Otto von Bismarck was a conservative chancellor of Prussia and Germany in the second-half of the nineteenth century. He is remembered for leading the unification of Germany through his able diplomacy and timely military conquests. His efforts ensured that Germany would be unified at the exclusion of Austria, and would therefore be dominated by the Prussian state. He also is remembered for preserving the balance of power in Europe in the 1870s and 1880s.

Simon Bolivar fought for South American independence from the Spanish Empire in the early nineteenth century. Bolivar was inspired by the enlightenment ideas he was exposed to during his education in Spain and returned to Latin America to lead the campaign for independence. His actions contributed to the independence of Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, and Bolivia. Bolivar served as President of Gran Colombia from its formation in 1819 until its demise in 1830.

The Haitian Revolution began as a series of slave revolts led by Toussaint-L’ouverture in the 1790s. The successes of the rebellion encouraged L’ouverture and others to transform the slave rebellion into an independence movement. Although L’ouverture was captured and imprisoned in France, the fight continued in his absence and, in 1804, Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared the independence of the Haitian republic.

The Tanzimat Reforms were enacted in the mid-nineteenth century by the government of the Ottoman Empire. The Tanzimat Reforms were designed to modernize the Ottoman Empire and to address the threat of rising nationalism within the Empire.

The Haitian Revolution ended colonial control of the island called Sainte Domingue by France and introduced independence and the renaming of the country to Haiti in 1804.

Of these Latin American colonies Haiti was the first to gain independence in 1804. Mexico, Argentina, and Colombia followed in the next few decades. Puerto Rico gained its independence from the Spanish Empire in 1898, although was immediately thereafter annexed and occupied by forces of the United States.

The “cahiers de doléances” were a set of complaints and suggested changes devised by many members of the Estates General, from both the Second and Third Estates. The overall aim of the “cahiers” was to secure equal rights for all (aka white male) French citizens. This goal was to be achieved through the implementation and removal of many monarchial procedures. For example, the Estates General was to be allowed to meet on a regular basis, without kingly interference. In addition, local and regional governing bodies were to be granted greater autonomy over themselves, taxes were to be apportioned on a more equitable basis, some aristocratic privileges (such as reserved hunting forests) were to be abolished, and the press was to be permitted to operate freely. The “cahiers” proved that many members of the Second and Third Estates held very similar ideas of reform, in spite of their social differences and classist outlooks.

At the start of the summer of 1789, when the members of the Estates General finally gathered together to hold their first meeting, King Louis XVI (perhaps fearing a dilution of his own power) attempted to gain back some level of dominance over the group. Already made uneasy by the claims for equality expressed in the “cahiers de doléances,” the King vehemently distrusted the Third Estate and so he refused to allow their members to take part in the same session, at the same time, as their fellow First and Second Estate legislators. Naturally, the Third Estate saw the King’s new rule as a direct attack against themselves, and so they refused to follow his order. When the King made no move to retreat from his policy, the Third Estate abandoned the entire Estates General and decided to make their own legislature, along with any members of the First and Second Estates who wanted to join them. Many members of the First Estate, as well as the entire Second Estate, took the Third Estate up on its offer and so, on June 17th, 1789, they all converged to form the new National Assembly.

King Louis XVI was deeply alarmed by the creation of the National Assembly – he hadn’t at all foreseen this turn of events. Consequently, he decided to meet with the few remaining members of the Estates General, but, most portentously, he had the National Assembly’s meeting room locked and barred. When the members of the National Assembly turned up and saw the locked doors, however, they weren’t discouraged or demoralized, as the King had hoped. Instead, the National Assembly was all the more energized and more determined than ever to achieve their reformist aims. Defiantly, they held their meeting instead on a tennis court – hence, the name of the oath – and there passed a solemn resolution that they would continue to meet, no matter what the King did to oppose them, until they had drafted a new national constitution, with all of their changes included. They also renamed themselves the National Constituent Assembly. The King tried to quash this latest development but it was too late, especially as the remaining members of the Estates General defected in support of the Assembly. From now on, the King was going to have to try and cooperate with the Assembly if he hoped to have any say in his nation’s government.

Initially, during the summer of 1789, most members of the National Constituent Assembly were in favor of instituting some form of constitutional monarchy in France. Many looked to the constitutional monarchy already in place in England, in which the English monarch and the Parliament shared rule under the Magna Carta, as a good model. But as King Louis XVI continued to make one sociopolitical blunder after another, support for any government which included the monarchy at all swiftly began to evaporate. Increasingly, the King looked to be an untrustworthy, inept, and/or entirely disinterested potential participant and so the Assembly began to consider other forms of government, including more drastic types.