Causes of the French Revolution

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The Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire.

The causes of the French Revolution are the significant factors that led to the French Revolution in 1789. Although France in 1785 faced economic difficulties, mostly concerning the equitability of taxation, it was one of the richest and most powerful nations of Europe.[1] The French people also enjoyed more political freedom and a lower incidence of arbitrary punishment than any of their fellow Europeans. However, Louis XVI, his ministers, and the widespread French nobility had become immensely unpopular. This was a consequence of the fact that peasants and, to a lesser extent, the poor and those aspiring to be bourgeoisie, were burdened with ruinously high taxes levied to support a wealthy monarchy, along with aristocrats and their sumptuous, often gluttonous lifestyles.[2] The fall of the ancien rgime in France may be blamed, in part, on its own rigidity. Aristocrats were confronted by the rising ambitions of the merchants, tradesmen and prosperous farmers, who were allied with aggrieved peasants, wage-earners and intellectuals influenced by the ideas of Enlightenment philosophers. As the revolution proceeded, power devolved from the monarchy and the privileged-by-birth to more-representative political bodies, like legislative assemblies, but conflicts among the formerly allied republican groups became the source of considerable discord and bloodshed. A growing number of the French citizenry had absorbed the ideas of "equality" and "freedom of the individual" as presented by Voltaire,Denis Diderot, Turgot, and other philosophers and social theorists of the Enlightenment. The American Revolution demonstrated that it was plausible for Enlightenment ideas - about how a government should be organized - to actually be put into practice.[3] Some American diplomats, like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, had lived in Paris where they consorted freely with members of the French intellectual class. Furthermore, contact between American revolutionaries and the French troops who served as anti-British mercenaries in North America helped spread revolutionary ideals to the French people. After a time, many of the French began to attack the undemocratic nature of their own government, push for freedom of speech, challenge the Roman Catholic Church, and decry the prerogatives of the nobles.[4]
Contents
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1 Enlightenment Ideas 2 Economics and finances

2.1 Debt

o o

2.2 Taxation 2.3 Failure of reforms

3 Famine 4 Transparency 5 References 6 Notes

Enlightenment Ideas[edit source | editbeta]

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Montesquieu, commentator and political philosopher.

Note that there is controversy about how deeply, by 1787, Enlightenment ideas had been able to penetrate the various classes of French society. There is also disagreement as to the degree to which these ideas were

Economics and finances[edit source | editbeta]

France in 1787, although it faced some difficulties, was one of the most economically capable nations of Europe. The French population exceeded 28 million; of Europe's 178 to 188 millions, only Imperial Russia had a greater population (37 to 41 million).[5]France was also among the most urbanized countries of Europe,[6] the population ofParis was second only to that of London (approximately 500,000 v. 800,000),[5] and six of Europe's thirty-five largest cities were French.[7]

Other measures confirm France's inherent strength. France had 5.3 million of Europe's approximately thirty million male peasants.[8] Its area under cultivation,[8] productivity per unit area,[9] level of industrialization, and gross national product [10] (about 14% of the continental European product, excluding Russia, and 6 10 percent above the level elsewhere in Europe [11]) all placed France near the very top of the scale. In short, while it may have lagged slightly behind the Low Countries, and possibly Switzerland, in per capita wealth, the sheer size of the French economy made it the premier economic power of continental Europe.

