Revolutions, Industrialization, and Imperialism

The period when Western Europe (and later Japan and the U.S.) pulled sharply ahead economically and militarily of regions like Qing China and Mughal India that had been comparably wealthy in 1700.

That government exists by the consent of the governed and that people hold natural rights.

Separation of government powers so that no single branch could dominate.

Taxation without representation after Britain tried to pay off its war debts; it ended with an independent republic and a written constitution (1787).

France funded the American Revolution → this helped bankrupt France → fiscal crisis triggered the French Revolution (1789) → the Declaration of the Rights of Man inspired enslaved people in Saint-Domingue → the Haitian Revolution.

It was the first successful large-scale slave revolt and created the first Black republic.

Napoleon's invasion of Spain broke colonial legitimacy; leaders like Bolívar and San Martín helped create about 15 new nations.

Abundant coal near iron and navigable rivers; capital and raw materials from Atlantic trade and colonies; stable property rights, patent law, and banking; and an agricultural revolution that freed labor and fed cities.

It untethered factories from riverbanks, since they no longer needed water power for their location.

Explosive urban growth (Manchester: ~25,000 in 1772 to over 300,000 by 1850), cholera, 14-hour shifts, and child labor — but eventually rising real wages, literacy, and life expectancy, plus labor unions, factory acts, and the Communist Manifesto (1848).