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Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) / German Unification

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Otto Von Bismarck

was responsible for transforming a collection of small German states and unifying them into the German empire. He assisted his father in making the family estates. he was appointed prime minister after returning from Prusha. he used the brush army to capture the German-speaking countries. he was victorious in a war the French declared. he expelled the Jesuits from government-controlled schools.

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In 1802 tussain was stunned to see the largest French expedition force assembled.

They fought the French for 3 long months. On May 6 1802 tussey lou veltir surrendered.

He believed the only way to rebuild his country was to return his black followers to the Cain

fields. He forced them to and the people began to think it was slavery.

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Italian History (1861-2021) since unification in 1861.

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The history of Italy covers the Ancient period and the Middle Ages. Italy was established in 1861.  By the mid-19th century, the Italian unification to the establishment of an Italian nation-state. Italy was fragmented into numerous city-states and regional polities.

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Victor Emmanuel II, (born March 14, 1820, Turin, Piedmont, Kingdom of Sardinia-died January 9, 1878, Rome, Italy), king of Sardinia-Piedmont who became the first king of a united Italy.

Brought up in the court of his father, Charles Albert, and given a conventional monarchical education emphasizing religious and military training, he was married to his cousin Maria Adelaide, daughter of an Austrian archduke. After the Revolution of 1848, when war broke out with Austria, Victor Emmanuel was given command of a division. In the luckless campaign that followed he proved a brave soldier but an indifferent general.

Ascending the throne on his father's abdication, he consolidated his position by suppressing the republican left and paying an indemnity to Austria, which brought him considerable opprobrium in Italy. In November 1852 he made the momentous decision to turn the government over to the able, determined Count Cavour, whose skillful manoeuvres over the next few years made him king of Italy. At the decisive battles of Magenta and Solferino, he commanded the Piedmontese corps in person, and following the armistice of Villafranca, he exercised a valuable restraint on Cavour, who wanted to continue the war alone. The following year Victor Emmanuel secretly encouraged Garibaldi in the conquest of Sicily and Naples; he then led his Piedmontese army into papal territory to link up with Garibaldi in the face of an excommunication by Pius IX.

Following Cavour's death in 1861, Victor Emmanuel played a more direct role in government and despite setbacks achieved two notable triumphs: the acquisition of Venetia through war on the side of Bismarck's Prussia in 1866, and of Rome after the withdrawal of the French garrison in 1870. The occupation of Rome as the national capital so antagonized Pius IX that he refused all overtures toward reconciliation, and no meeting ever took place between the two sovereigns; nevertheless, on Victor Emmanuel's death in 1878 Pius permitted his burial in the Pantheon.

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Victor Emmanuel II | Unification of Italy, Risorgimento, Savoy Dynasty

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Victor Emmanuel II, king of Sardinia-Piedmont who became the first king of a united Italy. Brought up in the court of his father, Charles Albert, and given a conventional monarchical education emphasizing religious and military training, he was married to his cousin Maria Adelaide, daughter of an

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The German Empire was characterised by modernism and traditionalism. Its foundation marked the start of a stormy marriage between democracy and the monarchy, in which - as is apparent in retrospect - the scope for development of the Constitution of 16 April 1871 was often an issue. Was there any chance, after 1871, of a transition to a parliamentary monarchy, in which the Kaiser's influence on affairs of state would have been reduced to a minimum, or had strict limits been drawn to prevent such a development?

Under the Constitution, the Imperial Chancellor, whom the Kaiser appointed and who was not dependent on the confidence of a parliamentary majority, was confronted by a Reichstag without the consent of which it was, in principle, impossible to enact any law and which had to approve the national budget. From 1871 the Reichstag initially met in the former Royal Prussian Porcelain Works in Leipziger Strasse. Not until 6 December 1894 did it move into the Reichstag building.

Imperial electoral law

The Reichstag had 382 members until 1874; thereafter, it had 397. They were elected for a three-year period, which was extended to five years in 1888, on the basis of a general, equal, direct and secret ballot and a first-past-the-post system of constituency seats. All male Germans over the age of 25 were eligible to vote. By the standards of the time, this electoral system was regarded as modern and progressive, even if it increasingly operated to the detriment of certain political parties. The law governing Reichstag elections played a key role in politicising the population after 1871, which is reflected not least in the steady growth in electoral turnout from 50.7% in 1871 to 84.9% in 1912.

As the German people were politicised, the political parties tended to transform themselves into modern organisations. Politicians' working practices also took on new features. Although the payment of remuneration to Members of Parliament was prohibited until 1906, the Reichstag soon acquired numerous full-time politicians who specialised in a particular policy area in their parliamentary work. The Reichstag became a working parliament, whose extensive body of legislation played a key part in establishing a national legal and economic area as well as laying the foundations for the welfare state by creating insurance schemes for sickness, accidents, old age and invalidity.

