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During 1750-1900, people from around the world challenged established government structures, and this led to a great deal of political, economic, and social change. For many of the following Revolutions, Enlightenment ideas directly influenced their advent!
Jan 18, 2024 · Nationalism, particularly between 1750 and 1900, is a concept marked by a strong sense of identity and loyalty to one’s nation or ethnic group. During this period, it became a significant force in shaping political and social movements. It often arose from shared cultural or historical connections among a people.
Definition: Hoped to establish a scheme of politics and discover principles that would foster political liberty in a prosperous and stable state Significance: Believed in changing the way the government was set up.
- Overview
- First read: preview and skimming for gist
- Second read: key ideas and understanding content
- Third read: evaluating and corroborating
- Sovereignty
- Introduction
- Sovereignty and liberal ideals
- Sovereignty for whom?
- Women, workers, and children
- Citizenship and the modern subject
A dictionary definition isn’t much help when trying to grasp the important concept of sovereignty. But understanding how radically it changed people’s personal and political lives is a good start.
The article below uses “Three Close Reads”. If you want to learn more about this strategy, click here.
Before you read the article, you should skim it first. The skim should be very quick and give you the gist (general idea) of what the article is about. You should be looking at the title, author, headings, pictures, and opening sentences of paragraphs for the gist.
Now that you’ve skimmed the article, you should preview the questions you will be answering. These questions will help you get a better understanding of the concepts and arguments that are presented in the article. Keep in mind that when you read the article, it is a good idea to write down any vocab you see in the article that is unfamiliar to you.
By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:
1.What is a citizen, and how is the idea of popular sovereignty important to creating citizens?
2.Thomas Hobbes was an important thinker from this period who wrote a book called Leviathan about popular sovereignty. How does the image from Leviathan express that idea?
3.The author argues that sovereignty left people out. What are examples she gives?
4.Beyond just being left out, the author argues that sovereignty for some actually meant that others could lose rights. How does she make this argument?
Finally, here are some questions that will help you focus on why this article matters and how it connects to other content you’ve studied.
At the end of the third read, you should be able to respond to these questions:
1.To what extent does this article explain the causes and effects of the various revolutions in the period from 1750 to 1900?
2.How do you think the idea of sovereignty might be used to support “revolutionary” causes in this period?
By Eman M. Elshaikh
A dictionary definition isn’t much help when trying to grasp the important concept of sovereignty. But understanding how radically it changed people’s personal and political lives is a good start.
In the wake of the Enlightenment, many societies around the world pursued sovereignty—the right and the power of a person or a nation to govern themselves. Sovereignty is a broad term that influences many modern concepts such as identity, individuality, and rationality (the use of reason). These ideas developed together during the long nineteenth c...
The long nineteenth century saw many changes including growing distrust in the authority of monarchs and religious institutions, and more interest in individualism, freedom, and rationality. These liberal political ideals (goals for perfection) generally placed a lot of importance on the people as a source of political power. One expression of this was the concept of popular sovereignty, the belief that a state’s power comes from the consent of the people. According to these ideas, a government is only legitimate if it represents the needs and ideas of the people who are governed.
In an absolute monarchy, sovereignty is in the hands of the king or queen. In other words, the state is whatever the monarch says it is. Popular sovereignty, on the other hand, views the state as a political organization that makes possible the ruling of a specific territory. The people within this type of state are usually not passive as subjects, but rather are citizens, with actual political rights. Rather than passively obeying the ruler, citizens could take an active role in the political process. This meant that popular sovereignty also encouraged the recognition of the individual and individual rights.
We must not confuse sovereignty with equality or civil rights. Although citizens had rights, that didn’t necessarily mean that all citizens had the same rights in practice, or that everyone in a society could be considered a citizen. So, who got left out? A person’s ability to participate in government—and to govern themselves—was often dependent on their class, race, and gender. Typically, in Europe and European colonies, only white land-owning males were truly independent. The conquered people of the colonies didn’t become citizens. Similarly, enslaved people, working-class people, and women weren’t given the same kinds of rights. In other words, personal sovereignty and autonomy were luxuries offered to a very small segment of society.
