4.3: The Seven Years War and North Atlantic Revolutions

Global Conflict

A major global war broke out in 1756 pitting Britain, Prussia, and Portugal against Austria, France, and Spain. The war began with fighting between Britain and France for control over the northern half of North America. Austria and Prussia, two German kingdoms went to war for control over central Europe. Austria sought support from France, with the goal of recapturing Silesia. King of Prussia, Frederick the Great, then, formed an alliance with Britain, France’s enemy. For the most part, the Spanish government viewed Britain as its main enemy due to its naval strength and the growth of the British colonies in the Americas. Portugal was brought into the conflict and allied with Britain when Spain attempted to invade its neighbor in 1762.

The war proved to a catastrophe for France and Spain. The French army was defeated in central Europe, and Britain seized its North American colonies. Similarly, Spanish naval forces were soundly defeated as well. The British captured Havana and Manila in 1761 and Spain was forced to cede Florida to Britain. The Treaty of Paris, which ended the Seven Years War, was humiliating for France. The settlement of the war saw France defeated and left England in effective control of the eastern part of North America, but Spain's American empire remained largely intact. Figure 4.3.1 shows how the Seven Year's War was very much a global war. There were major conflicts in North America, Europe, and India in addition to the conflicts between Spain and Great Britain and Spain and Portugal.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Global Map of the Seven Years War, Rice University and Open Stax, CC BY

US Independence

Some of the first places Enlightenment political ideas were tested were Britain’s thirteen North American colonies. The Seven Years War (1756-63) had been an expensive drain on Britain’s treasury and Parliament believed the American colonists ought to pay their fair share of the cost of their defense. By the end of the Seven Years War in 1763, when the British army boasted 100,000 troops, 7,000 of them were permanently stationed on American soil. Overall, the army and navy accounted for more than half of all government expenditure during the 1700s.

To pay for this military buildup, Britain instituted a number of taxes including the Sugar Act (1764), the Stamp Act (1765), the Townshend Act (1767), and the Tea Act (1773). Colonists were angered because they were unable to vote for members of Parliament and thus had no representatives to consent to this taxation on their behalf. Nevertheless, Parliament passed the Declaratory Act, which stated that it had absolute authority to impose taxes on the colonies and to regulate their affairs. Imposing new taxes on the colonists was a miscalculation by Parliament, because the merchants and the wealthy most affected by the taxes had the means and the motivation to organize a resistance movement.

Boycotts and protests by the colonists soon began, including the famous Boston Tea Party in 1773, during which enraged patriots boarded a British cargo ship and dumped tea from India into Boston harbor, rather than pay the hated new tax. As the crisis escalated, revolutionary sentiment came to a head when the first and second Continental Congresses, assemblies of elected colonial representatives, met in Philadelphia in 1774 and 1775, respectively. The Second Continental Congress adopted the powers of government as a form of resistance to British tyranny, created a Continental Army, and in 1776 approved the Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration of Independence was modeled on Enlightenment principles of sovereignty and natural rights, particularly the social contract theory of the writer and philosopher John Locke. Although support for independence was not universal among the colonists, and a substantial minority remained neutral or actively supported the British, twelve of the thirteen colonies ultimately approved the Declaration of Independence, the only abstention being New York. In the military conflict that ensued, Britain initially won most of the battles, but the Continental Army led by General George Washington eventually prevailed with the support of France. When the British surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia in 1781, Parliament decided to seek a peaceful conclusion. Some fighting continued until the fall of 1783, but peace was formally declared when representatives of the new United States and King George III of Great Britain signed the Treaty of Paris in September that year, officially ending the war.

The United States Constitution that formed the new government began with the words “We the People.” It acknowledged the Enlightenment concept that political power comes from the consent of the governed. The final document was influenced by the framers’ studies of earlier republics and by negotiations over various state constitutions that had favored the idea of three branches of government, the legislative, executive, and judicial, along with a system of checks and balances that made no one branch superior to the others.

Primary Sources: Abolition of Slavery in Pennsylvania

After declaring independence, the states of the north abolished slavery. Many saw a contradiction between the fight for liberty while still holding humans in slavery.

Discussion Questions

• Why did the leaders of Pennsylvania abolish slavey?
• Why was slavery not abolished in the US south?