Debt[edit source | editbeta]

It was debt that led to the long-running financial crisis of the French government. It is said that before the revolution, the French debt had risen from 8 billion to 12 billion livres. Extravagant expenditures on luxuries by Louis XVI, whose rule began in 1774, were compounded by debts that were run up during the reign of his even-more-profligate predecessor, Louis XV (who reigned from 1715 to 1774). Heavy expenditures to conduct the losing Seven Years' War against Britain (17561763), and France's backing of the Americans in their War of Independence, ran the tab up even further (Needs citation). Louis XV and his ministers were deeply unhappy about Britain's victory in the Seven Years' War and, in the years following the Treaty of Paris, they began drawing up a long-term plan that would involve constructing a larger navy and building an anti-British coalition of allies. In theory, this would eventually lead to a war of revenge and see France regain its colonies from Britain. In practice, it resulted in a mountain of debts. Louis XV had spent liberally to establish Versailles as a showplace city worthy to be the French capital, in function if not in fact. There, he built a Ministry of War, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs (where the Treaty of Paris (1783) ending the American Revolutionary War was signed), and a Ministry of the Navy. In Louis XV's high council, the parti dvot ("devout" party), led by the Comte d'Argenson, secretary of state for war, and the parti philosophique ("philosophical" party), which supported the Enlightenment philosophy and was led by Machault d'Arnouville, controller-general of finances, vied for power. On the advice of his mistress, the Marquise de Pompadour, the king supported the policy of fiscal justice designed by d'Arnouville. In order to finance the budget deficit, which amounted to 100 million livres in 1745, Machault d'Arnouville created a tax of 5 percent on all revenues (the vingtime), a measure that affected the privileged classes as well as the rest of the population. Still, expenditures outpaced revenues. [12] Ultimately, Louis XV failed to overcome these fiscal problems, mainly because he was incapable of harmonizing the conflicting parties at court and arriving at coherent economic policies. Worse, Louis seemed to be aware of the forces of anti-monarchism threatening his family's rule, yet he failed to do anything to stop them.[13] Louis XV's death in 1774 saw the French monarchy at its nadir, politically, morally, and financially. Under the new king, Louis XV's grandson, Louis XVI, radical financial reforms by his ministers, Turgot and Malesherbes, angered the nobles and were blocked by the parlements who insisted that

the king did not have the legal right to levy new taxes. So, in 1776, Turgot was dismissed and Malesherbes resigned. They were replaced by Jacques Necker, who supported the American Revolution and proceeded with a policy of taking out large international loans instead of raising taxes.

Jacques Necker

France sent Rochambeau, Lafayette and de Grasse, along with large land and naval forces, to help the Americans. French aid proved decisive in forcing the main British army to surrender at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781.[14] The Americans gained their independence, and the war ministry rebuilt the French army. However, the British sank the main French fleet in 1782, and France gained little, except for the colonies ofTobago and Senegal, from the Treaty of Paris (1783) that concluded the war. The war cost 1,066 million livres, a huge sum, that was financed by new loans at high interest rates, but no new taxes were imposed. Necker concealed the crisis from the public by explaining only that ordinary revenues exceeded ordinary expenses, and by not mentioning the loans at all.[15] When Necker's tax policy failed miserably, Louis dismissed him, and replaced him, in 1783, with Charles Alexandre de Calonne, who increased public spending in an attempt to "buy" the country's way out of debt. This policy also failed; therefore, Louis convened the Assembly of Notables in 1787 to discuss a revolutionary new fiscal reform proposed by Calonne. When the nobles were told the extent of the debt, they were shocked; however, the shock did not motivate them to rally behind the plan but to reject it. This negative turn of events signaled to Louis that he had lost the ability to rule as an absolute monarch, and he fell into depression. [16] Britain, too, was heavily indebted as a result of these conflicts; but Britain had far more advanced fiscal institutions in place to deal with it. France was a wealthier country than Britain, and its national debt was no

greater than the British one. In each country, servicing the debt accounted for about one-half the government's annual expenditure; where they differed was in the effective rates of interest. In France, the debt was financed at almost twice the interest rate as the debt across the Channel. This demanded a much higher level of taxation and less flexibility in raising money to deal with unforeseen emergencies. (See also Eden Agreement.) Edmund Burke, no friend of the revolution, wrote in 1790: "the public, whether represented by a monarch or by a senate, can pledge nothing but the public estate; and it can have no public estate except in what it derives from a just and proportioned imposition upon the citizens at large." Because the nobles successfully defended their privileges, the King of France lacked the means to impose a "just and proportioned" tax. The desire to do so led directly to the decision in 1788 to call the Estates-General into session.[17] The financial strain of servicing old debt and the excesses of the current royal court caused dissatisfaction with the monarchy, contributed to national unrest, and culminated in the French Revolution of 1789.

