During the American Revolution, abolitionism became a social movement for the first time. Amid their appeals for liberty and equality, Americans increasingly realized the contradictions of owning slaves, and even prominent Founding Father slaveholders spoke of the need to find ways to reform or phase out the institution. The first explicit abolitions in the world occurred amid the War of Independence. By the early republic, antislavery societies became numerous – though the cause’s momentum was thwarted in the closed-door Constitutional Convention and the rise of cotton in the American South in the 1790s motivated a new spread of slavery.

The French Jacobins rose to power amid the tumultuous circumstances of the early First Republic, having to combat both legions of exterior enemies and dissidents who had long attended their own clubs. The Jacobins pushed their club network further than their contemporaries – establishing more than three thousand locals across France – but also proved unwilling to tolerate dissent amid wartime dangers. The moderates who led the Thermidorian coup soon turned against Jacobin Clubs, suppressing them in stages across 1795.

America’s War of Independence led to an upsurge of support for reform in Britain, as the costly conflict heightened critiques of government repressiveness and lack of representation. In 1778, freeholders mobilized the Association Movement, which sought to raise a national wave of petitions in support of Parliamentary Reform. The movement and its affiliated Society for Constitutional Information caucused reformers of many causes – radical and moderate, including special-interest reformers seeking greater religious freedom and/or antislavery measures – together to make a common push for systemic changes.

Whereas scholars have typically viewed the movements described here in isolation, Friends of Freedom demonstrates how they developed as interconnected social movements that created political organizing as we know it. Friends of Freedom corresponded across movements and nations, seeking to model what a new inclusive regime of liberty could be. Modern social movements still use many of the same tools in building and spreading their campaigns.

American examples led British reformers to mobilize as they never had before. Amid the John Wilkes controversies of the late 1760s, which became a flash point for concerns over the unrepresentativeness of the British Parliament, government corruption, and rights to free speech, liberal supporters organized the Society of Supporters of the Bill of Rights with a Virginian as its secretary. Seeking to affiliate reformers’ support across Britain and the empire, while endeavoring to also support Americans during the prerevolutionary controversies, the Supporters and their successor organizations provide structure to the reform movement, whereas previously politicians had sought to maintain their “independence“ and avoid formal organizations.

Antislavery agitation spread through reformers with American contacts, but Britain’s movement to abolish the slave trade became the largest social movement of the era. Publishing damning exposés of the traffic, lobbying Members of Parliament, and forming vibrant locals across the British isles, the movement sponsored massive petition-signings that (unlike preceding reform movements) mobilized across social class, while women were also mobilized for boycotting against slave-produced products. The movement only failed to produce immediate results due to a countermovement centered in the slave ports that raised counterpetitions and lobbied for British economic self-interest, particularly once war against Revolutionary France began in 1793.

Whereas Americans had quickly won redress amid the Stamp Act controversy, over the following decade the use of similar, affiliated social movement organizations exacerbated rivalries with Britain and eventually mobilized the War of Independence. First, colonists responded to the hated Townshend Acts of 1767 with boycotting associations that sought to overturn the measure through economic warfare – that only led to partial changes. American rights became a partisan issue with Britain, as colonial patriots increasingly allied with the Wilkes and Liberty movement. The enduring tax on tea and the colonial resistance it inspired in 1774 motivated British passage of the Coercive Acts, that militarized the colonial networks and led them to prepare for war. Committees of Safety and Security seized power in many locales and proved integral in mobilizing the civil war against the British.

French Revolutionary principles and mobilization methods radicalized colonial Saint-Domingue (the future Haiti) even more profoundly than France itself. The collapse of absolutism set all factions in competition – leading to standoffs between elite planters and gens de couleur (free men of color) over voting rights, while conflicts between French abolitionists and colonial lobbyists also destabilized the social order. All sides, however, sought to mobilize social movements along recent revolutionary lines – organizing corresponding societies to make their pressure felt. The slave revolt that began the Haitian Revolution erupted amid near-civil war, as the fundamental questions of the era could not be contained by the small, repressive elite that had long controlled the colony.

The French Jacobins were founded in November 1789 after an inspiring letter arrived from the London Revolution Society, a minor British reform organization made up mostly of leading Protestant Dissenters. Thereafter, they mobilized a network of affiliated societies explicitly along Anglo-American lines, creating a powerful pressure-group capable of spreading revolutionary principles and influencing the National Assembly. Though barely surviving division and attempted suppression in 1791, as the Revolution radicalized they became poised to be an unparalleled force in French politics.

This chapter explores the American Sons of Liberty as the first modern social movement. Contesting Parliament’s Stamp Act of 1765, colonists across the British possessions mobilized angry protests and – even more consequently – affiliated through correspondence and deputations to create a new sort of alliance. For the first time, societies openly affiliated in pursuit of a common political objective. The repeal of the Stamp Act just months later, as the American movement won sympathy and respect in Britain, demonstrated the measure’s efficacy, and the Sons’ model would soon be called upon again.

Amid an Enlightened era, dissenting religious groups clamored for toleration and/or religious freedom, mobilizing their own campaigns and helping staff with those of the era’s other prominent movements. British Dissenters had long sought repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, which limited their rights of office-holding and other honors – while American colonists bristled against official churches that had also taken hold in the colonies. The American Revolution led to an upsurge in favor of religious freedom in America that overturned almost all religious restrictions by the 1790s, though British Dissenters’ movements over the same years met reversals from a stronger Establishment.

The radical changes of the early First French Republic inspired British reformers to form their own unprecedentedly inclusive club network, the London Corresponding Society. Openly trying to recruit workingmen, unlike elite preceding Parliamentary Reform networks, the society pushed for universal suffrage and a rapid opening of British politics. The organization’s potential sparked a much more successful counter-mobilization, however, from the Society for the Preservation of Liberty and Property from Republicans and Levellers, which gloried in the unreformed British system and sought to repress reform agitation. After the Declaration of War with France in 1793, most dissent was driven underground.

The corresponding societies of the Age of Revolutions survived through turning into more durable organizations – political parties. The Democratic-Republicans hotly contested the election of 1796 but suffered reversals for being Francophile enthusiasts amid the Quasi-War of 1798. Despite being threatened with repression by the Alien and Sedition Acts, however, party activists remobilized for the election of 1800, which brought Thomas Jefferson to the presidency and the Democratic-Republicans into power.

The hopes of the French Revolution were most keenly felt by their Catholic coreligionists in Ireland. Using revolutionary universalism to surmount long-standing religious differences, the United Irishmen were founded in 1791 to create a new political network for substantive reforms. The network faced suppression after the 1793 Declaration of War, however, and reorganized into militant underground militia cells. Seeking aid from the French government for a militant uprising, the United Irish ultimately rose with disastrous results in 1798.