Download Unit 17 Ideas Shape the World

Unit 17
Ideas Shape the World
Introduction to Unit
This unit explores the creation, transmission, and adaptation of ideas—as well as the actions they inspired—in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This period was especially rich for the transmission of ideas because an
increasingly global economy facilitated the transportation of peoples and ideas across oceans and continents. As
a result of this global economy, ideas as diverse as the philosophies of the European Enlightenment and the doctrines of a new reform-minded Islam inspired social and political rebellions in many parts of the world. Indeed,
economic and social links within both the Atlantic world and the Dar al-Islam provided avenues for the easy
exchange of ideas across all parts of each region. These regions were so diverse, however, that ideas were rarely
transplanted unchanged into new cultural contexts. Even so, when opportunities presented themselves, individuals with access to new ideas sought to put them into action in a wide variety of places. Yet, because of the
process of adaptation and the diverse range of situations in which ideas were applied, the results of such action
proved to be quite different across both time and space.
Learning Objectives
· Identify the historical conditions that made it easier for ideas to spread widely and so quickly in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
· Analyze what happens to ideas when people from diverse areas interpret them differently, according to
their own cultural settings.
· Discuss the relationship between the spread of ideas and charismatic individuals. Is it the message or the
messenger that gives ideas their power to effect change?
Preparing for This Session
Read Unit 17 in the Bridging World History online text. You may also want to refer to some of the Suggested
Readings and Materials. If you feel you need more background knowledge, refer to a college-level world history
textbook on this subject (look under the index for Revolution, Haiti, United States, Enlightenment, FrancoisDomingue (L’Ouverture), Toussaint).
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Unit 17
Unit Activities
Before You Begin—45 minutes
First, students should review the key ideas of John Locke after the English Revolution of 1688. One result of the
Enlightenment was the generation of British philosopher John Locke’s political ideas. He identified three basic
rights: “life, liberty, and property.” After the Constitution of the United States was ratified in 1789, which
Americans were most likely to obtain these political rights? Next to each citizen type, rank whether those people
were most likely to assume full (F), limited (L), or no (N) political rights as a result of the American Revolution.
Please mark F, L, N by your choices.
_______working poor
_______plantation elite
_______merchants
_______loyalists (colonists loyal to the British Empire)
_______middle-lower class women
_______elite women (Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren)
_______Native Americans
_______artisans
_______farmers
_______frontiersmen
_______free blacks (men and women)
_______lawyers
_______slaves
_______Jews and other religious minorities in each state
_______indentured servants
_______musicians and artists
The right to self-government was an Enlightenment idea, but so was a distrust of the masses: Only superior, educated, rational men—not people of color, and not women—were thought capable of running governments.
Check your textbook to find out which of the people above were given full rights as outlined in the United States
Constitution and Bill of Rights. Discuss what other ideas prevented the founders of the new government from
extending rights to all people.
Watch the Video for “Unit 17: Ideas Shape the World”—
30 minutes
Activity 1: Revolutions in the Atlantic World—25 minutes
Use the primary and secondary sources below to compare the ideas and actions of Toussaint L’Ouverture in the
Caribbean and Simon Bolivar in South America. By the end of the unit, you will write an essay comparing the
extents to which the leaders of the late-eighteenth-century and early-nineteenth-century revolutions intended to
extend full civil rights to all people in their nation-states.
The ideas of the United States Constitution permeated the documents of the French Revolution that began in the
same year (1789). The revolution on the French colony of Saint Domingue also saw the application of Enlightenment ideas. Use the table on the following page, a timeline of the events of the French Revolution, to answer the
questions that follow.
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Unit Activities, cont’d.
Events of the French Revolution As It Affected Saint Domingue (later Haiti)
August 26, 1789 ..........The Declaration of the Rights of Man was passed by the National Assembly.
March 28, 1790 ............Amendment gave right of citizenship to colonists who were property owners. Free man of
color Vincent Oge tried to be seated as representative from colony of Saint Domingue. He
was refused.
August 21, 1791 ..........Slave uprising on colony of Saint Domingue: a thousand whites killed.
September 20, 1791 ..Saint Domingue Colonial Assembly recognized citizenship of free persons of color in the
colony.
September 23, 1791 ..French National Assembly revoked March amendment.
December, 1791 ..........6,000 French troops arrived on the island to suppress rebellion.
April 4, 1792 ..................French National Assembly gave free people of color full citizenship.
June 2, 1792 ..................French National Assembly appointed three-man commission to ensure enforcement of
April decree.