Scrutiny of the government

Views differ very widely on the question whether this extensive legislation made the Kaiser and the Imperial Government become so heavily dependent on the Reichstag as to create a de facto situation of gradual transition to a parliamentary system of government in the Empire. The only point on which historians agree is that, after 1871, the Reichstag gained considerably in power and influence in relation to the Imperial Government and the individual states whose representatives formed the Bundesrat, or Federal Council. The majority view, however, is that the sole interest of the political parties lay in effectively overseeing the government, not in taking power, and that in any case the Empire lacked one major prerequisite for a parliamentary system of government, namely parties that were prepared to resolve even fundamental conflicts of interest in order to form durable coalitions.

The party system

The Empire had no mass parties with broad support bases transcending barriers of social class and religious creed. There were five parties, which broke down into splinter groups. In that system the parties were more or less closely intertwined, but each represented a distinct section of society, whose interests it pursued. The individual components of the party system were the German Conservatives and the German Reich Party, the Centre, which represented political Catholicism, and the National Liberal Party on the liberal Right as well as several parties of the liberal Left, including the German Progress Party, the German Liberal Party (Deutsche Freisinnige Partei), the Liberal People's Party (Freisinnige Volkspartei) and the Progressive People's Party, and the Socialist Workers' Party, which was renamed the Social Democratic Party of Germany ( SP D) in 1890. Although many blocs were formed between parties in the years from 1871 to 1918, these never lasted long enough to become stable 'governing coalitions'. The parties were too much at odds to develop the rights of Parliament conclusively or even to establish a more parliamentary system of government. Moreover, apart from the SPD, which formed the largest parliamentary group in the Reichstag from 1912, no party saw any lasting benefit in constitutional change, and even within the ranks of the Social Democrats there was an ambivalent attitude to parliamentary democracy.

World war and constitutional change

Not until the final stages of the First World War in September 1918, when Germany was on the brink of economic and military collapse, did the majority parties thrust their way into government. The military high command under Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff did not wish to take responsibility for the defeat, although in the course of the war they had increasingly determined imperial policy and had latterly done so almost dictatorially. For this reason, they were now willing to compromise with the political parties. The advances made by the majority parties and the military high command and, not least, the pressure exerted by the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, who did not wish to make peace with anything other than a democratic government, paved the way for the introduction of parliamentary democracy. By a large majority, Parliament amended the Imperial Constitution, and on 28 October 1918 the Empire became a parliamentary monarchy. On 9 November 1918, Philipp Scheidemann, of the Social Democrats, proclaimed the Republic from a window in the Reichstag building, thereby completing the constitutional transformation.

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German Bundestag - The Empire (1871-1918)

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The German Empire was characterised by modernism and traditionalism. Its foundation marked the start of a stormy marriage between democracy and the monarchy, in which - as is apparent…

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What was the Haitian Revolution?

Why did the Haitian Revolution start?

How is the Haitian Revolution related to the French Revolution?

Who did the Haitian Revolution involve?

Why is the Haitian Revolution important?

This article was most recently revised and updated by

Haitian Revolution, series of conflicts between 1791 and 1804 between Haitian slaves, colonists, the armies of the British and French colonizers, and a number of other parties. Through the struggle, the Haitian people ultimately won independence from France and thereby became the first country to be founded by former slaves.

Colonial rule and slavery

The Spanish began to enslave the native Taino and Ciboney people soon after December 1492, when Italian navigator Christopher Columbus sighted the island that he called La Isla Española ("The Spanish Island"; later Anglicized as Hispaniola.) The island's indigenous population, forced to mine for gold, was devastated by European diseases and brutal working conditions, and by the end of the 16th century the people had virtually vanished. Thousands of slaves imported from other Caribbean islands met the same fate.

After the main gold mines were exhausted, the Spanish were succeeded by the French, who established their own permanent settlements, including Port-de-Paix (1665) in the northwest, and the French West Indies Corporation took control of the area. Landowners in western Hispaniola imported increasing numbers of African slaves, who totaled about 5,000 in the late 17th century. By 1789, on the eve of the French Revolution, the estimated population of Saint-Domingue, as the French called their colony, was 556,000 and included roughly 500,000 African slaves, 32,000 European colonists, and 24,000 affranchis (free mulattoes [people of mixed African and European descent] or blacks).

Haitian society was deeply fragmented by skin colour, class, and gender. The affranchis, most of them mulattoes, were sometimes slave owners themselves and aspired to the economic and social levels of the Europeans. They feared and spurned the slave majority but were generally discriminated against by the white European colonists, who were merchants, landowners, overseers, craftsmen, and the like. The aspirations of the affranchis became a major factor in the colony's struggle for independence. A large part of the slave population was African-born, from a number of West African peoples. The vast majority worked in the fields; others were household servants, boilermen (at the sugar mills), and even slave drivers. Slaves endured long, backbreaking workdays and often died from injuries, infections, and tropical diseases. Malnutrition and starvation also were common. Some slaves managed to escape into the mountainous interior, where they became known as Maroons and fought guerrilla battles against colonial militia.