Taxation[edit source | editbeta]

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Since it was one of the major trading nations, France needed to raise most of its tax revenue internally, rather than through customstariffs. Taxes on commerce consisted of internal tariffs among the regions of France. This set up an arbitrary tax-barrier (sometimes, as in Paris, in physical form) at every regional boundary, and these barriers prevented France from developing as a unified market. Collections of taxes, such as the extremely unpopular salt tax, the gabelle, were contracted to private collectors ("tax farmers"), who, like all farmers, preoccupied themselves with making their holdings grow. So, they collected, quite legitimately, far more than required, remitted the tax to the State, and pocketed the remainder. These unwieldy systems led to arbitrary and unequal collection of France'sconsumption taxes. (See also Wall of the Farmers-General, Jean Chouan, Octroi, Claude Nicolas Ledoux, and the Indian salt tax.)

Htel de la gabelle (House of the Salt Tax) in Bernay, Eure, Upper Normandy, built in 1750 by Brant and Ange-Jacques Gabriel.

Peasants were also required to pay a tenth of their income or produce to the church (the tithe), a land tax to the state (the taille), a 5% property tax (the vingtime), and a tax on the number of people in the family (capitation). Further royal and seigneurial obligations might be paid in several ways: in labor (the corve), in kind, or, rarely, in coin. Peasants were also obligated to their landlords for: rent in cash (the cens), a payment related to their amount of annual production (the champart), and taxes on the use of the nobles' mills, wine-presses, and bakeries (thebanalits). In good times, the taxes were burdensome; in harsh times, they were devastating. After a less-than-fulsome harvest, people would starve to death during the winter. Many tax collectors and other public officials bought their positions from the king, sometimes on an annual basis, sometimes in perpetuity. Often an additional fee was paid to upgrade their position to one that could be passed along as an inheritance. Naturally, holders of these offices tried to reimburse themselves by milking taxpayers as hard as possible. For instance, in a civil lawsuit, judges required that both parties pay a bribe (called, with tongue-in-cheek, the pices, the spices); this, effectively, put justice out of the reach of all but the wealthy. The system also exempted the nobles and the clergy from taxes (with the exception of a modest quit-rent, an ad valorem tax on land). The tax burden, therefore, devolved to the peasants, wage-earners, and the professional and business classes, also known as the third estate. Further, people from less-privileged walks of life were blocked from acquiring even petty positions of power in the regime. This caused further resentment.

Failure of reforms[edit source | editbeta]

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During the reigns of Louis XV (17151774) and Louis XVI (17741792), several ministers, most notably Turgot and Necker, proposed revisions to the French tax system so as to include the nobles as taxpayers, but these proposals were not adopted because of resistance from the parlements (provincial courts of appeal). Members of these courts bought their positions from the king, as well as the right to transfer their positions hereditarily through payment of an annual fee, the paulette. Membership in such courts, or appointment to other public positions, often led to elevation to the nobility (the so-called Nobles of the Robe, as distinguished from the nobility of ancestral military origin, the Nobles of the Sword.) While these two categories of nobles were often at odds, they both sought to retain their privileges. Because the need to raise taxes placed the king at odds with the nobles and the upper bourgeoisie, he appointed as his finance ministers, "rising men" (to use Franois Mignet's insightful term), usually of non-noble origin. These commoners, Turgot, Chrtien de Malesherbes, and Jacques Necker lobbied for reforms in taxation and other moves toward moderation, such as Necker's attempts to reduce the lavishness of the king's

