French Revolution Dbq

Europe and France during the 17th to 18th century faced a multitude of challenges and improvements. As a new era allowed economic development to grow, colonies in Europe started expanding their political control to new continents. In the meantime, the French Revolution spurred many rebellions as citizens strive to adopt not only new sets of government policies, but also to establish new democratic systems. Another crucial challenge to the nations during this time was the fight for nature of citizenship. During the Enlightenment and French Revolution, the marginalization of women, slaves, and Jews from the society can be attributed to debates about gender roles, natural human rights and religious conflicts.
Influential thinkers like Jean Jacques

Around 6 million African slaves were traded by the Europeans alone, bringing great political power to nations like Britain who controlled hundreds of slave plantations. Even though most of the Enlightenment thinkers disagreed with the idea of slavery and believed that individual freedom created a peaceful society, people like Montesquieu still thought slavery was necessary in order to balance the nature of labor systems. Montesquieu not only defended enslavement, he also spoke in favor for slave holders' property rights. During the Atlantic slave trade period, there was also very little advocates who pushed to abolish slavery, resulting in little to no progress in the emancipation of slaves. Environmental determinism, which was "the belief that environment shaped character" also led to the idea that freedom wasn't for slaves. Slaves were essentially seen to not have the natural right to declare themselves as free because they never had the freedom to start off with. Freedom was only an imagination to slaves, as they were definitely not seen as equals during the time period. During the French revolution, slaves in Saint Dominigue, one of the largest slave colonies at the time, was able to abolish slavery through multiple rebellions in which forced the French to submerge to their requests. A few years after the success, Saint Domingue was then again faced with a new challenge from Napoleon and his French army. Toussaint Breda, a leader during the revolution fought many wars and defended his nation. People like Toussaint believed that all slaves had their own civil rights, and no one should be subjected to chains. After gruesome battles, Haiti was eventually declared as an independent state around the 18th century. During 1838, Britain also eventually declared to abolish and end slavery in response to slave revolts. Slaves in Saint Domingue fought for their own