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The Atlantic Revolutions were the revolutionary waves that swept Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, playing a crucial role in reshaping the political history of the modern geopolitical climate. It was associated with the Atlantic world during the period between 1770s and 1870s taking place in Europe and Americas between 1775-1783, Spanish America in 1810-1825, Europe and France in 1789-1814. This paper will succinctly discuss the extent to which socialist ideas and thinking in the period between 1800 and 1914 reflected the issues that were central to the Atlantic Revolutions that have been explored by Strayer and Nelson (2016). Moreover, this paper will also discuss the ways in which socialist thinking departed from the earlier revolutionary upheavals in the Atlantic Revolutions.
The Atlantic Revolutions, which refers to the Haitian, French, Haitian, and American Revolutions were almost entirely based on the conceptions of liberalism which was individual oriented and largely focused on the freedoms of people in the state against an oppressive government (Strayer & Nelson, 2009). This was evident by the revolts that were witnessed against the monarchist systems of governments in France, Spain, and Britain. Thus, the ideas of socialism like freedom inspired the people to break free from the oppression of the state government that would therefore minimally intervene in their lives and uphold the freedoms, human rights, and civil liberties by non-interventions in the lives of their citizens. Simply put, the Atlantic Revolutions originated and were influenced by democratic revolutionary ideals of socialist thinkers who wanted to extend political rights further in the period between 1800 and 1914.
The socialist ideals of Enlightenment by revolutionary thinkers in the period between 1800 and 1914 influenced the Atlantic Revolutions. The Enlightenment idea of natural laws of socialism have been implicated mainly in the French and American Revolutions (Withers, 2017). There was an agitation by the people to establish Enlightenment ideals within their nations. These socialist ideals included rejecting imperialism, political and social equality of all women and men, titles and nobility, upholding human rights, and economic equality as seen in the American Constitution and the Declaration of Independence (Tatarchenko, 2019). Moreover, socialist ideals and thinking that reflected the Atlantic Revolutions were the belief that the Enlightenment was telling people to fight for equality, natural rights, and civil liberties where people had the right to fight for their freedom as well as challenge the authority of the governing coalition. The emphasis on universal ideals of Enlightenment that included equal justice under the law by the oppressive government and disinterested courts indicated the revolutions and sprung socialism into action with people believing that they could actually be a change in political rights, economic fortunes, and new government. Indeed, revolutionary mentalities brought by socialist thinking were hatched and still continue to flourish to the modern-day existing world, the government in virtually all nations, and the people. The demand for self-determination to adjust pre-existing authoritarian standards that underlie economic and political liberty. Thus, anarchy is sometimes avoided in the political and economic spheres where socialist ideals stress on fraternity, the law, and equal rights. All these are usually bound together in the socialist idea of constitutionalism where natural theory, economic theory, and natural law prevents liberty from disintegrating into confusion.
The Enlightenment thinkers like Montesquieu and John Locke, that heavily influenced socialist thinkers in the revolutionary era. The agitation for rights based on the principles of equality, fraternity, and liberty were based on socialist thinking of giving citizens broader freedoms of speech, participation, right to vote freely, and better economic fortunes to produce governments with separation of powers, written constitutions, courts systems, and expanded suffrage among the people (Blume, 2019). At the center of the socialist thinking in the Atlantic Revolutions were general unrests in Europe that existed in the 1780s like economic strains from technological and demographic changes, political ideas that popularized the debates on Enlightenment, frustrating reverses especially in foreign policy, the stiffening of conservative resistance, policies that limited freedom, demands for economic and social change that were advanced by democratic and liberal critics, and the influence of the American revolutions. The socialist thinking can also be drawn from ideas of John Locke who said that all men are born equal with rights of liberty, property, and life. The socialist thinking believed that the human nature was good and that the human nature was good and that without government, people would be cooperative and reasonable that could learn from experiences as well as improving themselves. For instance, Frances government and its society on the eve of the French Revolution went against what most revolutionary thinkers had in mind. In the long-term, the Atlantic Revolutions mostly succeed since they spread the ideals of republicanism and neoliberalism that stemmed from the socialist thinking, established churches, and overthrown governments. Indeed, the Atlantic Revolutions by the time were influenced by socialism had built a framework that allowed the redress of wrongs and future inclusion.
Socialist revolutionaries saw the state as a probability of being mechanisms for freedom to be ushered to the oppressed. While aristocracies and monarchies may still be oppressive, socialists believed that the state could be able to for the wellbeing of their citizens and deliver economic freedom to eliminate oppression and poverty rather than a freedom to do just what one wants to do. They saw the freedom from philosophy as greater than the freedom to philosophy of the Atlantic Revolutions since they believed that one cannot be free without daily needs like food, shelter. Therefore, the state providing these needs to everyone would make people truly free than many liberal countries. On the other hand, socialist thinking, in some ways, depart from the earlier revolutionary upheavals. The radical alteration in basic values and beliefs provided a perfect ground for revolutionary upheaval. Socialist thinking ideals proved too much for some revolutionaries with some arguing that it provided unnecessary economic burden on the people in the face of economic struggles since there was a belief that the government should provide everything to people including basic needs. Moreover, expensive nature of providing needs, big government, and the inherent dictatorship in many states made socialist thinking depart from the revolutionary upheavals (Dal Lago, 2016). While the right to poverty has and was a liberal concept of a state based on social, economic, and political freedom where the revolution led to educated middle class in America and Europe, it was not an easy thing to achieve based on the alignments of the world that was largely based on capitalism. The world faced numerous economic and political challenges that made it hard to realize the dreams of socialism in providing basic needs for all people by the government also making it difficult to get rid of class-based birth rights and partialities.
References
- Blume, K. J. (2019). Poseidon’s Curse: British Naval Impressment and Atlantic Origins of the American Revolution.
- Dal Lago, E. (2016). Imagining the British Atlantic after the American Revolution. Ed. by Michael Meranze and Saree Makdisi. Canadian Journal of History, 51(3), 686-688.
- Strayer, R. W., & Nelson, E. (2009). Ways of the World: A Brief Global History. Bedford/St. Martin’s.
- Strayer, R. W., & Nelson, E. W. (2016). Ways of the World: A Brief Global History with Sources (Volume 2, Since the Fifteenth. Bedford/St. Martins).
- Tatarchenko, K. (2019). Thinking Algorithmically: From Cold War Computer Science to the Socialist Information Culture. HIST STUD NAT SCI, 49(2), 194-225.
- Withers, C. W. (2017). Where Was the Atlantic Enlightenment?Questions of Geography. In The Atlantic Enlightenment (pp. 51-74). Routledge.
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