America, French and Latin American Essay

Total Length: 1354 words ( 5 double-spaced pages)

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The French Revolution was widely propagated by the inequality that the French Feudal system had propagated, the bankruptcy of the government brought about by the spend thrift habits of Louis XIV and the heavy influence that American Revolution had on the French themselves after the writings of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau and others became too famous hence influencing the French to go against their own king.

The Latin American Revolution

This refers to various revolutionary wars that took place in the Latin America in the period between the 18th and the 19th century whose results were creation of various countries in the Latin America which account for more than 20 states that are in existence in the current Latin America (Zbigniew Marcin Kowalewski, 2005). The Latin America revolutions followed closely the American and the French Revolutions which had impacted in a profound manner the French, Portuguese and Spanish colonies throughout the world.

The first among the many countries to follow the American Revolution was Haiti which was a French colony then known as Saint Domingue (Haitian Treasures, 2011). This was in 1791 to 1804 when the Haitian Revolution saw the fight for independence of the country from the French. It began with Boukman, an African priest calling for a revolution and Toussaint who was not trained in military took up the challenge of leading the troop and by 1804 he had moved with the troops to Santo Domingo and freed the slaves. Toussaint was sent to prison but Jean-Jacques Dessalines took over the leadership till the declaration of independence in January 1804.

There was a wide attempt by Napoleon to expand the French influence and occupation in Europe, Spain, Portugal and even the Spanish America, after his failure to reinstate the French influence in the North American states.
The result of this was several wars including the Peninsular War in Spanish America that saw a Spanish Creoles question their allegiance to the metropole. This saw many other revolutions that lasted two decades including the relocation of the Portuguese monarchy to Brazil due to the French occupation of Portugal. After the relocation, the royal court gave back the big city of Lisbon to Portugal and in 1822, Pedro, who was a prince regent in Brazil, effectively declared himself the emperor of the independent Brazil.

There was a common entity between the American Revolution and the Latin American Revolution in that they were both fighting an external colonialist; this was not the primary factor in the French Revolution where they were fighting against an unjust monarchy by their own people. All the revolutions had one factor though in common which was the use of force in all the revolutions. The other common factor was the fight against inequality since in all the three cases, there was gross deprivation of the subjects to equal treatment as the ruling master hence fueling the revolutions.

The wars led to the freedom of the various countries and change of regime in franc. The American Revolution gave birth to a Republican governance system which was highly based on democracy and consideration of the rights of individuals. In France, the monarchy of Louis XVI was toppled to give way to Robenspierre who was very dictatorial then went back to liberal system under Napoleon who even conducted elections only to relapse into dictatorship. After the exit of Napoleon, the system went back to Monarchy under Louis XVIII. In the Latin America, the situation was pretty similar to the case in USA only that they were characterized by rampant relapse to dictatorship even after the constitution.....

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