\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Born eight months after the outbreak of the American Revolution, Jane Austen entered a world on the brink of seismic change. Although the conflict that ended with the independence of 13 North American colonies from British rule did not affect her directly, its geopolitical legacy shaped the world in which she came of age.<\/p>\n During the 1760s and 1770s, colonists in North America grew increasingly frustrated with taxation by Britain, and by its legislative supremacy over their lives. In 1773, the Tea Act effectively gave the East India Company a monopoly on importing tea to America \u2013 and levied taxes on that tea, payable to the British Government. In response, colonists disguised as Mohawk Native Americans boarded British ships and dumped an entire shipment of tea into Boston Harbour \u2013 a protest known as the Boston Tea Party. Westminster responded by passing the Intolerable Acts, ending local self- government and commerce in Boston.<\/p>\n Tensions boiled over in April 1775, when British troops in Massachusetts attempted to confiscate weapons in Lexington and Concord. When they met resisting local militia, the \u201cshot heard \u2018round the world\u201d was fired \u2013 marking the start of the Revolutionary War. The following year, on 4 July 1776, delegates from 13 colonies assembled in Philadelphia declared their independence and established the United States of America.<\/p>\n Over the next five years, on battlefields from Bunker Hill to Yorktown, the colonists \u2013 led by figures including George Washington \u2013 fought for liberty and self-governance. And, with support from France and other European powers, the tide turned in their favour. Signing the Treaty of Paris in 1783, Britain formally recognised the US as an independent nation, ending the conflict. But the ideals championed in that war opened the era of the Atlantic Revolutions.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n On 22 August 1791, the French colony of Saint- Domingue, on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, was shaken by an uprising. Inspired by the French Revolution, more than 100,000 enslaved Africans overthrew the oppressive regime, leaving many of its 8,000 plantations in ruins and more than 1,000 Europeans dead. The colony was the most lucrative in the Caribbean, producing around half of the world\u2019s coffee and sugar, so in 1792 Paris dispatched a 6,000-strong force to pacify it.<\/p>\n Following the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars, in 1793 British and Spanish troops arrived on the island, exacerbating the turmoil as these European powers recruited people to their war aims. Amid this chaos, Toussaint L\u2019Ouverture \u2013 who had been born into slavery In 1802, another French expedition ousted L\u2019Ouverture and whisked him to France, where he died in captivity a year later. When Napoleon restored slavery in Saint-Domingue, the revolution erupted afresh and, led by the formerly enslaved Jean-Jacques Dessalines, revolutionary forces decisively expelled the French. On 1 January 1804, the Republic of Haiti \u2013 the first led by people of colour \u2013was declared, galvanising the international anti-slavery movement. Just three years later, Britain\u2019s Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was signed into law. Though Austen\u2019s views on the Haitian Revolution aren\u2019t known, many in her circle supported abolitionism. And both her brother Francis and the fictional Captain Wentworth in Persuasion were present at the Napoleonic battle of Santo Domingo (the Spanish colony on Hispaniola) in 1806, so Jane was clearly familiar with events on the island.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Having provided support for the American independence cause, France\u2019s King Louis XVI grappled with a mounting economic crisis. In 1789, hunger and widespread discontent sparked revolution: on 14 July, a Parisian mob stormed the Bastille prison, reviled symbol of royal tyranny. But the movement\u2019s pursuit of liberty, equality and fraternity \u2013 and the revolutionary government\u2019s aspiration to spread these principles beyond France\u2019s borders \u2013 spooked Europe\u2019s monarchies.<\/p>\n Over time, factionalism and infighting split the revolutionaries. In an effort to rally national unity, the government targeted France\u2019s historic enemies, and in April 1792 declared war on Austria. Later, Louis and his Austrian-born queen, Marie Antoinette, were toppled and executed. A series of coalitions formed by European powers including Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia aimed to contain and reverse the revolutionary changes in France in wars spanning much of the next decade.<\/p>\n These conflicts spread revolutionary and nationalist ideals, and pioneered strategies such as national conscription. But their most significant legacy would be the meteoric rise of a Corsican corporal, Napoleon Bonaparte. After a decade of turmoil, the 1802 Treaty of Amiens was signed by France and Britain, bringing to an end the Revolutionary Wars \u2013 though not auguring a lasting peace with France.<\/p>\n The Austen family wasn\u2019t untouched by these events. Of Jane\u2019s brothers, Henry joined the Oxfordshire Militia, while Francis and Charles enlisted in the Royal Navy. Jane was horrified by a description by her cousin (and, later, sister-in-law) Eliza de Feuillide of her first husband\u2019s guillotining in 1794, during the bloody period of the French Revolution known as the Terror.<\/p>\n Like her contemporaries, Jane eagerly followed events. She even sported an Egyptian-style \u2018Mamalouc\u2019 cap to a ball honouring Lord Nelson\u2019s victory over the French at the battle of the Nile.