THE WORLD ATLAS

Chapter · Age of Revolutions

A New Nation Is Born

The world in 1783

In September 1783 the Treaty of Paris ended the American Revolutionary War and recognised the independence of the United States, a republic stretching from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. Britain lost thirteen colonies but kept Canada and was building a new empire in India, where the East India Company ruled Bengal.

France and Spain, which had helped the Americans, gained little and were sinking into debt; France's financial crisis would lead to revolution in 1789. Catherine the Great annexed Crimea in 1783, and Russia was now the largest country on Earth, though Qing China under the Qianlong Emperor ruled more people and had reached its greatest size. Ideas of the Enlightenment about rights and reason were spreading, steam engines were beginning to power British mills, and the Montgolfier brothers flew the first hot-air balloons. Yet the Atlantic slave trade was at its peak, carrying around 80,000 Africans a year to the Americas.

Open the map in 1783

The great powers

Region by region

Southern Africa

The Dutch Cape Colony had expanded east to the Fish River, where colonists fought the Xhosa in the first frontier war (1779 to 1781). Portugal held Angola and Mozambique and drew enslaved people from the interior through the Lunda and Luba kingdoms. Among the Nguni peoples of the south-east, chiefdoms such as the Mthethwa and Ndwandwe were growing, while the small Zulu clan was not yet powerful. The Omani Busaidi rulers held Zanzibar and claimed the Swahili coast, though their Mazrui governors in Mombasa acted almost independently, and in Madagascar the Merina highlands, still divided, would be united by Andrianampoinimerina from about 1785.

Northern Africa

Sultan Mohammed III ruled Morocco and in 1777 had been among the first to recognise the United States. Egypt was an Ottoman province dominated by the Mamluk beys Murad and Ibrahim. Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli were autonomous Ottoman regencies whose corsairs threatened Mediterranean shipping. In West Africa, Asante, Dahomey, Oyo and the Bambara kingdom of Segu were major powers, the Funj Sultanate was in decline, and Ethiopia was split among regional warlords in the Era of the Princes.

Europe

George III ruled Great Britain, where William Pitt the Younger became prime minister in December 1783. Louis XVI ruled an indebted France, Charles III Spain and Maria I Portugal. Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, was pushing radical reforms in the Habsburg lands, Frederick the Great ruled Prussia, and Catherine II ruled Russia. Poland-Lithuania under Stanislaw August had lost a third of its territory in the First Partition (1772), Gustav III ruled Sweden, and Abdul Hamid I the Ottoman Empire.

Middle East & South Asia

The Ottoman Empire was weakened after its defeat by Russia in 1774. Iran was ruled by the Zand dynasty under Ali Murad Khan, with Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar rising in the north, and Timur Shah Durrani ruled Afghanistan. In Arabia, the Saudi emirate of Diriyah spread Wahhabi teaching across Najd. In India the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II was powerless in Delhi; the Maratha Confederacy, led by Nana Fadnavis for the boy Peshwa Madhavrao II, was the strongest Indian power; Tipu Sultan of Mysore was at war with the British; and the East India Company under Warren Hastings ruled Bengal and Bihar and held territory around Madras and Bombay.

Northern & Central Asia

Russia ruled Siberia and the northern Kazakh steppe, and its fur traders were moving into the Aleutian Islands and Alaska. Qing China had destroyed the Dzungar Khanate in the 1750s and ruled the conquered region, called Xinjiang ("New Frontier"), through a military governor at Ili. The Kazakh hordes were divided and partly under Russian protection, while the Uzbek khanates of Bukhara, Khiva and the rising Kokand ruled the Central Asian oases.

East Asia

The Qianlong Emperor ruled Qing China at its greatest extent, including Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet, with a population nearing 300 million. Korea was ruled by the reforming King Jeongjo. In Japan, the shogun Tokugawa Ieharu and his minister Tanuma Okitsugu faced the Tenmei famine, worsened by the eruption of Mount Asama in 1783.

Southeast Asia

Rama I had founded the Chakri dynasty and the new capital of Bangkok (the Rattanakosin Kingdom) in 1782, after Burma destroyed Ayutthaya in 1767. In Burma, King Bodawpaya of the Konbaung dynasty had just come to the throne. Vietnam was in turmoil as the Tay Son rebels drove out the Nguyen lords. The Dutch VOC controlled Java and the spice islands but was weakened by war with Britain, and Spain ruled the Philippines.

Northern North America

Britain ruled the Province of Quebec and Nova Scotia, which received tens of thousands of Loyalist refugees from the United States in 1783. The Hudson's Bay Company traded across Rupert's Land, competing with Montreal merchants who would form the North West Company. Denmark-Norway ruled Greenland, and Russian fur traders were reaching Alaska, where Inuit, Dene and other Indigenous peoples still held almost all the land.

Southern North America

The United States, governed by the Confederation Congress under the Articles of Confederation, now held the lands from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, between British Canada and Spanish Florida. Spain regained Florida in 1783 and held Louisiana west of the Mississippi, along with New Spain, which reached north to California and Texas, and Cuba. France kept Saint-Domingue, the world's richest sugar colony, and Britain held Jamaica and other Caribbean islands.

Northern South America

Spain ruled through the Viceroyalties of New Granada (Bogota) and Peru (Lima), and had recently put down two huge revolts: the Comuneros of New Granada (1781) and the Indigenous uprising led by Tupac Amaru II in Peru (1780 to 1781). Portuguese Brazil, governed by a viceroy in Rio de Janeiro, was producing gold, sugar and cotton with the labour of enslaved Africans. Britain, the Dutch and France held the Guianas.

Southern Cone

Spain had created the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata in 1776, ruled from Buenos Aires and including Paraguay, Uruguay and Upper Peru (Bolivia), and had taken Colonia do Sacramento from Portugal for good in 1777. Chile was a Spanish captaincy-general. The Jesuits had been expelled in 1767, and Mapuche and other Indigenous peoples still controlled southern Chile, the pampas and Patagonia.

Australasia & Oceania

James Cook's voyages (1768 to 1779) had mapped New Zealand and eastern Australia, which Cook claimed for Britain in 1770, and Cook was killed in Hawaii in 1779. Britain's First Fleet would found a penal colony at Sydney in 1788. Aboriginal nations, Papuan peoples and Maori iwi still held their lands, and in Hawaii the chief Kamehameha was beginning his rise to power.

Events

  1. Burma destroys Ayutthaya; Siam is reunited soon after
  2. First Partition of Poland by Russia, Prussia and Austria
  3. The American Declaration of Independence
  4. Tupac Amaru II leads a great Indigenous revolt in Peru
  5. British surrender at Yorktown
  6. Rama I founds Bangkok and the Chakri dynasty
  7. Treaty of Paris recognises US independence; Russia annexes Crimea

Moments of this period

Wars of this period

More chapters

Sources