany, Belgium, and the United States.
The earliest center of industrial production in continental Europe was Belgium, where coal, iron, textile, glass, and armaments production flourished. By 1830 French firms had employed many skilled British workers to help establish the textile industry, and railroad lines began to appear across Western Europe. Germany was a little later in developing industry, mainly because no centralized government existed there yet. After German political unification in 1871, the new empire soon rivaled England in terms of industrial production. Industrialization in the United States was delayed until the country had enough laborers and money to invest in the business. Both came from Europe, where overpopulation and political revolutions sent immigrants to the United States to seek their fortunes. The American Civil War (1861-1865) delayed further immigration until the 1870s. The United States had abundant natural resources; land, water, coal, and iron ore; and after the great wave of immigration from Europe and Asia in the late 19th century; it also had labor. During the late 1800s, industrialization spread to Russia and Japan, in both cases by government initiatives.
Technologies of the Industrial Age
The first factories emerged near rivers and streams for water power, but with the discovery of the energy stored in fossil fuels such as coal and oil, location on rivers was not as important. Coal transformed power by allowing for steam engines. During the Second Industrial revolution gas engines and electricity emerged.
The earliest transformation of the Industrial Revolution was Britain’s textile industry. In 1750 Britain already exported wool, linen, and cotton cloth, and the profits of cloth merchants were boosted by speeding up the process by which spinners and weavers made cloth. One invention led to another since none were useful if any part of the process was slower than the others. Some key inventions were:
- The flying shuttle – John Kay’s invention carried threads of yarn back and forth when the weaver pulled a handle, greatly increasing the weavers’ productivity.
- The spinning jenny – James Hargreaves’ invention allowed one spinner to work eight threads at a time, increasing the output of spinners, and allowing them to keep up with the weavers. Hargreaves named the machine for his daughter.
- The water frame – Richard Arkwright’s invention replaced the hand-driven spinning jenny with one powered by water power, increasing spinning productivity even more.
- The spinning mule – In 1779, Samuel Crompton combined features of the spinning jenny and the water frame to produce the spinning mule. It made thread that was stronger, finer, and more consistent than that made by earlier machines. He followed this invention with the power loom that sped up the weaving process to match the new spinners.
The Impact of the Industrial Revolution
As Industrial Revolution progressed, it had a massive impact on almost every aspect of society. In many ways, it improved society and made people’s lives easier. However, it also had negative impacts in many areas as well. Here are some of the more lasting and influential effects that industrialization had on society.
During the early Industrial Revolution, working conditions were usually terrible and sometimes tragic. Most factory employees worked 10 to 14 hours a day, six days a week, with no time off. Each industry had safety hazards that led to regular accidents on the job. As the era progressed, conditions became somewhat safer. However, it would take time for workers to unionize and demand safer conditions before things improved.
Working in new industrial cities had an effect on people’s lives outside of the factories as well. Urbanization was the greatest change to an industrialized society. Cities expanded enormously as workers left their farms and migrated from rural areas to the city in search of jobs. In pre-industrial society, over 80% of people lived in rural areas. By the early 1900s, a majority of people in England and America lived in cities.
The densely packed and poorly constructed working-class tenements in cities contributed to the fast spread of disease. Neighborhoods were filthy, unplanned, and with crisscrossed muddy roads. Tenement apartments were built touching each other, leaving no room for ventilation. These often lacked toilets and sewage systems, and as a result, drinking sources were frequently contaminated with disease. Cholera, tuberculosis, typhus, typhoid, and influenza ravaged new industrial towns, especially in poor working-class neighborhoods.
For skilled workers, their quality of life decreased during the early Industrial Revolution. Machines replaced the skills that weavers were previously paid well for. However, eventually, the middle class would grow as factories expanded and allowed for managers and higher wages for workers.
Gradually, a middle class did emerge in industrial cities toward the end of the 19th century. Until then, there had been only two major classes in society: aristocrats born into their lives of wealth and privilege, and low-income working-class commoners. New urban industries eventually required more “white collar” jobs, such as business people, shopkeepers, bank clerks, insurance agents, merchants, accountants, managers, doctors, lawyers, and teachers.
Despite strong pushback from management and business owners, labor unions developed among workers. These unions used strikes, boycotts, and collective bargaining to win higher wages, shorter workdays, and other concessions that made their jobs more tolerable.
Laws were passed to end the abuses of child labor. With children in more densely packed cities, the first public school systems developed, greatly increasing the education level in society.
Women entered the workforce in textile mills and coal mines in large numbers, despite being paid less than men. Women began to organize and protest for more equality in society, most importantly for the right to vote. In the early 1900s, women finally won greater rights, including suffrage. Today, the feminist movement continues as women fight for equal pay and equal rights.
