Inspired in part by Enlightenment ideas, the French Revolution introduced mass politics, led to the creation of numerous political and social ideologies, and remained the touchstone for those advocating radical reform in subsequent decades.

Revolution,

c. 1648-1815 CE 

The French Revolution was the most formidable challenge to traditional politics and diplomacy during this period. Inspired in part by Enlightenment ideas, the revolution introduced mass politics, led to the creation of numerous political and social ideologies, and remained the touchstone for those advocating radical reform in subsequent decades. The French Revolution was part of a larger revolutionary impulse that, as a transatlantic movement, influenced revolutions in Spanish America and the Haitian slave revolt. Napoleon Bonaparte built upon the gains of the revolution and attempted to exploit the resources of the continent in the interests of France and his own dynasty. Napoleon’s revolutionary state imposed French hegemony throughout Europe, but eventually a coalition of European powers overthrew French domination and restored, as much as possible, a balance of power within the European state system. Conservative leaders also attempted to contain the danger of revolutionary or nationalistic upheavals inspired by the French Revolution.

The romantic movement of the early 19th century set the stage for later cultural perspectives by encouraging individuals to cultivate their uniqueness and to trust intuition and emotion as much as reason. Partly in reaction to the Enlightenment, romanticism affirmed the value of sensitivity, imagination, and creativity and thereby provided a climate for artistic experimentation. 
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Source: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap-european-history-course-and-exam-description.pdf

The Colonies

Objectives:
  1. Explain the causes and consequences of European maritime competition from 1648 to 1815.
  2. Explain the economic and political consequences of the rivalry between Britain and France from 1648 to 1815.
Britain and France vied for control of North America and India during the 17th and 18th centuries.
HMS Centurion captures Nuestra Señora de Covadonga during the War of Jenkin's Ear
Boston silversmith Paul Revere engraved this image of the 1770 Boston Massacre that fueled anti-British sentiment in the American colonies.
  • The expansion of European commerce accelerated the growth of a worldwide economic network.

  • Commercial rivalries influenced diplomacy and warfare among European states in the early modern era.

  • European sea powers vied for Atlantic influence throughout the 18th century.

  • Portuguese, Dutch, French, and British rivalries in Asia culminated in British domination in India and Dutch control of the East Indies.

  • Rivalry between Britain and France resulted in world wars fought both in Europe and in the colonies, with Britain supplanting France as the greatest European power.
The Colonies

The French Revolution

Objectives:
  1. Explain the causes, events, and consequences of the French Revolution.
  2. Explain how the events and developments of the French Revolution influenced political and social ideas to 1815.
July 14, the anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille in 1789, is celebrated a French national holiday.
Queen Marie Antoinette was widely despised.
Crowds took Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette prisoner during the Women's March on Versailles.
By 1793 Louis XIV was beheaded by guillotine and France had become a republic.
The violent Reign of Terror (1793–1794) only ended with the arrest and execution of the radical Jacobin leader Maximillien Robespierre, head of the Committee of Public Safety.
  • The French Revolution resulted from a combination of long-term social and political causes, as well as Enlightenment ideas, exacerbated by short-term fiscal and economic crises.

  • The first, or liberal, phase of the French Revolution established a constitutional monarchy, increased popular participation, nationalized the Catholic Church, and abolished hereditary privileges.

  • After the execution of Louis XVI, the radical Jacobin republic led by Robespierre responded to opposition at home and war abroad by instituting the Reign of Terror, fixing prices and wages, and pursuing a policy of de-Christianization.

  • Revolutionary armies, raised by mass conscription, sought to bring the changes initiated in France to the rest of Europe.
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  • Women enthusiastically participated in the early phases of the revolution; however, while there were brief improvements in the legal status of women, citizenship in the republic was soon restricted to men.

