Chapter 16 (Part 1)

"New ideas of liberty, equality, free trade, religious tolerance, republicanism, and human rationality were in the air." I think these ideas here were the primary reasons as to why the Atlantic Revolutions happened. The overall thrust was to extend political rights further that what had ever been seen. Some people refer to these Revolutions as the "democratic revolutions." The Atlantic Revolutions inspired efforts in many countries to abolish slavery, to extend the right to vote, to develop constitutions, and to secure equality for women. You could say that Nationalism was one of the most important ideas in of the modern era, started form the Atlantic revolutions.

 The North American Revolution
The American Revolution all started with the declaration of Independence in 1776, after they ended up with an underdog military victory in 1781, and finally generated a federal constitution in 1787, joining thirteen other colonies into one unified nation. This was the first of many disruptions that rocked the Atlantic world. One thing that is interesting is that if you take a look at why the revolution was started it wasn't out of tensions within the colonies, but rather from the British colonies trying to tighten their control over the colonies and extract more money from them. A big reason for that was because Britain was at war with the French and its treasury was drained. So they looked to America to make up for the loses. They began to impose new taxes and tariffs. It was obvious that the colonists were infuriated, which led them to go to war. What was really cool to see about all of this was that the revolution wasn't what really brought their society to they way it became but that it had already developed that way before they even went to war. All the revolution did was accelerate the already existing democratic tendencies of the colonies.

The French Revolution
One of the biggest impacts I would say the American Revolution had was to start or motivate the French Revolution. Since a lot of French soldiers had fought in the American Revolution they came back home with those ideas of revolution. As Thomas Jefferson said, France " has been awakened by our revolution."

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