Loading
Unit 5
10–15% of examThis unit covers the rivalry for trade and empire that made Britain Europe's leading power, and the debt and anger that brought on the French Revolution. You'll follow the Revolution from 1789 through the Terror, Napoleon's empire and his defeat, then see how the Congress of Vienna tried to restore order and how Romantic artists pushed back against pure reason.
Longer videos that cover the whole unit. Good for a first pass or a final review.
In the 1700s, European states competed hard for land, trade and colonies, and the cost of their wars piled up debt. At the same time, Enlightenment ideas about rights and the consent of the governed made people question the old order of kings, nobles and church.
Key terms
An Atlantic economy linked Europe, Africa and the Americas: enslaved Africans were forced to work on plantations growing sugar, tobacco and cotton, and those goods fed a European appetite for new consumer products like sugar, coffee and tea. In Asia, rival trading companies competed until Britain began to dominate India after the Battle of Plassey (1757) and the Dutch controlled the East Indies (today's Indonesia).
Key terms
Britain beat France in the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), taking Canada and pushing French influence in India aside, thanks to its strong navy and its ability to borrow money cheaply through Parliament and the Bank of England. Britain lost its 13 American colonies in the American Revolution, but France's spending to help the Americans worsened its own debt crisis.
Key terms
Facing bankruptcy, Louis XVI called the Estates-General in 1789. The Third Estate declared itself the National Assembly and swore the Tennis Court Oath, Parisians stormed the Bastille, and the moderate first phase ended noble privileges, issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, put the Catholic Church under state control and made France a constitutional monarchy. War, fear of enemies and radical Jacobin leaders then brought a republic, the king's execution in 1793, a mass draft (the levée en masse) and the Reign of Terror under Robespierre, before the more moderate Directory took over in 1795.
Key terms
The Revolution's language of rights spread well beyond France. In the French colony of Saint-Domingue, enslaved people rose up in 1791; led at first by Toussaint Louverture, they won independence as Haiti in 1804. Olympe de Gouges and Mary Wollstonecraft argued that women deserved rights too, while Edmund Burke warned that tearing down old institutions led to chaos, which became a founding text of conservatism.
Key terms
Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in 1799 and crowned himself emperor in 1804. His Napoleonic Code made men equal before the law and protected property, but limited women's rights, and his Concordat of 1801 made peace with the Catholic Church. He conquered much of Europe, but Britain's navy, the Continental System's failure, the war in Spain, the disastrous 1812 invasion of Russia and rising nationalism in conquered lands led to his defeat, finally at Waterloo in 1815.
Key terms
In 1814–1815 the great powers, led by Austria's Metternich, redrew Europe's map after Napoleon. They restored "legitimate" monarchs such as the Bourbons in France, built up states around France to contain it, and aimed for a balance of power so no single country could dominate. Their agreement to meet and keep order became the Concert of Europe.
Key terms
Romanticism pushed back against the Enlightenment's focus on reason, valuing emotion, imagination, nature and the past, as Rousseau had already done. Writers like Wordsworth and Goethe, painters like Caspar David Friedrich, and the Brothers Grimm, who collected German folk tales, celebrated feeling and national traditions, which helped fuel nationalism, and religious revivals like John Wesley's Methodism stressed personal, heartfelt faith.
Key terms
This wrap-up topic asks you to weigh what changed and what stayed the same from 1648 to 1815. Monarchy, noble privilege, serfdom in the east and balance-of-power diplomacy lasted, and the Congress of Vienna even brought back old kings, while revolutions spread new ideas of citizenship, written constitutions and nationalism.
Key terms