  • While many were inspired by the revolution’s emphasis on equality and human rights, others condemned its violence and disregard for traditional authority.
Théroigne de Méricourt, "one of the first Amazons of liberty," attended debates of the National Assembly at Versailles throughout the summer of 1789 dressed in men's riding clothes.
mass shootings of counter-revolutionary peasants in the Vendée region during the Reign of Terror

The Haitian Revolution

Objectives:
  1. Explain the causes, events, and consequences of the French Revolution.
  2. Explain how the events and developments of the French Revolution influenced political and social ideas to 1815.
Free Women of Color with their Children and Servants by Agostino Brunias
Following a successful slave revolt inspired by the French Revolution, Jean-Jacques Dessaline became the first Emperor of Haiti.
  • Revolutionary ideals inspired a revolt of enslaved people led by Toussaint L’Ouverture in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which became the independent nation of Haiti in 1804. 
The French and Haitian Revolutions

The Napoleonic Empire

Objectives:
  1. Explain the effects of Napoleon’s rule on European social, economic, and political life.
  2. Explain the nationalist responses to Napoleon’s rule in Europe.
Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned Emperor of the French in 1804.  For a brief while, he dominated the European continent and led the largest empire in Europe since the days of Rome.
Construction of the neoclassical-style Arc de Triomphe, seen here in the 1890s, was ordered by Napoleon I to honor those who fought and died for France in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
Napoleon Bonaparte as depicted by propagandist Jacques-Louis David
A French invasion of Britain was forestalled by Admiral Lord Nelson ​at the Battle of Trafalgar.
Francisco Goya commemorated Spanish national resistance to Napoleon's armies during the Peninsular War. 
  • As first consul and emperor, Napoleon undertook a number of enduring domestic reforms while often curtailing some rights and manipulating popular impulses behind a façade of representative institutions.

  • Napoleon’s new military tactics allowed him to exert direct or indirect control over much of the European continent, spreading the ideals of the French Revolution across Europe. Napoleon’s expanding empire created nationalist responses throughout Europe.
Louis-François Lejeune, The Battle of the Pyramids (1808)
Louis-François Lejeune, The Battle of Borodino (1822)

The Congress of Vienna

Objective: Explain how states responded to Napoleonic rule in Europe and the consequences of the response.​
Louis XVIII trying on Napoleon's boots. This British political cartoon by George Cruikshank mocks the conservative Congress System's interventions to smother liberal revolutions following the Congress of Vienna.
  • After the defeat of Napoleon by a coalition of European powers, the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815) attempted to restore the balance of power in Europe and contain the danger of revolutionary or nationalistic upheavals in the future.
Europe's conservative aristocracy met at the Congress of Vienna to restore the pre-revolutionary order and prevent further revolution.
Napoleon on Saint Helena by Franz Josef Sandmann (c. 1820​)
The Napoleonic Empire and Congress of Vienna

Romanticism

Objective: Explain how and why the Romantic Movement and religious revival challenged Enlightenment thought.
  • Rousseau questioned the exclusive reliance on reason and emphasized the role of emotions in the moral improvement of self and society.

  • Romanticism emerged as a challenge to Enlightenment rationality.

  • ​Romanticism broke with Neoclassical forms of artistic representation and with rationalism, placing more emphasis on intuition and emotion.

  • Romantic artists and composers broke from classical artistic forms to emphasize emotion, nature, individuality, intuition, the supernatural, and national histories in their works.
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  • Romantic writers expressed similar themes while responding to the Industrial Revolution and to various political revolutions. 

Painting

Literature

Architecture

Neuschwanstein Castle (1886) in Bavaria, Germany

Music

German Romantic Nationalism

The Brothers Grimm contributed to early German nationalism by writing down a collection of German fairy tales from the peasant oral tradition.
  • Napoleon’s expanding empire created nationalist responses throughout Europe.

  • Revolution, war, and rebellion demonstrated the emotional power of mass politics and nationalism.
Romanticism

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Resources:

Barron's AP Euro Flash Cards

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