Factional conflict and the rise of Toussaint Louverture

Against this background arose a revolution, beginning as a series of conflicts from the early 1790s. Among the causes of the conflicts were the affranchis' frustrations with a racist society, turmoil created in the colony by the French Revolution, nationalistic rhetoric expressed during Vodou ceremonies, the continuing brutality of slave owners, and wars between European powers. Vincent Ogé, a mulatto who had lobbied the Parisian assembly for colonial reforms, led an uprising in late 1790 but was captured, tortured, and executed.

In May 1791 the French revolutionary government granted citizenship to the wealthier affranchis, but Haiti's European population disregarded the law. Within two months isolated fighting broke out between Europeans and affranchis, and in August thousands of slaves rose in rebellion. The Europeans attempted to appease the mulattoes in order to quell the slave revolt, and the French assembly granted citizenship to all affranchis in April 1792. The country was torn by rival factions, some of which were supported by Spanish colonists in Santo Domingo (on the eastern side of the island, which later became the Dominican Republic) or by British troops from Jamaica. In 1793 a commissioner, Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, was sent from France to maintain order and offered freedom to slaves who joined his army; he soon abolished slavery altogether, a decision confirmed the following year by the French government.

In the late 1790s Toussaint Louverture, a military leader and former slave, gained control of several areas and earned the initial support of French agents. He gave nominal allegiance to France while pursuing his own political and military designs, which included negotiating with the British. In January 1801 Toussaint conquered Santo Domingo, and in May of that year, he had himself named "governor-general for life." He put the peasants back to work on the plantations under military rule and encouraged many of the French proprietors to return. In December 1801 Napoléon Bonaparte (later Napoleon I), wishing to maintain control of the island, attempted to restore the old regime (and European rule) by sending his brother-in-law, Gen. Charles Leclerc, with an experienced force from Saint-Domingue that included Alexandre Sabès Pétion and several other exiled mulatto officers. Toussaint struggled for several months against Leclerc's forces before agreeing to an armistice in May 1802; however, the French broke the agreement and imprisoned him in France. He died on April 7, 1803.

Independent Haiti

Some of Toussaint's lieutenants-most notably Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henry Christophe- resumed the war against the French in 1802. They were soon joined by Pétion and other mulatto leaders, who were infuriated by the restoration of the restrictions on their caste. Both the blacks and the mulattoes were enraged by reports that France had reestablished slavery in Guadeloupe and Martinique, and the struggle was carried on with great desperation. The French were weakened by an epidemic of yellow fever-Leclerc succumbed to the disease in November 1802-and the conclusion of the Louisiana Purchase in May 1803 signaled Napoleon's intention to withdraw from North America. Less than three weeks later, the French position in Haiti became truly hopeless with the renewal of hostilities between France and Britain on May 18, 1803.

On November 18 the Armée indigène (French: "Indigenous Army") under Dessalines defeated the French at the Battle of Vertières, and French Gen. Jean-Baptiste-Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, surrendered Cap-Français (now Cap-Haïtien), the last significant French stronghold. Under the terms of the surrender, the French were given 10 days to evacuate, but Rochambeau showed no haste in embarking his troops. Dessalines responded by threatening to turn his cannons on the French ships at anchor in Cap-Français harbour. Ironically, it would fall to the Royal Navy, which had been blockading Saint-Domingue since the resumption of the Napoleonic Wars, to carry out the evacuation. British Capt. John Bligh treated with both Rochambeau and Dessalines, and the French garrison finally departed Cap-Français as British prisoners. While this marked the end of French military action on Haiti, France continued to maintain a presence in the eastern part of the island until 1809.

On January 1, 1804, the entire island was declared independent under the Arawak-derived name of Haiti. Many European powers and their Caribbean surrogates ostracized Haiti, fearing the spread of slave revolts, whereas reaction in the United States was mixed; slave-owning states did all they could to suppress news of the rebellion, but merchants in the free states hoped to trade with Haiti rather than with European powers. More important, nearly the entire population was utterly destitute-a legacy of slavery that has continued to have a profound impact on Haitian history.

In October 1804 Dessalines assumed the title of Emperor Jacques I, but in October 1806 he was killed while trying to suppress a mulatto revolt, and Henry Christophe took control of the kingdom from his capital in the north. Civil war then broke out between Christophe and Sabès Pétion, who was based at Port-au-Prince in the south. Christophe, who declared himself King Henry I in 1811, managed to improve the country's economy but at the cost of forcing former slaves to return to work on the plantations. He built a spectacular palace (Sans Souci) as well as an imposing fortress (La Citadelle Laferrière) in the hills to the south of the city of Cap-Haïtien, where, with mutinous soldiers almost at his door, he committed suicide in 1820. It was not until 1825 that France recognized Haiti's independence, and then only in exchange for a large indemnity of 100 million francs, with a repayment period until 1887.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Michael Ray.

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Haitian Revolution | Causes, Summary, & Facts

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Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), series of conflicts between Haitian slaves, colonists, the armies of the British and French colonizers, and a number of other parties. Through the struggle, the Haitian people ultimately won independence from France and thereby became the first country to be founded by former slaves.

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German Romanticism

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Romantics and Realists

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Romanticism