Sept. 18, 1792 ..............Leger Felicite Sonthonax formed alliance with free people of color against rebellious whites
and to pacify slaves.
February, 1793..............France declared war on Great Britain. British troops cut off supplies to Saint Domingue.
Louis XVI was beheaded. Touissant and his army made alliance with Spain against
Sonthonax.
June, 1793......................French commander General Galbaud betrayed Sonthonax, and he allied with the British.
Sonthonax gave freedom to 15,000 black slaves so they could join his army.
August 29,1793............Sonthonax emancipated all slaves in the colony.
May, 1794 ......................Touissant led his troops against the British.
June 4, 1794 ..................British troops commanded most of the port towns of Saint Domingue.
July 22,1795 ..................Spain ceded its half of the island to France.
April 1796 ......................Touissant gained title of lieutenant governor of the colony.
August 27, 1797 ..........Sonthonax ‘s forces were defeated by Touissant.
· In pairs, read the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. Find passages that suggest that the political and
economic rights of all people under the control of the French government WILL be protected.
· Read the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and find passages that suggest that the political and economic rights of all people under the control of the French government will NOT be protected.
How will the end of the French revolutionary government and the beginning of Napoleon’s government change
the application of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man to the colony of Saint Domingue? How did the
social and economic structure in Saint Domingue affect how the ideas of the Enlightenment were perceived and
applied during the Haitian Revolution?
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Unit Activities, cont’d.
Social and Political Structure in Saint Domingue
The white plantation owners—who comprised just six percent of the island’s population—saw themselves as an
important province of France rather than a colony. They were euphoric when the National Assembly recognized
the principle of colonial representation, and they demanded an end to French economic and commercial restrictions. The free black plantation owners, some of whom were designated as mulattoes, assumed that they would
now be treated as property owners with full protection of their civil and economic rights.
At the same time, the middle- and lower-class whites saw the revolution as a chance for their own political and
social equality with the plantation owners.
The African slaves still on plantations, or the maroons who escaped to the mountains, also desired the application
of the Declaration of the Rights of Man in order to get their freedom and be treated as equals.
Read the primary source below and determine the key issues for the French government on giving rights to the
people of color in their colonies.
Abbe Gregoire (1750-1831), a parish priest and deputy from the clergy of Lorraine, spoke in favor of minorities on
many occasions during the Revolution. He had won one of the prizes of the Academy of Metz in 1788 for his essay
urging relaxation of restrictions against the Jews in order to encourage their assimilation into the French nation,
and he favored granting them full rights of citizenship in the debates of December 1789. He also took up the
cause of the free blacks. After trying to speak on their behalf in the National Assembly and publishing the pamphlet below, he continued to raise the question in 1790 and 1791. Gregoire argued that giving rights to the free
blacks would actually help maintain the slave system (free blacks manned the militias charged with hunting fugitive slaves in the colonies). But, he also suggested that he still believed in the abolition of slavery.
The whites, having might on their side, have pronounced unjustly that a darkened skin excludes one from the
advantages of society. Priding themselves on their complexion, they have raised a wall separating them from
a class of free men that are improperly called people of color or mixed-race. They have vowed the degradation
of several thousand estimable individuals, as if all were not children of a common father ....
Four questions present themselves relative to free people of color: 1) Will they be assimilated in every way to
the whites? 2) Will they have representatives at the National Assembly? 3) What will be the number of representatives? 4) Do those who ask to fill this post have a legal commission? A preliminary examination of what
they do in our colonies will resolve these questions by informing us what they should become.
Bearing all the burdens of society more than whites, only partially sharing the advantages, being prey to contempt, often to flagrant insult, to anguish, this is the lot of the people of color, especially in St. Domingue.
One rigorous consequence of what precedes is that the rejection of the people of color threatens the state
with an unsettling shock; if on the contrary you fill in the gap that separates them from whites, if by bringing
minds closer together you cement the mutual attachment of these two classes, their reunion will create a mass
of forces that is more effective for containing the slaves, whose afflictions will no doubt be alleviated and
about whose lot it will be permitted to be touched, until that opportune moment when they can be freed ....
The people of color being equal in everything to the whites, one will surely not ask if they should be active in
legislation and send deputies to the National Assembly. Subjected to the laws and to taxation, citizens must
consent to the one and the other, without which they can refuse obedience and payment. If someone could
claim to possess to a higher degree this right that is equal for everyone, it would be without doubt those who,
having been more afflicted by long and multiple vexations, have more complaints to lodge. (Abbe BaptisteHenri Gregoire, Memoir in Favor of the People of Color or Mixed-Race of Saint Domingue [1789].)
