North American Revolution
Successful rebellion conducted by the colonists of parts of North America (not Canada) against British rule (1775-1787); a conservative revolution whose success assured property rights but established republican government in place of monarchy.
Thomas Jefferson
..., Virginian, architect, author, governor, and president. Lived at Monticello. Wrote the Declaration of Independence. Second governor of Virgina. Third president of the United States. Designed the buildings of the University of Virginia.
Declaration of Independence
the document recording the proclamation of the second Continental Congress (4 July 1776) asserting the independence of the colonies from Great Britain
French Revolution
The French Revolution (1789-1815) took its first step as the French soldiers came home from America full of republican enthusiasm. Differing from the American Revolution the French Revolution had conflict within the imperial french society. Attempting to start from scratch and build the French infrastructure back up. ( Liberté, égalité, fraternité )
Louis XVI
- King of France (1774-1792). In 1789 he summoned the Estates-General, but he did not grant the reforms that were demanded and the French Revolution followed. Louis and his queen, Marie Antoinette, were executed in 1793.
National Assembly
French Revolutionary assembly (1789-1791). Called first as the Estates General, the three estates came together and demanded radical change. It passed the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789.
Robespierre
A French political leader of the eighteenth century. A Jacobin, he was one of the most radical leaders of the French Revolution. He was in charge of the government during the Reign of Terror, when thousands of persons were executed without trial. After a public reaction against his extreme policies, he was executed without trial.
Guillotine
A machine for beheading people, used as a means of execution during the French Revolution.
Estates-General
a. Louis XVI called for a meeting of the Estates General in 1789 to solve the financial crisis
b. Each of the three estates received one vote
c. First Estate- clergy less than 1 percent of population, no taxes
d. Second Estate- nobles 2% of population, no taxes
e. Third Estate- bourgeoisie, workers, peasants, 97% of population; high taxes not privileges/power
Declaration of the Rights of Man
This document rose up in the French National Assembly giving humans natural rights.
The Terror
Term used to describe the revolutionary violence in France in 1793-1794, when radicals under the leadership of Maximillien Robespierre esecuted tens of thousands of people deemed enemies of the revolution.
Napoleon Bonaparte
French head of state from 1799 until his abdication in 1814 (and again briefly in 1815); Napoleon preserved much of the French Revolution under an autocratic system and was responsible for the spread of revolutionary ideals through his conquest of much of Europe
Haitian Revolution
Hearing about the French Revolution the slaves viewed it as a personal freedom. Led by Toussaint Louverture the former slaves overcame internal resistance, outmaneuvered the foreign powers, and even defeated Napoleon when trying to reestablish French control in Haiti, meaning mountainous or rugged.
Louverture, Toussaint
First leader of the Haitian Revolution, a former slave (1743-1803) who wrote the first constitution of Haiti and served as the first governor of the newly independent state.
Spanish Revolutions
Latin American Revolutions Series of risings in the Spanish colonies of Latin America (1810-1826) that established the independence of new states from Spanish rule but that for the most part retained the privileges of the elites despite efforts at more radical social rebellion by the lower classes.
Hidalgo-Morelos Rebellion
Socially radical peasant insurrection that began in Mexico in 1810 and that was led by the priests Miguel Hidalgo and José Morelos.
Creoles
In colonial Spanish America, term used to describe someone of European descent born in the New World. Elsewhere in the Americas, the term is used to describe all nonnative peoples.
Simon Bolivar
1783-1830, Venezuelan statesman: leader of revolt of South American colonies against Spanish rule.
Jose de San Martin
South American general and statesman, born in Argentina: leader in winning independence for Argentina, Peru, and Chile; protector of Peru
Abolitionist Movement
An international movement that between approximately 1780 and 1890 succeeded in condemning slavery as morally repugnant and abolishing it in much of the world; the movement was especially prominent in Britain and the United States.
Nationalism
The focusing of citizens' loyalty on the notion that they are part of a "nation" with a unique culture, territory, and destiny; first became a prominent element of political culture in the nineteenth century
Nation-State
A state whose territory corresponds to that occupied by a particular ethnicity that has been transformed into a nationality
Zionism
A movement founded in the 1890s to promote the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Mary Wollstonecraft
British feminist of the eighteenth century who argued for women's equality with men, even in voting, in her 1792 "Vindication of the Rights of Women."
Vindication of the Rights of Women
An early publication from the English woman Mary Wollstonecraft. Wollstonecraft created an image in which the class roles of the three estates were represented by women
Feminism
Movement that claimed that women have value in society not because of an abstract notion of equality but because women have a distinctive and vital role as mothers; its exponents argued that women have the right to intervene in civil and political life because of their duty to watch over the future of their children.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Leading figure of the early women's rights movement in the United States (1815-1902)
Woman's Suffrage
the right of women to vote and historically includes the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending suffrage to women; 19th Amendment