Major Atlantic Revolutions: Causes, Key Events, and Nationalism

all right get your party pants on y'all cuz it's time to talk about revolutions and we ain't got no time to waste so if

you're ready to get them brain cows milks let's get to it now before we get Coy with the major revolutions you need

to know we need to explore the three main factors that got everyone whipped up into a revolutionary fervor and the

first cause and maybe the most important was the rise of nationalism which describes a sense of commonality among a

People based on a shared language religion social customs and it's often linked with a desire for territory this

was a new development during this period like for most of human history as you've seen in previous units large states

incorpor ated many diverse peoples within their borders like the Ottoman Empire or the Mongol Empire or you know

insert Empire name here none of those Empires were associated with a singular people that shared an ethnicity or a

language or whatever however during this period the notion that a people who shared a culture and a history and

ethnicity ought to dwell in their own territory and Rule themselves was becoming increasingly strong oh and by

the way if you want no guides to follow along with this video in all my videos check that link below anyway some states

actually try to use this growing nationalistic fervor to their advantage in order to foster a sense of unity

among their and they did this by injecting nationalist themes into their schools and emphasizing public rituals

that glorify the nation and its culture and by pushing people into military service for example Russian leaders

required the Russian language to be spoken throughout their territorial Holdings in order to create a sense of

unity among the various ethnicities under the authority of the state however that attempt at nationalistic Unity

through language backfired in places like Ukraine and Poland and Finland each Place had their own languages that

identified them as a people on the imposition of Russian only created a more powerful counter nationalism

against Russian Authority in those places so you know nationalism fail okay now the second cause of revolutions was

a widespread discontent with monarchist and Imperial rule I mean it's a general rule of history that ain't nobody likes

getting squashed under the thumb of Big Daddy government although we're going to focus in this video on the major

Atlantic revolutions it's going to be important to know that these revolutions took place in the context of a much more

generalized rejection of authority across the world for example the safit Empire tried to impose harsh new taxes

and was met with Rebellion from various militaristic nomadic groups on the edges of the Empire and that resistance led to

the the weakening of the safid state so much that in the early 18th century outside Invaders officially put an end

to the safh or you had the wahhabi movement which thought to reform the corrupted form of Islam endemic in the

Ottoman Empire and that combined with plenty of other problems contributed to the long decline of the Ottoman and the

third cause of Revolution was the development of new ideologies and systems of government recall from the

last video that Enlightenment thinkers like lock and rouso and monu whipped their thinky thinky Parts into a fury

and conceived of a new kind of governmental structure at the center of all of it was the concept of popular

sovereignty which argued that the power to govern was in the hands of the people themselves and that naturally meant that

government should be characterized by democracy since in order to exercise that power people must have the right to

vote and influence the policies of the government then came the idea of liberalism which was an economic and

political ideology that emphasized the protection of civil rights the necessity of a representative government the

protection of private property and economic freedom okay now you got the causes down so let's get to know the

major Atlantic revolutions themselves all of which were inspired by democratic ideal first is the American Revolution

which began in 177 6 and the short story goes like this the British had established 13 colonies in North America

on the Atlantic coast and because Britain was so far removed from these colonies by this giant honking ocean

right here those colonies pretty much developed a culture a system of government and an economic framework

without interference from Big Mama Britain but after the 7 years war part of which was fought on the North

American continent Britain's War debts were uh substantial and that's when Britain decided to clamp down on those

colonies and get them to help pay for that war with a flurry of new taxes it's all because of the stiff imposition of

new taxes the curtailment of various freedoms that the had previously enjoyed and a widespread adoption of

