Background to the Glorious Revolution

In the mid-17th century, the English Parliament was the longest-lasting and most developed body on the European continent; for centuries the monarchy had understood it as mixed, composed of nobles and non-nobility.

During the 17th century, these traditions were threatened. First, by Charles I’s attempts to rule without Parliament, and later during Oliver Cromwell’s dictatorial protectorate.

The restoration of the monarchy in 1660 settled whether England would be a republic or a monarchy in the future, but the kind of monarchy it would become was still an open question when the reign of Charles II, raised in France and an admirer of all things French, including the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV, began.

The English Parliament was divided into two factions, one in favor of the king and the other made up of those who opposed James II for being Catholic and supported his brother Charles II, an Anglican, although a secret Catholic.

Both brothers reflect the transition between the restored monarchy and the emergence of the constitutional monarchy.

James II was the polar opposite of his worldly brother Charles. A zealous Catholic convert, he offended his Tory followers, almost all of whom were members of the established Church of England, by repealing laws that prevented Catholic and Protestant dissenters from holding political office.

Note: Tories vs. Whigs

The Tories were originally an English political faction that emerged in the 17th century, eventually evolving into what we know today as the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom. They arose around 1679 during the debate over excluding the Catholic James II from the throne. They tolerated Catholicism within the monarchy, which put them at odds with the Protestant Whigs, who promoted parliamentary power and the exclusion of Catholics. Likewise, they transformed into the Liberal Party in the 19th century and later into the Liberal Democrats.

Even today, no Catholic can be king, as the position entails appointing Anglican bishops as Supreme Head of the Church of England. No heir to the throne can be Catholic or marry one, thus excluding Catholics from the line of succession “forever.”

This reveals a tension between formal freedom and structural exclusion. English liberalism advanced civil rights but maintained religious barriers that contradicted its own principles. It is a clear example of how political systems can be reformist in legal matters but conservative in symbolic ones. Today, this situation is known as “liberal hypocrisy.”

In June 1688, James II, the Catholic king, ordered all clergy of the Church of England to read his decree of religious tolerance from the pulpits. Seven bishops refused and were imprisoned, accused of seditious libel. However, they were acquitted during their trial. The bishops’ trial was one of the pivotal events of his reign.

Another critical event was the unexpected birth in 1668 of a son to James and his wife, Mary of Modena. This child, who was to be raised Catholic, would displace James’s much older Protestant daughter, Mary Stuart, as heir to the thrones of Scotland and England.

Thus, a delegation of Whigs and Tories crossed the English Channel to Holland to invite Mary Stuart and her Protestant husband, William III of Orange, to travel to England with an invading army to preserve Protestantism and the country’s liberties by convening a new Parliament. William III also welcomed the opportunity to make England an ally against the expansionist foreign policy of Louis XIV.

The Glorious Revolution

William and Mary’s invasion became a bloodless coup, as James had to leave the country to avoid another civil war. Parliament was able to declare the throne vacant and pave the way for William and Mary to ascend to it as joint sovereigns by right of succession. A Bill of Rights

Passed by Parliament and accepted by the new monarchs in 1689, it reaffirmed English civil liberties such as trials by jury, habeas corpus, the guarantee that no one could be imprisoned without criminal charges, and the right to seek redress for grievances from the monarch through Parliament. The Bill of Rights also declared that the monarchy was subject to the law of the land.

A Toleration Act, also passed in 1689, guaranteed dissenting Protestants the right to worship, although they were not permitted to hold political office. Furthermore, in 1701, an Act of Succession stipulated that all future monarchs of England would have to belong to the official state church. This meant that now that Queen Mary had died without issue, the throne would pass, upon the death of King William, first to Mary’s Protestant sister, Princess Anne, and then, if Anne also failed to produce an heir, to George, Elector of the German Principality of Hanover and Protestant great-grandson of James I.

In 1707, a formal Act of Union between Scotland and England guaranteed that in the future the Catholic heirs of James II would have no more right to occupy the throne of Scotland than they had to occupy the throne of England.

The English were quick to dub the events of 1688 to 1689 the “Glorious Revolution” because it occurred without bloodshed and also because with it England was firmly established as a mixed monarchy governed “by the king together with parliament.”

The Glorious Revolution was the product of a unique political situation, but it also reflected anti-absolutist political theories that were taking shape in the late 17th century in response to the ideas of writers such as Bodin, Hobbes, Filmer, and Bossuet. The most prominent of these critics of absolutism was the Englishman John Locke (1662–1704), who wrote two treatises on civil government before the revolution, although they were not first published until 1690.

