World history 2 per. 3
12/5/14
The Enlightenment influenced many revolutionary events in both France and South America. During the Enlightenment around the 1700s, the world went into an age of democratic revolutions. These democratic revolutions, wanted to put power in the hands of the people, no mater who they were. France was the strongest, richest power in Europe, and it was also its cultural leader. The king of France was Louis XVI on the eve of France's revolution, in 1789. At the time, France was in deep debt, spending tones of money, and many people became angry about this. France was a modernizing country with a growing middle class, who stood up, and razed this issue. The National Assembly then held a private meeting in which they took an oath to never disband until France has a constitution, and at that moment, a revolution began. This revolution slowly was going towards democracy, but at the same time, this created a time of violence and death. Later into the revolution the National Assembly created a Declaration of the Rights of Man, which gave all people with land and some money rights. Near the end of the revolution the people of France stormed into the palace, capturing the royal family, and due to humiliation and the fall of the Bastille the royal rule ended, although the king didn't step down. The deputies then could write a constitution. In doing this many things happened, they confiscated the land of the Catholic Church, they ended slavery in the new world colonies, every French man could vote, and finally they had a constitution. They later found Louis XVI and the queen, and so they brought them back to Paris, and they decapitated Louis XVI and then later his queen. In 1793 the Reign of Terror began, which was when the revolution peaked. Many nations waged war on France, wanting to put a king on their throne, and in 1794 people had experienced to much terror, so they killed Robespierre, which stopped everything. The Revolution was near the end and moderates took charge, writing a new constitution that preserved the republic, but with no king, but instead putting the power in the hands of wealthy men. The next wars that followed ended France's Revolution, and spread revolutions on to the rest of Europe. Later a young general named Napoleon Bonaparte basically became a dictator of France, but in the end with a lot of backward steps, France became a democratic government.
In the 1500s lots of land in South America, and some parts of southern North America fell to Spanish conquerors. In the New World the "Creoles", or the white men that were born in Spain's new world, and they became very excited about the news of all the revolutions that had happened in France and North America. So they and others decided that they would try to start a revolution and gain their independence. After a lot of fighting due to the revolution a man by the name of Morelos came along. He wanted not democracy, but instead a mix of democracy and socialism, but this wouldn't happen until a century later, due to his death. A few years later, Mexico was freed for Spanish rule, but their independence came through "clinical opportunism, and not because of popular democratic movement. Simón Bolívar was a man born into wealth in Venezuela, at the northern end of South America. In 1819, when Spanish troops still help a majority of Venezuela, Bolívar formed a plan to free Colombia. In winning the people made him the president of Columbia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. While Bolívar "Liberated" northern South America, General José de San Martín did the same for the south. San Martín then took the next big task of liberation, and that was the conquest of Peru. But this was also a problem, because San Martín didn't believe in representative government, instead he believed that Peru required a king, and he believed to be that king. But the Creoles disagreed, and so did his friends, so they abandoned him. Bolívar and San Martín were two very different people, and Bolívar didn't want to help San Martín take Peru; he wanted all of the glory, and wanted nothing to do with the General. Later San Martín died in Europe where he fled, after being disappointed. With his path to glory cleared, Bolívar went to Lima, Where he got prepared to take his glory. He and his men won two major battles, after which the Spanish governor surrendered, but he didn't stop there, Bolívar's forces then went on to beat another spanish army, in the last South American, which was in the center of the continent. This area was later named Bolivia, in honer of the Liberator. But Bolívar's triumphs soon came to an end, when he eurged the former colonies to unite and form a single nation, but only four of them agreed, and eventually let the plan die. After his idea, the nations in which he had freed from Spain made war on each other. Bolívar later died to to his health. Democracy didn't take place in Spanish America for the next century and a half. Later ranchers, miners, businessmen and generals ran the former colonies by them selfs, to suit their own needs. Democracy only took root in much of Spanish America, in the last half of the twentieth century. But since the 1700s, democracy has slowly spread across the world.
This is a painting of the French Revolution
This is a panting of Simón Bolívar
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