The Glorious Revolution

1. How did the Enlightenment influence the Age of Revolutions?

            The enlightened thinkers helped the Age of Revolutions take off by making them think on how they were being treated and it told them what were the basic needs each individual person needed, if the people of said country were lacking the required terms they had the right to revolt. The Age of Revolutions was heavily influenced by the enlightenment of several geniuses. The revolutions it helped most was clearly the Glorious Revolution, the French Revolution and the American Revolution. The main enlightened thinker that affected these Revolutions was Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, they both brought new ideas to the people and to the future government leaders. The Glorious Evolution (http://gabizav.wix.com/thegloriouscause) greatly influenced off Thomas Hobbes’s ideas, when James II was thrown off power the ideas of him were passed on to be one of the post important laws, also parts of the Bill of Rights had rules that were influenced off him like “the king could not suspend or create laws without the consent of parliament”. The American Revolution was influenced by John Locke’s book and Jefferson took chunks directly from his books and used them in the Declaration of Independence simply because there was no better way to word it. Thirdly different people influenced the French revolution although they all weren’t looking for the same change, they wanted a New France. There was a lot of conflict on woman’s rights and several women were killed because of it, some of those people would be Marie Antoinette, Olympe de Gouges, Jean Rousseau and Charles Montesquieu. All of these revolutions were heavily influenced by all of these people and without their different ideas they would have never happened at the time.

 

 

2. How did the French revolution cause other revolutions?

The French Revolution was a perfect reason for many other countries to fight for independence some saw it as the perfect opportunity so they stood strong against the monarchs. Those countries would be Brazil, Haiti, and Mexico they were all under an oppressive government and they all strived for freedom. At this time Spain and Brazil had a tight leash on the Americas because they were farming their resources through the Encomienda system. Due to the harsh treatment from the Spanish and Portuguese monarchs the people revolted making three of the biggest Revolutions in Central and South America those were called The Mexican Revolution(http://nataliaswart.wix.com/mexicanrevolution), the Haitian Revolution (http://learnhaitirevolution.weebly.com), and the Brazilian Revolution (http://joshmejia2.wix.com/brazilianrevolution), the important thing about these revolutions is that it would have been harder to do if it wasn’t thanks to the French revolution.

 

3. What role did inequality play in the age of revolutions?

Inequality was a big factor in a lot of revolutions those including the French Revolution (http://frprojectwh.wix.com/thefrenchrevolution), the Mexican Revolution and the Haitian Revolution.  The French Revolution was greatly affected by inequality because women were smart and they were constantly fighting for their rights and they knew what buttons to push. Although a lot of them were killed it helped build up to the established rules that lie over France nowadays. Haiti was divided by money, there were really rich people who ruled plantations and really poor people that were paid less than minimum wage and had little rights. Thirdly alike Haiti the natives of Mexico were forced to Encomienda to work for little to no money also the Indians were not allowed to vote, they were all slaves to Spaniards. This imbalance created a major uproar in Mexico and causes the Indians and lower class people to rebel against the higher tier of Spaniards. All of these revolutions were affected by the injustices that the government was putting on the people.

 

4. Why did these revolutions take place, and why did so many of them take place during this period?

The majority of these revolutions took place because the government was treating the majority of the people without respect, unfairly, and in inhuman like conditions. And how John Locke would say “All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.” Meaning that since the government treated their people so horribly they were bound to collapse, even if you think you have them on a tight leash. Also the first revolutions had a domino effect on other countries making them realize that independence was possible they only had to try harder.