World history concepts · AP World History: Modern
Atlantic revolutions
Atlantic revolutions: The revolutions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in North America, France, Haiti and Latin America, inspired by Enlightenment ideas.
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What it means
These revolutions challenged monarchy, colonial rule and in some cases slavery, drawing on ideas of natural rights and popular sovereignty. The Haitian Revolution, beginning in 1791, created the first independent state founded by formerly enslaved people.
The revolutions influenced one another and spread ideas of liberty and nationalism across the Atlantic world.
Example
Simón Bolívar led independence movements in several South American countries in the early nineteenth century.
On the exam
The Atlantic revolutions are a Unit 5 topic and a common comparison or causation essay subject.
Lessons and practice questions
Related terms
- NationalismA sense of shared identity and loyalty to a nation, often based on common language, culture or history, and the belief that the nation should govern itself.
- Atlantic slave tradeThe forced transport of millions of enslaved Africans to the Americas from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.