Enlightenment principles of government the American Revolution began those Enlightenment principles are on full

display in the Declaration of Independence which is positively overflowing with ideas of popular

sovereignty natural rights and the social contract anyway with substantial help from France the Americans won the

war and the United States was born in 1783 this victory was a real big deal because it provided the template for

other nations throughout the world for a successful overthrow of oppressive power and the establishment of a republican

style government okay the second revolution to know is was the French Revolution which began in 1789 now

remember that France played a big part in the American Revolution and as French soldiers returned home from war many of

them were inflamed with ideals of democracy and started looking at their own Stupid absolutist King with

suspicion and so when Louis the 16th attempted to tighten his control over France in order to pay his own enormous

War debts the people of France rebelled and went ahead and overthrew the government and established a republic

and Enlightenment principles likewise undergirded the main document of this revolution namely the Declaration of the

rights of man and citizen which elegantly championed the ideas of natural rights and popular sovereignty

and then the third Revolution to know is the Haitian revolution which began in 1791 now here's where I tell you that

Haiti was the colonial property of France and it happened to be the most prosperous colony in the whole dang

world and so when the Island's majority enslaved black population heard about French revolutionaries calling for

Liberty and equality they were like uh yeah that sounds kind of nice and so under the leadership of tant latur the

enslaved Haitians revolted and eventually defeated the French establishing the second Republic in the

Western Hemisphere after the United States and the first black government in this region and the fourth Revolution

you need to know is actually many revolutions but we'll combine them under the heading of Latin American

Revolutions so Spanish and Portuguese colonies throughout Central and South America were similarly influenced by

Enlightenment ideas and began to resent the increasing control their Imperial parents were exerting upon them huh we

sense in a theme here anyway this resentment was especially present in the Creole class which was made up of those

who were of European Heritage but were born in the Americans and on the racial hierarchy in the Americas that put them

in the second position below the peninsulares who were European also but were born so the Crees were kind of like

the Kirkland's brand of colonial Authority and they were none too happy about Peninsular getting most of the

political power and so in 1808 Napoleon's invasion of Spain and deposition of the Portuguese Monarch

created an unstable political situation in the American colonies and that created the occasion for the revolution

in Latin America and so Creole military leaders like Simone Bolivar appealed to Colonial subjects AC cross racial lines

with Enlightenment ideals which he summarized in his letter from Jamaica and that document just like the other

revolutionary documents we've considered contained appeals to popular sovereignty and the right to self-rule rule among

the various Spanish colonies and so through a series of long and protracted Wars one Latin American colony after

another won its independence and many of them formed Republican governments in its weight okay now let's finish by

talking about a couple other nationalist movements during this period and what happened as a result and here you just

need to understand that while nationalism was a prime factor in the full-blown revolutions we just talked

about there were also many other nationalist movements that resulted not in Revolution but for calls for a higher

degree of self-rule in some cases and National unification in other cases so first let's talk about the propaganda

movement in the Philippines this was also a Spanish colony and they imposed a similar racial hierarchy here as they

did in their American colonies I mean you can't say they weren't consistent anyway the Spanish tightly controlled

opportunities for education in this colony and that meant that many of the wealthier Creoles and mesos traveled to

Europe for a university education and when they got there Europe was a wash in Nationalist and Enlightenment ideas and

some of those Filipino students absorbed those ideas and brought them right on home and so they started publishing

these ideas like mad and even though they weren't calling for independence from Spain the Spanish authorities knew

where that kind of thinking could lead and so they sought to suppress the movement and as a result the Philippine

Revolution broke out at the end of the century and then second nationalism played a major role in the unification

of Italy and Germany so before and during this period both Italy and Germany were made up of dozens of

fragmented States but under the influence of nationalism military leaders from both Nations inspired their

respective populations to come together and unify each place under a single government and so through a combination

of diplomacy and DEA military tactics this nationalist fervor resulted in the unification of these fragmented regions

Okay click here to keep reviewing for unit 5 and click here if you want to grab my video note guides which are

great for students who hate reading their textbook but still want to get the content of this course firmly crammed

into their brain fold and I appreciate you hanging out and I'll catch you on the flip-flop himler out