Origins of Revolutions
This 18th–19th century shift toward mechanization, factories, and urbanization transformed economies.
What is the Industrial Revolution?
This intellectual movement valued human potential, Greek/Roman classics, and the importance of individual achievement.
What is Humanism?
This 1775–1783 conflict produced a new nation based on Enlightenment ideas of liberty and self-government.
What is the American Revolution?
This term describes free people of color in Saint-Domingue who demanded more political power before the Haitian Revolution.
Who were the affranchis?
This term refers to domination of one group over another in politics, culture, or economics.
What is hegemony?
These social inequalities—where nobles and monarchs held most of the power—helped spark revolutions.
What are entrenched social and political hierarchies?
This 1517 document by Martin Luther criticized indulgences and helped launch the Protestant Reformation.
What are the Ninety-Five Theses?
The American Revolution involved this contradiction: fighting for freedom while preserving slavery and ignoring Indigenous rights.
What is the anti-colonial paradox?
This leader of the Haitian Revolution unified forces, wrote a constitution, and abolished slavery before being captured by the French.
Who is Toussaint Louverture?
The idea that people imagine themselves as belonging to a shared political community helps explain the rise of this modern identity.
What is nationalism?
This movement emphasized reason, rights, and questioning authority, helping inspire political revolutions.
What is the Enlightenment?
The invention of this machine by Gutenberg allowed ideas of the Renaissance and Reformation to spread rapidly.
What is the printing press?
This 1789 French document declared that men are “born and remain free and equal in rights.”
What is the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen?
This concept—blending cultures such as European, Indigenous, and African—shaped Latin American society and identity.
What is transculturation?
This system of government concentrates power in a single hereditary ruler such as a king or emperor.
What is an absolute monarchy?
People facing economic suffering—like enslaved laborers, peasants, and merchants—pushed for this major kind of political change.
What are political revolutions / overthrow of existing power structures?
This scientist defended heliocentrism through telescope observations, challenging Church authority.
Who is Galileo Galilei?
Ideas of natural rights and the right to overthrow unjust governments were central to this Enlightenment thinker’s influence on the Atlantic Revolutions.
Who is John Locke?
Napoleon’s invasion of this European country in 1808 helped spark independence movements across Latin America.
What is Spain?
The concept of the “other” was used by Europeans to justify inequality by portraying certain people as inferior based on supposed physical differences.
What is otherness / the concept of the “other”?
This phrase describes the combination of economic changes, new ideas about rights, and frustrations with monarchies that fueled uprisings across the Atlantic world.
What are the origins/causes of revolutions in the long nineteenth century?
This political thinker argued that government is based on the consent of the governed and that people have natural rights to life, liberty, and property.
Who is John Locke?
This massive 17th-century conflict between Catholics and Protestants reshaped Europe and strengthened sovereign nation-states.
What is the Thirty Years’ War?
This West African reformer launched a major Islamic revolution and criticized unjust rulers in works like The Foundations of Justice.
Who is Uthman dan Fodio?
This political idea states that a government’s power comes from its people, not God or monarchs—transforming ideas of nationhood.
What is sovereignty?