Advanced History

Era guide, 1750 to 1900

The age of revolutions: timeline and study guide

Between 1750 and 1900, political revolutions remade governments around the Atlantic while industry changed how people worked, traveled and fought.

Timeline of the age of revolutions

Revolutions and the nineteenth century, 1750 to 1900
  1. Seven Years’ War1756 to 1763
  2. Industrial Revolution in Britainc. 1760 to 1840
  3. American Revolution1775 to 1783
  4. French Revolution1789 to 1799
  5. Haitian Revolution1791 to 1804
  6. Napoleon in power1799 to 1815
  7. Latin American independence warsc. 1808 to 1826
  8. British Slavery Abolition Act1833
  9. German Empire proclaimed1871
  10. First Opium War1839 to 1842
  11. Revolutions of 18481848
  12. Berlin Conference1884 to 1885
  13. US Civil War1861 to 1865
  14. Meiji Restoration1868

On a small screen, swipe the timeline sideways to see all of it.

Two kinds of revolution

The historian Eric Hobsbawm described this period as shaped by a "dual revolution": the political upheavals that began in North America and France, and the Industrial Revolution that began in Britain. You don't have to accept his framework, but it is a useful way to organize the era. One set of changes was about who held power and on what basis. The other was about machines, energy and work.

The Atlantic revolutions

  • The American Revolution: the Declaration of Independence in 1776, war with Britain until 1783, and a new federal Constitution drafted in 1787.
  • The French Revolution: beginning in 1789, it abolished the monarchy, declared the rights of man and citizen, and went through a period of mass executions known as the Terror. Napoleon Bonaparte took power in 1799 and was crowned emperor in 1804.
  • The Haitian Revolution: enslaved people in the French colony of Saint-Domingue rose up in 1791. Haiti declared independence in 1804, the first state founded after a successful revolt by enslaved people.
  • Latin America: between about 1808 and 1826, most of Spain's and Portugal's American colonies won independence, led by figures such as Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín.

The Industrial Revolution

From about 1760, British manufacturing shifted toward machines, factories and coal-powered steam engines, starting with cotton textiles. Railways followed from the 1820s and 1830s. Industry spread to Belgium, the United States, Germany and later Japan. Workers moved into fast-growing cities, which brought crowded housing, new labor movements and new political ideas, including socialism.

Themes that run through the era

Nationalism. The idea that a people should have its own state helped unify Italy (as a kingdom in 1861) and Germany (as an empire in 1871), and it drove the revolutions of 1848.

Abolition. Britain abolished its slave trade in 1807 and passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. In the United States, slavery was ended by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, after the Civil War. Brazil abolished slavery in 1888.

Empire. Industrial power fed a new wave of imperial expansion. Britain fought China in the Opium Wars, and European states divided much of Africa among themselves after the Berlin Conference of 1884 to 1885. Japan, after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, industrialized quickly and became an imperial power itself.

Sources and how we know

Sources multiply in this era: newspapers, parliamentary reports, factory inspectors' findings, census data, photographs from the mid-century onward, and the writings of the enslaved and formerly enslaved. Government reports on working conditions are rich, and they were written by people with reform goals, so source them with the HIPP questions.

Practice questions

  • Compare the causes of the American and Haitian revolutions.
  • Evaluate the extent to which industrialization changed family life in Britain before 1850.
  • Explain how nationalism contributed to the unification of Germany.

Previous era: early modern. Next era: the twentieth century.