court. Each one failed. Instead, the "Parkinson's law" of bureaucratic overextended waste prevailed, to the detriment of the gentry and other non-seigneurial classes. In contrast, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, appointed finance minister in 1783, restored lavish spending reminiscent of the age of Louis XIV. By the time Calonne brought together the Assembly of Notables on 22 February 1787 to address the financial situation, France had reached a state of virtual bankruptcy; no one would lend the king money sufficient to meet the expenses of the royal court and the government. According to Mignet, the loans amounted to 1.64 billion livres, and the annual deficit was 140 millions. Calonne was succeeded by his chief critic, tienne Charles de Lomnie de Brienne, archbishop of Sens, but the fundamental situation was unchanged: the government had no credit. To address this, the Assembly of Notables sanctioned "the establishment of provincial assemblies, regulation of the corn trade, abolition of corves, and a new stamp tax", but the assembly dispersed on 25 May 1787 without actually installing a longer-term program with prospects for success.

Famine[edit source | editbeta]

French bread

See also: the "Great Fear" These problems were all compounded by a great scarcity of food in the 1780s. A series of crop failures caused a shortage of grain, consequently raising the price of bread. Because bread was the main source of nutrition for poor peasants, this led to starvation. Contributing to the peasant unrest were conspiracy theories that the lack of food was a deliberate plot by the nobility.[18] The two years prior to the revolution (178889) saw meager

harvests and harsh winters, possibly because of a strong El Nio cycle [19] caused by the 1783 Lakieruption in Iceland.[20] The Little Ice Age also affected farmers' choices of crops to plant; in other parts of Europe, peasant farmers had adopted the potato as its staple crop. The potato had been introduced to France during the 16th century and despite resistance had largely supplanted the turnip and rutabaga in France.[21] Despite encouragement from individuals like Antoine Parmentierand Louis XVI, grain was still a much more popular staple crop in France. This was partially because potatoes were seen as more difficult to transport and store than grain.[22] In 1789, a normal worker, a farmer or a laborer, earned anywhere from fifteen to thirty sousper day; skilled workers received thirty to forty. A family of four needed about two loaves of bread a day to survive. The price of a loaf of bread rose by 67 percent in 1789 alone, from nine sous to fifteen.[citation needed] Many peasants were relying on charity to survive, and they became increasingly motivated by their hunger. The "bread riots" were the first manifestations of a roots-based revolutionary sentiment. Mass urbanization coincided with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and more and more people moved into French cities seeking employment. The cities became overcrowded with the hungry, destitute, and disaffected, an ideal environment for revolution. "Bakers' queues" became the term for the long line-ups at shops when bread was short. The phrase is quite rarely used, and it is generally only seen in references to Thomas Carlyle's book The French Revolution: A History. Carlyle uses the phrase at once to condemn the revolutionaries for their failure to meet basic public needs, and as synonym for the angry French public after the French Revolution started to sour.[23]

Transparency[edit source | editbeta]

H. F. Helmolt argued that the issue was not so much the debt per se, but the way the debt was refracted through the lens of Enlightenment principles and the increasing power of third-estate creditors, that is, commoners who held the government's paper. Properly speaking, the people ought to have been accustomed to the fact that the French government did not fulfill its financial obligations, for since the time of Henry IV, that is, within two centuries, it had failed to meet its obligations fifty-six times. In earlier days such catastrophes had not been announced and publicly discussed. Now all France, which for two generations had been worked upon by the party of rationalism, shared the outcry against the financial situation.[24] The struggle with the parlements and nobles to enact reformist measures displayed the extent of the disintegration of the Ancien Rgime. In short order, Protestants regained their rights, and Louis XVI was pressured to produce an annual disclosure of the state of his finances. He also pledged to reconvene the Estates-General within five years. Despite the pretense that France operated under anabsolute monarchy, it became clear that the royal government could not successfully implement the changes it desired without the

consent of the nobility. The financial crisis had become a political crisis as well,[24] and the French Revolution loomed just beyond the horizon.

