The Atlantic Revolutions were a wave of social breakthroughs taking place between the 1770s and the 1820s in the Atlantic World, empires having the access to the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic Revolutions stroke Europe as well as South and North America, mainly influencing the social life in the United States, France and French-controlled Europe, Spanish America. Smaller revolutionary acts arose in Switzerland, Brazil, and Russia. Being the strong push factor The Atlantic Revolutions gave a start to the independence movements in the New World, which began with the American Revolution in 1775–1783 and finished with gaining independence by the Spanish colonies in about 1820.
The majority of revolutions turned to be successful, they gave the development to the republicanism ideals, the aristocracy overthrow, and established churches. The ideas emphasized instead were the ideals of the Enlightenment, the epoch, which was characterised by the gratest value ever existed - the equality of all people. These revolution were the first to show that such social acts could actually work in practice. Thanks to these events revolutionary genius flourishes to the present day.2
Between the second half of the XVIII century and the beginning of the XIX century the revolutionary ideas were spread over four continents – all the working people shared the same desire. All of them wanted humanity, united in action as well as majestic and powerful liberty. These revolutions were overturning governments in the countries through all of the continents bordering the Atlantic. Revolutionaries challenged the privileges of aristocrats, clerics, and monarchs to claim their sovereignty. The whole empires were threatened by the flames of these revolutions - revolutionaries throughout the Atlantic world staked their claim to the rights of man. Two centuries before the Arab Spring, without social media or even an international postal system, revolutionaries shared ideals of liberty and equality across entire continents. 1
When speaking about the common specific features of all the Atlantic Revolutions it should be noted that:
- they were started because of the acts of an international politics;
- inter-imperial territories seeked reforms;
- empires exacerbated social, political, and ethnic inequities;
- all the social classes fought for their own reasons, which often differed from those of the elites;
-population growth was so fast, that cities and villages greatly increased in size;
- urban pursuits had a lead role in economic change;
- agriculture remained to be the means of living for most Europeans;
- clergy and nobility owned most land, which resulted for them in economic resources;
- peasants worked hard without income (just could cultivate the landlord`s land for own sake);
- nobility had principal privileges. 3
When the eighteenth century passed,everything changed: over half of the land was owned by peasants themselves, the lords traditional sources of income had been reduced, some peasants gained control of their holdings at at a price.
The revolutionary ideas were spread in Euroamerican societies across the Atlantic Ocean coast. More and more people accepted and glorified the ideals of liberty and equality in response to Enlightenment philosophy and the Atlantic Revolutions. Common working people repudiated inequality of classes and conditions and fought for liberty.
Bibliography
American Revolution: Oxford Bibliographies Online Research Guide. Oxford University Press, 2010.
Klooster, Wim. Revolutions in the Atlantic World: A Comparative History. NYU Press, 2009.
Polasky, Janet. Revolutions without Borders: The Call to Liberty in the Atlantic World.Yale University Press, 2015.
