Chapter 16...

I feel like I’m learning about the American and French Revolutions for the first time.  The British decided to introduce additional taxes in North America without warning.  This introduction of new taxes led to the American Revolution because the British government was trying to extract more revenue by adding taxes that would help to tighten its control over the separate colonies.   It’s interesting that France joined North America by being able to come together and fight against the British government.  The North America Revolution took place between 1775-1787 with the Declaration of Independence in 1776 that resulted in a military victory in 1781 which then created the Federal Constitution in 1787 which brought together 13 previously separated colonies into a new nation.  I was happy to read that slavery was gradually being abolished in the Northern states, although it shouldn’t have taken that long.  I cannot fathom why the southern states continued practicing slavery.  The United States began working toward the earlier practices and principles of equality that were mentioned in the Declaration of Independence.  I found it interesting that at the time that the new U.S. Constitution led to the separation of church and state and federalism as well as the creation of the Bill of Rights and, checks and balances was caused by the practice of Enlightenment.

I appreciated reading about the feminist beginnings/movement.  Women began to question why they were seen and treated as inferior to men.  The text mentioned how the French Revolution raised the possibility of re-creating human societies.  I just placed an order on Amazon for Mary Wollstonecraft’s book called Vindication of the Rights of Woman and I might see if I can do my research paper about her.  There were more educational opportunities and some freedom that were found in the growing class of developing societies.  In 1914 around 100,000 women took part in French Feminist organizations.  Also, during this time the United States had passed legislation and, I was surprised to see that divorce laws were liberalized in some places.