References[edit source | editbeta]

1. ^ Norman Gash, Reflections on the revolution French Revolution,National Review, July 14, 1790: "Yet in 1789 France was the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful state in Western Europe."[verification needed] 2. ^ For an overview of the time see, for example, F. A. M. Mignet History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814(1824, available on Project Gutenberg): speaking of his arrival for the first session of the Estates, "the king appeared ... The hall resounded with applause on his arrival." Later, July 27, 1789, nearly two weeks after the storming of the Bastille, "when Louis XVI. had left his carriage and received from Bailly's hands the tricolor cockade, and, surrounded by the crowd without guards, had confidently entered the Htel de Ville, cries of "Vive le roi!" burst forth on every side. The reconciliation was complete; Louis XVI received the strongest marks of affection." 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. ^ Mackey, Richard (1976). "American Revolutionary influences on the French Revolution". Conspectus of History 1(3): 57. ^ The Origins of the French Revolution. Historyguide.org (2006-10-30). Retrieved on 2011-11-18. ^ a b Bairoch 1989, p. 941 ^ Bairoch 1989, p. 942 ^ Bairoch 1989, p. 943 ^ a b Bairoch 1989, p. 945 ^ Bairoch 1989, p. 946

10. ^ Bairoch 1989, p. 949 11. ^ Bairoch 1989, pp. 959963 12. ^ Kenneth N. Jassie, "We Don't Have a King: Popular Protest and the Image of the Illegitimate King in the Reign of Louis XV". Consortium on Revolutionary Europe 17501850: Proceedings 1994 23: 211219. Issn: 0093-2574 13. ^ The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon, (171599), a scholarly bibliography by Colin Jones (2002) pp. 124, 132 33, 147 14. ^ Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence: A Study of Arms and Diplomacy, 17741787 (1975) ISBN 0691-06920-4 15. ^ On finance see William Doyle, Oxford History of the French Revolution (1989) pp. 6774 16. ^ John Hardman, Louis XVI, Yale university Press, New Haven and London, 1993 p. 126 17. ^ The French Revolution. Discoverfrance.net. Retrieved on 2011-11-18. 18. ^ Kaplan, Steven. The Famine Plot Persuasion in Eighteenth-Century France. Pennsylvania: Diane Publishing Co, 1982. ISBN 087169-723-8 19. ^ Richard H. Grove (1998). "Global Impact of the 178993 El Nio". Nature393: 318319. doi:10.1038/30636.

20. ^ Wood, C.A., 1992. "The climatic effects of the 1783 Laki eruption" in C. R. Harrington (Ed.), The Year Without a Summer? Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa, pp. 5877 21. ^ "Histoires de lgumes" by M. Pitrat and C. Foury, Institut National de la recherche agronomoique, 2003, p167 22. ^ William L. Langer, "American Foods and Europe's Population Growth 17501850", Journal of Social History, 8#2 (1975), pp. 5166. Retrieved from [1]on 2/29/2012 23. ^ * The French Revolution A History,Thomas Carlyle ISBN 0-7661-8764-0(also Project Gutenberg etext 1301) 24. ^ a b H. F. Helmolt, History of the World, Volume VII, Dodd Mead 1902, pp. 120121.

The Old Regime Provinces of France

2.

