The Age of Revolutions

The Seven Years' War left Britain with a global empire and a huge debt. Its attempts to tax the American colonies led to the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

France had helped the Americans and went bankrupt doing it. In 1789 the French people rose against their king, declared the rights of man and, in 1793, executed him.

Enslaved people in Haiti took the revolution's words at face value and freed themselves. Meanwhile, in Britain, steam engines began a quieter but even bigger revolution.