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Many indigenous people died at the hands of the European colonists. Some were killed deliberately and others died of diseases, such as smallpox, contracted from the colonists. As colonies grew and thrived, the colonists typically began to resent their distant rulers. European colonists felt that they had worked hard to create their own societies and disliked having to pay taxes to their colonial monarchs. As time went

Living in a Diaspora People who must live away from their home nations are sometimes said to live in a diaspora . This word means “a scatter- ing.” If it refers to the Jews, the term is capitalized.

on, colonists also often stopped feeling any real loyalty to their former homelands. Many of the children and grandchildren of original colonists had never been to Europe and had no reason to

think of it as home. ■ Revolution

Many modern nations were born from revolutions. Resentments against the distant monarchs would build over time until colonial leaders declared independence, fighting a war against the ruling country if necessary. Eventually the new nation formed its own government. Many independence days commemorate a particular moment in this revolutionary process. The United States was one of the first countries to rebel against its European rulers. The American Revolution was partly the result of a philosophical movement called the Enlightenment and new ways of thinking that were popular in France and North America at that time. Political philosophers of the 1600s and 1700s, such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, emphasized the natural rights of each individual rather than the authority of the state. Leading citizens in North America and Europe read about these concepts and began to develop their own ideas about how nations should be organized. This new philosophy inspired the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the document that launched the American Revolution in 1776. The French Revolution followed closely on the heels of the American Revolution, erupting in 1789. Although French leaders were clearly influenced by the American experience, French revolutionaries were rebelling against their local monarch, unlike the Americans, who had fought against a distant one. Many of the Spanish colonies in Latin America followed suit and had their own revolutions in the early 1800s.

Independence Days

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