Locke argued that humans originally lived in a state of nature characterized by absolute freedom and equality, devoid of any form of government. Their only law was the law of nature, which Locke equated with the law of reason, by virtue of which individuals enforced their natural rights: life, liberty, and property, thus condemning any kind of absolutism.

He condemned absolute monarchy but was no less critical of parliamentary claims to sovereignty. Government, he argued, was created to protect life, liberty, and property. No political authority could infringe upon the natural rights of individuals to preserve them inviolate. By the end of the 18th century, Locke’s ideas would become a relevant element in the intellectual context of the American and French revolutions.

The French Revolution

It brought about a profound change in the profile of Western culture, along with the industrial revolution.

These two revolutions laid the foundation for the great development that occurred in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They happened almost simultaneously and affected largely the same people. Although in different ways and to varying degrees, they led to the overthrow of absolutism, mercantilism, and what remained of feudalism.

Together they gave rise to the theory and practice of economic individualism and liberalism. And together they ensured that the painful changes they brought about polarized Europe for several generations. The so-called Age of Revolutions lasted from the 1770s until almost the end of the 19th century.

In 1879, one in five Europeans lived in France. Many considered France the center of European culture. Therefore, a revolution in France captured the attention of all Europe and had international significance. It instilled great hopes and, consequently, bitter disappointments, because it raised issues that could only be resolved in at least 50 years.

The Terror as a revolutionary paradox: justice, violence, and legitimacy in France in 1793.

The French Revolution, a symbol of political emancipation and a break with absolutism, gave way in 1793 to one of its most contradictory episodes: the Reign of Terror. Under the leadership of Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety, the revolutionary state suspended constitutional guarantees and legitimized violence as an instrument of political purification. The guillotine, transformed into an emblem of equal justice, executed thousands of citizens accused of treason, without distinction of class or affiliation.

This period presents a fundamental tension between Enlightenment ideals—liberty, equality, fraternity—and the practice of concentrated power that suppressed dissent. The Reign of Terror was not only a response to internal and external threats; it was also a way of redefining popular sovereignty through fear, surveillance, and the elimination of the “moral enemy.”

Historically, the Reign of Terror reveals how revolutionary processes can lead to exceptional regimes that contradict their own ethical foundations. The fall of Robespierre in 1794 marked the end of this phase, but left open the question of the limits of revolutionary justice and the price of political utopia.

It is estimated that between 16,000 and 40,000 people were killed throughout France; the victims were nobles, clergymen, Girondins, monarchists, and those suspected of treason.

The Girondins were a moderate political group that emerged during the French Revolution, composed primarily of enlightened bourgeois who advocated a parliamentary republic, economic liberalism, and an orderly transition from monarchy. Although they promoted the revolutionary war to spread republican ideals, they clashed with the Jacobins over their opposition to the radicalization of the process. Their downfall in 1793, after being accused of conspiring against the unity of the Republic, marked the beginning of the Reign of Terror, during which many Girondins were executed by guillotine, becoming a symbol of the tensions between political moderation and revolutionary violence.

The events can be divided into three stages:

1. From 1788 to 1792, the struggle was constitutional and quite peaceful; it was articulated around demands against the king: payment of taxes without representation, nepotism, arbitrary authority, etc., and a program was established to renew the nation.
2. From 1792 to 1794, the monarchy fell and was replaced by a republic. It was a period of revolution, crisis, and consolidation. A centralized government mobilized all its resources to repel foreign armies and external counter-revolutionaries, eliminate traitors, and eradicate any vestige of the previous regime. This became known as the Reign of Terror, which saved the Republic but ultimately undermined itself through factionalism, pointless arguments, and
3. From 1794 to 1799, the government, still at war with Europe, veered towards corruption and inevitably towards the military rule of Napoleon, who continued the war until his final defeat in 1815.

Conclusion

The tumultuous events in France were part of a general trend from the late 18th century until the democratic upheavals.

The French Revolution was the most violent, prolonged, and conflictive of all those that occurred at that time, but the same dynamic was repeated everywhere.