<\/p>\n Winston Churchill, musing on Jane Austen\u2019s novel Pride and Prejudice<\/em>, once quipped: \u201cWhat calm lives they had\u2026 No worries about the French Revolution, or the crushing struggles of the Napoleonic Wars\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Jane Austen\u2019s career as a writer reached its zenith during the series of wars involving Napoleonic France. Her most famous novels were penned as those conflicts raged and, though war itself is absent from her stories, the military characters she created, and the references to everyday hardship in her books, attest to her lived reality. Two of her brothers were fighting in the Royal Navy, and the threat of a French invasion of England remained credible until Nelson\u2019s victory at Trafalgar in October 1805.<\/p>\n Napoleon Bonaparte was a skilled military leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution. After seizing power in 1799, Napoleon \u2013 who later crowned himself Emperor of the French \u2013 aimed to establish an empire and exert his influence globally. Through military campaigns, he drove a rapid expansion of French territory, conquering numerous European nations and bringing them under his rule. His military victories \u2013 including in battles at Austerlitz in 1805 and Jena-Auerstedt in 1806 \u2013 demonstrated his tactical brilliance and reshaped the political landscape of the continent.<\/p>\n Britain, Russia, Prussia, Austria and other nations joined forces in coalitions pushing back against Napoleonic France. A series of battles and campaigns followed, notably the Peninsular War in Spain and Portugal, and the Russian campaign of 1812. Despite his military prowess, Napoleon\u2019s invasion of Russia proved disastrous, and led to his first abdication in April 1814, followed by exile to the Mediterranean island of Elba.<\/p>\n The following year, while European statesmen were gathered in Vienna to establish a new continental order, Napoleon escaped from Elba and landed in southern France. Arriving in Paris in March 1815, he resumed hostilities \u2013 culminating in French defeat at the battle of Waterloo in June 1815 by a combined British and Prussian force led by the Duke of Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Bl\u00fccher. Napoleon was subsequently exiled once more, to the island of St Helena in the South Atlantic, marking the end of the Napoleonic era and decades of warfare.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In a letter dated 2 September 1814, Jane Austen wrote: \u201cI place my hope of better things on a claim to the protection of Heaven, as a Religious Nation, a Nation in spite of much Evil improving in Religion, which I cannot believe the Americans to possess.\u201d Despite her reticence in discussing many of the global events that defined her era, the coincidence of this scathing verdict with a conflict then raging in North America is perhaps telling.<\/p>\n So-called \u2018War Hawks\u2019 in Congress asserted that Britain\u2019s presence in Canada posed a threat to the US, and called for military action. Tensions had arisen as a direct result of two decades of near-constant warfare between Britain and France. Factors that frustrated the US included impressment (forced recruitment) into the Royal Navy of American sailors believed to be deserters; competing Anglo-French trade restrictions imposed on neutral powers such as the US; and British support for Native American resistance to US expansion westwards across North America. So, on 18 June 1812, the US declared war on Britain, launching a conflict that would last nearly three years.<\/p>\n Despite initial American naval victories, the British were able to maintain blockades of key US ports. On 24 August 1814, in retaliation for American attacks on York (modern-day Toronto), British soldiers burned public buildings in Washington DC \u2013 including the White House and the Capitol. War fatigue and economic stresses forced both sides to the negotiating table, and on 24 December 1814 the Treaty of Ghent was signed. Even so, the distances involved delayed ratification of the treaty by Congress until 16 February 1815 \u2013 after US victory at the battle of New Orleans on 8 January.<\/p>\n War and Conflict, with Dr Lizzie Rogers<\/a> \u2013 watching time 11 mins<\/p>\n Uncertainty and unrest: the madness of the Regency period<\/a> \u2013 reading time 8 mins<\/p>\n Peterloo: the story of a massacre<\/a> \u2013 listening time 37 mins<\/p>\n Reading between the lines: the real-life events that inspired Jane Austen<\/a> \u2013 reading time 6 mins<\/p>\n 1816: the year without summer<\/a> \u2013 reading time 9 mins<\/p>\n The Napoleonic Wars: everything you wanted to know<\/a> \u2013 listening time 1 hour, 3 mins<\/p>\nThe American Revolutionary War (1775\u201383)<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
![\"HistoryExtra](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2024\/01\/HEXAcademy-Call-to-Action-4f473a5.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"HistoryExtra")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div><\/a><\/p>\nThe Haitian Revolution (1791\u20131804)<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
The French Revolutionary Wars (1792\u20131802)<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
Did you know?<\/h4>\n
The Napoleonic Wars (1803\u201315)<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
The War of 1812 (1812\u201315)<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
Explore more content from week three of our Regency course:<\/h4>\n
![\"HEXA](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2019\/08\/HEXA-Regency-Week-3-260sq-7e9f990.jpg?quality=45&resize=556,556\" "\\"HEXA")
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