In fact, in many ways, the achievement of sovereignty for some resulted in the loss freedom for others. For example, in several sovereign democracies like the United States, slavery was still legal, thriving, and important to the economy. Need a powerful example of how sovereignty does not mean equality? Just look at the American Three-Fifths Compromise of 1787. In this agreement, each enslaved person was counted as three-fifths of a full citizen for the purposes of determining representation (the right to vote) and taxation. In this case, the inclusion of enslaved people was seen as compatible with popular sovereignty for other people, but... three-fifths? Slavery is already fundamentally dehumanizing, but to have your humanity mathematically downgraded is one of history’s most literal and glaring examples of inequality.
The same is true for most children. Middle- and upper-class families in Europe and the Americas got to enjoy new values of familial love and innocence. Educating your children instead of putting them to work was a privilege. In places like Japan, children were seen as especially vulnerable, and there were many government programs designed to protect children during this fragile phase in life.
However, if you weren’t part of the small privileged class, or in Japan, it was another story. Under slavery and colonialism, children were forcibly separated from their parents. Enslaved children were sold, and indigenous children were sometimes sent away from their families. Also, within the colonies, many children of mixed heritage were born outside of marriage. Because of race laws and the realities of colonial hierarchies, mixed children would almost never get to be a part of a cohesive family unit.
In colonial settings, many children were seen as the subjects of colonial masters, and working conditions could be pretty harsh. Whether through indentured labor or wage labor, children in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and India continued to labor in plantations, factories, and mines. They also often worked as household servants. In other parts of the world, like in China, classical values like obedience and hard work continued to shape children’s lives.
Women were also often left out when it came to personal sovereignty. Some Enlightenment thinkers still saw women as inferior to men, while others pushed for women’s equality. However, women also differed across race, class, and region. Working class women, women of color, and colonial subjects didn’t have access to these new social and educational opportunities. In most places, women of the lower classes took on new roles out of economic need. Many single mothers had to work to support their families.
Let’s not forget that all these cultural and social shifts were about much more than just a single issue. Rather, peoples’ entire relationship to the state was being altered. Some found that the state now gave them freedom to control their lives and bodies, while others found they had less control. For example, women were increasingly valued as those responsible for raising the next generation of citizens. To educate their children and ensure their full political participation, mothers needed to be educated too. Motherhood became a political act! This created new opportunities for women, but it also meant that a woman’s decision whether to have children at all was not necessarily hers to make.
Children, too, came to be controlled more—partly through schools. Schools tried to promote children’s health and protect them from abuse, but also control their daily activity. In Canada, Australia, and the United States, governments often forced indigenous children into boarding schools. The purpose was to change behaviors that colonists saw as problematic. That usually meant getting them to adopt European traditions and customs and leave their own behind. Similarly, in British India, school was used to instill European values in students with the goal of making them more useful as colonial subjects.
So, while Enlightenment ideas about citizenship, sovereignty, and autonomy changed the face of the globe, it’s important to remember that these changes were very uneven. Through the modern period and into the twenty-first century, different groups of people have been included and excluded from these values. However, these ideas surrounding personal sovereignty have continued to influence many political institutions to this day.
Author bio
The author of this article is Eman M. Elshaikh. She is a writer, researcher, and teacher who has taught K-12 and undergraduates in the United States and in the Middle East. She teaches writing at the University of Chicago, where she also completed her master’s in social sciences and is currently pursuing her PhD. She was previously a World History Fellow at Khan Academy, where she worked closely with the College Board to develop curriculum for AP World History.
[Sources and attributions]
AP World 5.2 Key Terms. Get a hint. Declaration of Independence. Click the card to flip 👆. the document recording the proclamation of the second Continental Congress (4 July 1776) asserting the independence of the colonies from Great Britain. Click the card to flip 👆. 1 / 23.
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