Atlantic revolutions

Atlantic revolutions were connected political upheavals around the Atlantic world from the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries. They challenged imperial rule and inherited hierarchies while advancing competing ideas of sovereignty, rights, and citizenship.

American Revolution: The war and political break through which thirteen British colonies in North America formed the United States. Its independence helped establish a republican model that circulated across the Atlantic.
Age of Enlightenment: An intellectual movement emphasizing reason, criticism of authority, and inquiry into society and nature. Its debates supplied arguments about sovereignty, rights, and legitimate government.
George Washington: The commander of the Continental Army and first president of the United States. His leadership helped turn the American rebellion into a durable republic, despite its preservation of slavery.
Atlantic slave trade: The forced transoceanic trade that transported millions of enslaved Africans to the Americas. Its persistence made claims of liberty inseparable from struggles over slavery and abolition.
Declaration of Independence: The 1776 statement by which thirteen British colonies declared themselves independent states. Its language of equality and consent shaped later arguments for self-government and exposed exclusions.
French Revolution: The upheaval beginning in 1789 that ended France’s monarchy and reshaped its political and social order. Its declarations, wars, and abolition of feudal privileges carried revolutionary politics across Europe and the Caribbean.
Social contract: A theory that political authority derives from an agreement among people, rather than divine right alone. Revolutionaries used consent-based accounts of authority to justify replacing inherited rule.
Maximilien Robespierre: A French revolutionary politician associated with the Committee of Public Safety and the Reign of Terror. His career illustrates how republican virtue and emergency government could converge in revolutionary France.
Abolitionism: A movement to end slavery and the legal systems that sustained it. Abolitionists tested whether revolutionary principles would apply to enslaved people.
United States Constitution: The 1787 framework establishing the federal government of the United States. It institutionalized a republic while accommodating slavery and limiting participation.

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