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Unit Activities, cont’d.
Discussion Questions
· Discuss how each of the groups on Saint Domingue might react to the French Declaration of the Rights of
Man.
· Predict how the conflict on Saint Domingue might make other colonial powers or other slave-owning
societies uneasy. It is important to remember how valuable Saint Domingue was for France’s foreign trade
revenue and imports.
· Discuss how the events of one revolution led to events in the other revolution.
· Compare the goals and effects of the Haitian, French, American, and English revolutions.
Simon Bolivar:
Since it is not possible for us to select the most perfect and complete form of government, let us avoid falling
into demagogic anarchy or monocratic tyranny. These opposite extremes would only wreck us on similar reefs
of misfortune and dishonor; hence, we must seek a mean between them. I say: Do not adopt the best system
of government, but the one which is most likely to succeed. (Richard W. Slatta, Simon Bolivar’s Quest for Glory
[Texas A and M University Press, 2003].)
Look at the images of Touissant and Bolivar below and on the following page. How do their military portraits support or weaken your arguments about how much they intended to extend full civil rights to citizens under the
control of their proposed governments?
Item #3514. Anonymous, SURRENDER OF TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE (c. 1800–1900). Courtesy of Fritz Daguillard.
Item #3509. Charles Etienne Motte, SURRENDER OF MAUREPAS
(c. 1700–1800). Courtesy of Fritz Daguillard.
Item #3516. Nicolas Eustache
Maurin, TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE (1838). Courtesy of
Fritz Daguillard.
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Item #4087. Anonymous, SIMON
BOLIVAR LEADING HIS TROOPS (n.d.).
Image donated by Corbis-Bettmann.
Item #2402. Anonymous, SIMON
BOLIVAR (1890). Courtesy of The
Library of Congress.
Item #4218. Jose Gil de Castro,
SIMON BOLIVAR (1825). Courtesy
of The Library of Congress.
Activity 2: The Wahhabit Influence on the Sokoto Caliphate—
25 minutes
Use the sections below to identify the Wahhabi influence on the Sokoto caliphate. Write a thesis paragraph that
argues how the Wahhabi reformist ideas led to a revolution in West Africa.
In the Islamic world—from West Africa to Southeast Asia—Islamic revitalization movements were inspired by the
ideals of such religious clerics and activists as Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab in Arabia and Usman dan Fodio in West Africa.
The idea of revitalizing Islam or renewing Islam (“techteed” means “to make something new” in Arabic) is interpreted differently by different people. For Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab in eighteenth-century Arabia, it meant trying to
remove from Islam various practices that he thought were detracting from the worship of the one true God. Ibn
‘Abd al-Wahhab believed that Islam had fallen into a degraded state. He challenged the polytheistic beliefs and
secular practices that had begun to take hold among the Arabian people. His message attracted many followers.
Extensive education and travel shaped Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s views: He received a formal Islamic education in a literalist school of thought, which stressed adherence to every detail of Islamic law along with the omnipotence and
inscrutability of the divine being. After his formal education, he followed in the footsteps of many other Muslim
scholars, traveling to Mecca, Basrah, Baghdad, Kurdistan, Hamadhan, Isphahan, and Damascus in search of knowledge. It was 20 years before he returned home. His two decades of travel reinforced the literalist tendencies of his
early academic training. According to one scholar, he had seen the “conditions of life among the majority of
Muslim peoples and was moved to utter disgust by the laxity in worship among them.” (M.S. Zaharaddin,
“Wahhabism and Its Influence Outside Arabia,” Islamic Quarterly 23, no. 3 [Great Britain, 1979]: 147.)
Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab wrote a treatise called Book of Unity, in which he “insisted that the Qu’ran and the Prophet
were the only valid Muslim authorities, and proposed to return to the fundamental principles embodied in Muslim
scriptures. Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab had dedicated himself to the establishment of an Islamic state in which he would
be juridical advisor, or shaykh.” (Ira Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, 2nd ed. [Cambridge University Press,
2002] 572.) By 1744, his dream began to come true: By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, pilgrims
returning home from Mecca were transporting Wahhabi reformist ideals to their own parts of the world—to India,
to Indonesia ... and to West Africa. There, one of the most powerful Islamic revitalization movements was led by
the Fulani Muslim cleric Usman dan Fodio in what is today Nigeria: “It is well known in our time Islam ... is widespread among people other than the sultans. As for the sultans, they are undoubtedly unbelievers, even though
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Unit Activities, cont’d.
they may profess the religion of Islam, because they practice polytheistic rituals and turn people away from the
path of God and raise the flag of worldly kingdom above the banner of Islam.” (Alfred J. Andrea and James H.
