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Revolutionary Changes in the Atlantic World, 1750–1850

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CHAPTER 21

Revolutionary Changes in the Atlantic World,
1750–1850
I.
Prelude to Revolution: The Eighteenth-Century Crisis
A. Colonial Wars and Fiscal Crises 1. Rivalry among the European powers intensified in the early 1600s as the Dutch Attacked Spanish and Portuguese possessions in the Americas and in Asia. In the 1600s and 1700s the British then checked Dutch commercial and colonial ambitions and went on to defeat France in the Seven Years War (1756–1763) and take over French colonial possessions in the Americas and in India. 2. The unprecedented costs of the wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries drove European governments to seek new sources of revenue at a …show more content…

Rationalist Enlightenment reformers also sparked popular opposition when they sought to replace popular festivals with rational civic rituals. 3.Spontaneous popular uprisings had revolutionary potential only when they coincided with conflicts within the elite.
The American Revolution, 1775–1800
A. Frontiers and Taxes 1.After 1763, the British government faced two problems in its North American colonies: the danger of war with the Amerindians as colonists pushed west across the Appalachians, and the need to raise more taxes from the colonists in order to pay the increasing costs of colonial administration and defense. British attempts to impose new taxes or to prevent further westward settlement provoked protests in the colonies. 2.In the Great Lakes region, British policies undermined the Amerindian economy and provoked a series of Amerindian raids on the settled areas of Pennsylvania and Virginia. The Amerindian alliance that carried out these raids was defeated within a year. Fear of more violence led the British to establish a western limit for settlement in the Proclamation of 1763 and to slow down settlement of the regions north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi in the Quebec Act of 1774. 3.The British government tried to

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