Atlantic Revolutions led to the Domination of Africa

1945 Words4 Pages

Before one can define the impact of the three Atlantic Revolutions on Africa, one must look back to the prior decade before the American Revolution and discuss what led to it. History provides significant indicators that future wars and oppression of a vulnerable people often lead to nationalism and democracy in the 19th Century and beyond. Through European monarchs would lose much of its territories throughout the world, starting in the 18th Century. England would control the world’s gateways to trade, which would in turn led her to a dominate and peaceful Victorian age. One must study the seeds of the Revolution of 1763, The American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Haitian Revolution to properly answer their impact.

The year 1763 A.D. brought an end to the tumultuous World War between great European monarchs. The aftermath of this seven year war became the dominate theme of 1763. A world war is “a war engaged in by all or most of the principal nations of the world.” (Merriam-Webster, 2006). The seven year war involved Great Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal of Europe, which were the dominant world powers over land and sea. The conflict between neighbors would spread all over the world to four of the five remaining inhabited continents.

Many other governments joined this global conflict to include Prussia, Russia, Austria, Sweden, Saxony, Hanover, Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel Iroquois Confederacy, Hesse-Kassel, Schaumburg-Lippe, and Bengal Subah. This lengthy list of participants does not include the indigenous population of the Americas or the colonist who were well on their way “to form a more perfect union.” The birth of a new nation is at hand in 1763 while the Crown crafts legislative scrolls to control its rebe...

... middle of paper ...

...ation in Africa was just another form of absolutism and the indication from world history, especially the Atlantic Revolutions should have warned them that blacks would rise and possess their freedom on the continent of Africa. The revolutions of the West freed only blacks outside the continent of Africa. Africa was put in a physical vice under white rule up until the 1990s. The end of Apartheid is not the end of the march for freedom. Africa still needs to be freed economically, that she may control her own destiny, as well as cultivate her own future.

Works Cited

Adhikari, M. (2009). Burdened by Race. Cape Town: UCT Press.

Calloway, C. G. (2006). The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Merriam-Webster. (2006). Merriam-Webster's Dictionary and Thesaurus. Springfield: Merriam-Webster Incorporated.

Open Document