Overfield, The Human Record: Sources of Global History, 3rd ed., vol. 2, Since 1500 [Houghton Mifflin: Boston, 1998]
229-30.) Dan Fodio’s mystical visions prompted him to challenge the ruling landlord class. His Fulani tribesmen
had suffered under their rule, and they were ready to revolt. Under Dan Fodio’s leadership, they overthrew their
oppressors and established a confederation of Islamic emirates in the early 1800s. Dan Fodio was first a cleric, and
second a political and military man. After the rebellion, he retired to a life of scholarship—delegating the governmental functions of the new empire to his brother. Their state became known as the Sokoto Caliphate and promoted the spread of Islam.
Activity 3: The Enlightenment and Gender—35 minutes
Based on the following documents, examine the impact of the Enlightenment on gender roles for European men
and women. Discuss some of the possible reasons why the European women were not automatically given the
same rights that European men gained from the Enlightenment in terms of creating more representative political
systems.
· Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. 1792.
· Leon, Pauline and others. Petition to the National Assembly. 1791. (Richard W. Bulliet, The Earth and Its
Peoples: A Global History, [New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997]: 696.)
· English Women’s Petition. 1649.
· de Gouge, Olympe. Declaration of the Rights of Women. 1791.
Activity 4: Legacies of Mary Wollstonecraft and Wahhabi
Movement—30 minutes
Compare how Mary Wollstonecraft’s writings affected later efforts to gain rights for women with the impacts of
the Wahhabi movement and the creation of the Sokoto caliphate.
In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft published her most important work: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which
called for women and men to be educated equally. She advocated a national system of co-educational day
schools where boys and girls would learn together to become active, participatory citizens. Although
Wollstonecraft’s calls for educational reform brought no immediate results during her lifetime, she inspired later
feminists across the Atlantic, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton. By the end of the nineteenth century, universal public
education for boys and girls had become the norm in both Europe and America.
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Unit 17
Homework
Read Unit 17 in the online text, Section 3, Reading 3: John K. Thornton, “‘I am the Subject of the King of Congo’:
African Political Ideology and the Haitian Revolution,” Journal of World History 4, no. 2 (Fall 1993): 181–214 and
answer the following questions.
Reading Questions
Read the following passages about Congolese political ideology summarized from the above article. Then, link the
political ideology with the fact that most of the slaves in the colony of St. Domingue were young men and recent
arrivals to the island. Many claimed they had aristocratic status in their home West African states. What effect
would the combination of their previous status, the harshness of slavery on St. Domingue, and the rebellion of
their owners against the imperial power of France have on their views toward revolution on St. Domingue? What
effect would Congolese political ideology have on the acceptance of Dessalines and then Christophe as emperors
in the early days of Haitian independence?
The Congo was a centralized political state in West Africa. In the Congo, there were two main theories of kingship:
· The king should be a ferocious conqueror. “Such kings exercised absolute power and could not be controlled by society; they could act with complete impunity, even killing people arbitrarily.” (189–190) Kings
who abused their power also were considered to be using witchcraft, which was defined by abuse of power
and selfishness. “Public greed or selfishness might be divinely punished by public disaster.” (192)
· The king should be like a blacksmith. The blacksmith king was a “conciliatory figure who resolves conflict
and is gentle, generous, and unselfish.” (191)
“Indeed, it was to political philosophy that Congo owed its late eighteenth-century participation in the slave trade.
The civil wars that punctuated most of the eighteenth century were fought at least in part to resolve constitutional issues and determine who was the king of Congo and what were his powers.” (186)
“In common with many other political systems, Congo political philosophy alternated between two opposing
concepts; an absolutist one that granted the king full powers and the right to manage all the affairs of the country
(at least in theory), and a much more limited one that required the king to rule by consent of the governed and
to make decisions only after consultation with at least some of those he governed.” (187)
“Although there were civil wars in Congo throughout the eighteenth century over the conflicting ideas about
kingship, for the most part there were larger moral ideas of political philosophy, which held that whatever powers
kings might have, they should use them in the public interests.” (191)
Optional: Visit the Web Site
Explore this topic further on the Bridging World History Web site. Browse the Archive, look up terms in the Audio
Glossary, review related units, or use the World History Traveler to examine different thematic perspectives.
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