What’s New:

1. Emergence of the popular movement
2. Emergence of political parties to represent people previously excluded from the system.
3. Emergence of popular newspapers
4. Emergence of political leaders representing the “sans-culottes”
5. The most extreme questioned the moderates.
6. As in other revolutions, the popular movement was silenced by force, and authority was restored “manu militari.”
7. The ideas of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” reached the doorsteps of homes in all towns

Three concepts that left an impact as a legacy of the Revolution and the Napoleonic era:

1. Freedom, which translated into individual rights and duties, liberation from arbitrary authority.
2. Equality, which meant the abolition of legal differences in rank and became a powerful mobilizing force throughout the 19th century and much of the 20th, even to this day.
3. Nation, a political concept, considered by some political scientists to be the most important legacy of the French Revolution, because a nation is composed of citizens and not subjects. The sovereignty of a country no longer rested with dynasties or feudal lords, but with the citizens of the nation, generating sympathy and deeply resonating in the hearts of the people.

Paradoxically, this concept, which was transferred to other European peoples with the military expansion of Napoleon’s armies, generated a rejection of the French invasions, because the other nations were fighting for their freedom, equality before the yoke imposed by the emperor, and the national sovereignty of their peoples.

When the revolutionary period ended, these three concepts ceased to be mere ideas, since they had taken shape in new institutions, whether countries, alliances between countries, but also polarization and conflicts, not only in Europe, but throughout the world, which would be reflected in the following centuries.

The Industrial Revolution

The French Revolution brought about a drastic and sudden transformation of the political and diplomatic landscape of Europe. The Industrial Revolution arrived gradually, but between 1830 and 1840, several thinkers, philosophers, and social writers perceived the extraordinary changes that were taking place in the economic world.

The Industrial Revolution lasted for the next 100 years.

It represented the transition from an agricultural, rural, artisanal economy to a large-scale production economy of companies with a greater concentration of capital, which resulted in urbanization.

Technological changes, such as new forms of propulsion, transportation, mechanization, and labor organization, along with increased productivity and, fundamentally, the discovery of new forms of energy, triggered social changes with revolutionary consequences for the West and its relationship with the rest of the world.

The society and economy that relied on water, wind, and wood to meet their energy needs became dependent on steam engines and coal.

In 1800, the world produced 10 million tons of coal; by 1900, that figure had risen 100 times to 1 billion tons. Consequently, the enormous economic growth of Western countries was based on the exploitation and use of this “fossil fuel,” especially as oil and electricity became major energy sources towards the end of the 19th century and continue to this day. However, the population growth that began in the 18th century was also a crucial factor.

The industrial revolution so altered the foundations of the economy and the role of human beings within it that it generated a feeling of power, but also of fear and anxiety.

The Industrial Revolution began in northern England and western Scotland in the late 18th century, and from there it spread slowly and unevenly across the European continent.

New economic institutions, state subsidies, and legal changes emerged.

In short, the population of Europe doubled in a century, from 1800 to 1900. European GDP tripled during the same period. Private life, family structures, landscape, cities, population, environment, sex, the human condition, and the emergence of specialization because of the division of labor were all affected.

Within the working class, women workers emerged in the industrial sector. In a context of poverty, illegitimate pregnancies increased exponentially, but the blame for this situation was always placed on the woman.

Industrialization generated new forms of wealth, but at the same time, new forms of poverty, fostering a profound awareness of disparity between social groups.

So, both opponents and supporters of the new order spoke of “social classes.” People began to develop what was called “class consciousness.” This shaped a succession of subsequent political events.

Grades:

1. Normandy:  Today northwest France (D-Day beaches)
2. Anglo-Saxons: Germans who migrated to northern France (Britain)
3. Civil war: over the succession to the throne (Henry I attempted to impose his  daughter Matilda as heir, but the nobility did not fully accept her). Upon Henry I’s death in 1135, his nephew Stephen of Blois seized the throne with ecclesiastical support. Barons were divided between supporting Stephen or Matilda; many acted as independent lords. Feudal fragmentation, militarization
4.  Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453)—France vs. England—Dispute over the French throne, houses: Plantagenet (England) vs. Valois (France)—French victory. The Hundred Years’ War was more than a territorial dispute: it involved the rise of national identities and the decline of medieval chivalry.
5. Wars of the Roses  (1455–1487) – Civil war: House of Lancaster vs. House of York – Dynastic rivalry between two branches of the Plantagenets for the English throne: Lancaster (red rose) vs. York (white rose). Victory of the Tudors (Henry VII), end of the Plantagenets: – Centralization of royal power, weakening of the feudal nobility, beginning of the English Renaissance.

Key observations

• The current industrial revolution is not based on a single disruptive technology, but on the convergence of multiple intelligent systems.
• Unlike previous ones, its impact transcends the physical: it modifies human cognition, institutional ethics, and digital geopolitics.
• The pace of transformation is exponential, which demands an unprecedented educational, labor, and regulatory adaptation.

Fernando Solís Fuster