Chapter 16: Atlantic Revolutions, Global Echoes

- The 2010 Haitian earthquake devastated this already impoverished country. 

- also reawakened issues from slave-led revolution of 1804

- heavy reparations to the French had long impeded development of the country 

- Haitian Revolution was part of a wider set of upheavals

-  Haitians drew inspiration from North American and French Revolutions

-  the Haitian revolution helped to shape Latin American independence struggles

1. From the early eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century, political and social upheaval occurred in many parts of the world.
   
2. Atlantic revolutions took place in this wider framework.
   
3. But the Atlantic revolutions were distinctive. 
   1. costly wars that put strains on European states were global rather than regional 
   2. the revolutions were closely linked to one another 
   a. revolutionaries provided advice and encouragement to each other 
   b. shared a common set of ideas 

1. The North American Revolution, 1775–1787 
   1. basic facts of the American Revolution are well known
   2. a bigger question is what it changed
   3. the American Revolution was a conservative political movement 
   a. aimed to preserve colonial liberties, rather than gain new ones
   b. for most of seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the British North American colonies had 
   much local autonomy
   c. colonists regarded autonomy as their birthright
   d. few thought of breaking away from Britain before 1750 
   
   
   A. The legacies of the Atlantic revolutions are still controversial. 

   1. to some people, they opened new worlds of human potential 

   2. the revolutions also had many victims, critics, and opponents

   a. conservatives believed that societies were organisms that should evolve slowly; radical change invited disaster

   
   

   b. critics argued that revolutions were largely unnecessary

   
   

   B. Historians also struggle with the pros and cons of revolutionary movements.