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The French Revolution And The American Revolution

Decent Essays

1. At the end of eighteenth and start of nineteenth centuries, the Atlantic World was transformed by a series of revolutions on both sides of the Atlantic. What were they? How were they related? How were they the same? How were they different?

The wave that swept the nations around the Atlantic started of with the American Revolution. Just like all the other revolutions the course covered, American Revolution had multiple reasons. One was the amount of taxes imposed by the British government to the colonies. The inhabitants of the colonies had to pay taxes but not were not getting representation they thought was their birthright. They felt like they did not have equal advantages of ‘’English liberties’’. These colonists, influenced by the Enlightenment ideas, first went against the Parliament and sought the help of their King. However, when the king sent troops to restore imperial order in the colonies, their hopes as Englishmen died out, and they started to oppose to the king’s regime also.
Next up is the French Revolution. French Revolution has influenced and was influenced by the American Revolution financially. France had helped the rebelling colonists through an American-French Alliance. After the American Revolution was over, France was bankrupted because of the military aid they had sent to North America and the reconstruction of the palace Versailles as the new hub for the monarch.
The French also took the social change aspect of the revolution a step further than their American fellows. One striking trait of the nature of French Revolution that separates it from others discussed in class was that it became very violent very quickly. Unlike the American Revolution, it was not only about replacing a regime; the old system had to be wiped off the face of the earth. Rapidly, a witch hunt spread over France for anyone associated with the former king. This violence also aggravated opposition from other European countries against the National Assembly. European monarchs exemplified France as a worst case scenario.
This wasn’t the only radicalism the National Assembly demonstrated. As the American colonies were going through a period of religious freedom, French state cut its links from the Catholic

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