SECTION 1. We conceive that it is our duty, and we rejoice that it is in our power to extend a portion of that freedom to others, which hath been extended to us..It is not for us to inquire why, in the creation of mankind, the inhabitants of the several parts of the earth were distinguished by a difference in feature or complexion. It is sufficient to know that all are the work of an Almighty Hand. We find in the distribution of the human species, that the most fertile as well as the most barren parts of the earth are inhabited by men of complexions different from ours, and from each other; from whence we may reasonably, as well as religiously, infer, that He who placed them in their various situations, hath extended equally his care and protection to all, and that it becometh not us to counteract his mercies. We esteem it a peculiar blessing granted to us, that we are enabled this day to add one more step to universal civilization, by removing as much as possible the sorrows of those who have lived in undeserved bondage, and from which, by the assumed authority of the kings of Great Britain, no effectual, legal relief could be obtained. Weaned by a long course of experience from those narrower prejudices and partialities we had imbibed, we find our hearts enlarged with kindness and benevolence towards men of all conditions and nations; and we conceive ourselves at this particular period extraordinarily called upon, by the blessings which we have received, to manifest the sincerity of our procession and to give a Substantial proof of our gratitude.

SECT. 2. And whereas the condition of those persons who have heretofore been denominated Negro and Mulatto slaves, has been attended with circumstances which not only deprived them of the common blessings that they were by nature entitled to, but has cast them into the deepest afflictions, by an unnatural separation and sale of husband and wife from each other and from their children; an injury, the greatness of which can only be conceived by supposing that we were in the same unhappy case.

Pennsylvania - An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery (1780), in the Public Domain

The French Revolution

Massive government debt stemming from the Seven Years War and French support for the independence of the United States forced King Louis XVI (1775-1793) to call the Estates-General in 1789 to raise revenue. Too many people had tax exemptions, and he needed to tax the Second Estate. By 1763, the French national debt stood at an enormous 2,200 million livres, and the government was unable to collect taxes as many of the richest people in France had tax exemptions.

Many in France saw the meeting as an opportunity to create a constitutional monarchy. In 1789, the Third Estate was dominated by educated merchants and large landowners who advocated for establishing a British-style parliament as a check on the King’s power. The commoners had enough support from sectors of the clergy and nobility to declare themselves as the National Assembly. These leaders then formed a new government and issued Declaration of the Rights of Man which claimed “Natural Law” as the basis for equal rights for all and called for liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression. Like the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution, the Assembly declared that the king did not have absolute power and asserted the rights of freedom of speech, the press, religion, and assembly.

However, the French Revolution differed from the American in that it was not a colonial independence movement, but a rejection of corporatism and absolutist rule by the people of France. The social changes attempted by the new government were much more significant than simply replacing a British ruling class with an American one as the revolution had done in the new United States. Unfortunately, the power vacuum created by the complete elimination of the prior government structure resulted in the rise of a radical Jacobin Party led by Maximillian Robespierre. By 1793, a Reign of Terror imprisoned 300,000 people and executed 40,000, including King Louis XVI and his Queen, Marie Antoinette.

Napoleon Bonaparte and the Restoration

The Reign of Terror led to a rejection of the Jacobin party and the trial and execution of Robespierre in 1794. A more conservative government, the Directory, was installed but it failed to manage an orderly transition from the old regime to a new style of republican government. The Directory’s failure created an opening for an ambitious opportunist named Napoleon Bonaparte, who as a general of the French Army had defended the Directory and the new French Republic against the neighboring monarchies, which had sent in troops to put down the Revolution. Returning from an Egyptian campaign in 1799, Napoleon overthrew the Directory and crowned himself Emperor in 1802. Napoleon also introduced a new Civil Code in 1804 that completely revamped the French legal system and is still in use today. The Code replaced France’s old corporatist legal system and provided equality under the law.

Napoleon’s empire might have lasted a bit longer, if he had not been so interested in expanding it to include not only Europe and Haiti, but Russia. In a final example of bad judgment, Napoleon invaded Russia and occupied Moscow in September 1812. Russia’s fast-moving Cossack cavalry executed a scorched-earth retreat before the advancing French army, so Napoleon’s forces arrived in Moscow hungry, only to find that the city’s quarter-million people had abandoned their homes and taken everything they could carry. The began a long retreat in early October at the beginning of what turned out to be a brutal winter. To make matters worse, Russian cavalry repeatedly cut the French supply lines, and of an original force of over 600,000 men, only about 100,000 made it back to France alive. Napoleon’s enemies invaded France and after being defeated at Waterloo Napoleon was out of power. Although the French monarchy was restored, the new King Louis XVIII adopted a constitution that created a legislature which approved of taxes. This constitution also recognized civil liberties and equality under the law.

Review Questions

• How did the Seven Years War spark upheaval?
• How did the north Atlantic Revolutions promote the ideals of the Enlightenment ?