Enlightenment ideas explode into political action as the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions overthrow established authority and establish new principles of governance based on popular sovereignty and natural rights.
British taxation without colonial representation sparks a constitutional crisis that will escalate into revolution within a decade.
Thomas Jefferson's declaration articulates Lockean principles of natural rights and government by consent, justifying the American break from Britain.
Britain recognizes American independence, and the world's first large-scale republic begins the experiment of self-governance.
The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia creates a federal republic with separation of powers, directly implementing Montesquieu's and Locke's ideas.
A Parisian mob storms the Bastille fortress-prison, marking the symbolic beginning of the French Revolution and the collapse of absolute monarchy.
The French National Assembly proclaims universal rights to liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression — the Enlightenment made into law.
The French king is guillotined in Paris, sending shockwaves across Europe and marking the point of no return for the Revolution.
Under Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety, an estimated 17,000 are executed by guillotine as the Revolution devours its own.
Enslaved people in Saint-Domingue launch the largest and only successful slave revolt in history, demanding the liberty that the French Revolution promised but denied them.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines declares Haiti independent — the world's first free Black republic and the second independent nation in the Western Hemisphere.