Age of Revolutions

The time period from 1688 and 1830, known appropriately as the Age of Revolutions, harbored progressive change and political upheaval intertwined across Europe and the New World. Detailing the causes and effects of the Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, the Latin American Revolutions, and the French Revolution, they are all comparable in their push for human rights, freedom from oppression, initial social, political and economic strife and the establishment of progressive new government.

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 was simply a bloodless (discounting minimum related fighting in Ireland and Scotland) change of leadership in post-Elizabethan England, whose significance relies upon the verity that it literally began modern English parliamentary democracy, ensured that an absolute monarch would never again hold absolute power, and resolutely established the frequently contested Protestant faith in England and Her ruling class with the abdication of the preceding Catholic king, James II and his belief in the divine right of succession. Replacing him and his influence was, ironically, his son-in-law and daughter, William and Mary of Orange, already the Protestant partial rulers of the Netherlands. Promptly signing the English Bill of Rights, the dual ascension pair curtailed progression in the direction of monarchial absolutism in the British Isles by circumscribing the monarch's powers; a ruler could no longer suspend laws, levy taxes, or maintain a standing army during peacetime without Parliament's permission. As a direct result of the Glorious Revolution, England, and eventually, the United Kingdom, has since been governed under a system of constitutional monarchy.

Similarly motivated by a desire for independence and freedom of European monarchial leadership was the American Revolution, which, comparable to the resulting French Revolution, was an insurgency of the common populace (embittered with their authoritative and nationalistic mother England whose obligatory tax inflation, mercantilist policies and egotistical governing strategies didn't allow for progressive American growth and personal country development) against a foreboding and controlling government in an effort to alleviate financial, political, and social oppression. Notably setting precedence, however, were, ironically, European Enlightenment ideas and philosophies (as harnessed by revolutionary writers such as Thomas Paine in his popular pamphlet, Common Sense) that not only invigorated and inspired the revolution itself, but also the democratic government that was created after its success, as well as, in a situation similar to the inauguration of the English Bill of Rights directly following the Glorious Revolution, the eventual writing, ratification, and use of an analogous American Constitution and Bill of Rights, declaring omnipotent the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (nearly directly quoted from the writings