3. A leading cause of social stress in France during the Revolution was its large
population. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, France had 20 million people living within its borders, a number equal to nearly 20 percent of the population of non-Russian Europe. Over the course of the century, that number increased by another 8 to 10 million, as epidemic disease and acute food shortages diminished and mortality declined. By contrast, it had increased by only 1 million between 1600 and 1700. Also important, this population was concentrated in the rural countryside: of the nearly 30 million French under Louis XVI, about 80 percent lived in villages of 2,000 or less, with nearly all the rest in fairly small cities (those with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants). 4. The foremost exception, of course, was Paris, which was home to about 600,000 by 1789. Only a handful of other citiesnotably Lyons, Bordeaux, and Marseilleshad more than 100,000 within their limits. These demographics had an enormous impact, both inside and outside France. 5. In addition, the eighteenth century saw the intrusion of capitalism into everyday life. Thanks to a large expansion of overseas trade and a longer-term development of domestic trade, the money economy experienced continued growth. Although selfsufficiency or local exchange remained the preponderant way of economic life, these

incursions of capitalism began drawing everyone into some form of regional and even international exchange. 6. Amid these broad economic and population shifts, daily life in the countryside remained much the same, particularly on small family farms. Their owners and workers were known as peasants, although they differed considerably in wealth and status. A few could claim to be "living nobly," meaning they rented their land to others to work, but many were day-laborers desperate for work in exchange for a place to stay and food to eat. In the middle were others, including independent farmers, sharecroppers, and renters. Historians have estimated that in lean years 90 percent of the peasants lived at or below the subsistence level, earning only enough to feed their families. Others inhabited the countryside, most notably small numbers of noble and non-noble owners of manors, conspicuous by their dwellings, at the least. Consequently, documents on life in the countryside at this time reflect the omnipresence of poverty. One of the most well-known observers of the lateeighteenth-century French countryside, the Englishman Arthur Young, considered these small farms the great weakness of French agriculture, especially when compared with the large, commercial farms he knew at home. Others commenting on the lot of impoverished peasants before 1789 blamed the tensions between rich and poor on the country's vast social differences. 7. Although home to the wealthy and middling, cities tended to be even more unsavory places to live than the countryside. Exposed daily to dirty air and water, urban dwellers could expect to have a shorter life span than their country brethren. Louis-Sbastien Mercier, a writer who adored life in Paris and wrote extensively about all aspects of it, often lamented not only the poor health of city workers but also the strict conditions governing their employment. Guilds regulated almost every sector of the economy and thus limited the number who could enter a trade as an apprentice, become a journeyman, or set up a workshop and retail store as a master. With experience, a worker could theoretically move up the social hierarchy, but in practice such ascent was extremely difficult to achieve, as the limited number of masterships in any given industry tended to be passed down within a family. Thus in some trades and in some cities journeymen complained of feeling restricted and expressed greater solidarity toward their counterparts in other trades than toward their own masters.

8. Bread constituted the staple of most urban diets, so sharp price increases were felt quickly and were loudly protested at grain markets or at local bakers' shops. Most people directed their anger at bread suppliers rather than political authorities, although it was often the municipal and royal authorities who tried to alleviate shortages and prevent such protests. As a result, the credibility and popularity of government officials came to be linked to the functioning of the grain and bread markets.

9. In addition to economic differences, early modern French society was legally stratified by birth. Its three traditional divisions, or "orders," were the clergy [the First Estate], the nobility [the Second Estate], and the common people [Everyone else - - the Third Estate]. Nobles ruled over commoners, but even among commoners, specific individuals (such as officeholders) or groups (such as a particular guild or an entire town) enjoyed privileges unavailable to outsiders. Because these privileges were passed on primarily through inheritance, they tended to constrain social mobilityalthough without preventing it, since they could also be bought or sold. Thus individuals and groups constantly negotiated with one another and with the crown for more and better privileges. Even as these privileges maintained a close grip on eighteenth-century imaginations, writers of the Enlightenment found them too rooted in tradition and proposed that talent supersede birth as the main determinant of social standing. Even when based on merit, they argued, social differences should not be defined by law, as they were in the old regime's orders. Traditionalists countered that a hierarchy of social orders was necessary to hold society together. 10. When the King called for an Estates-General in 1789, the social tensions plaguing the old regime emerged as a central issue of the Revolution.Traditionally, estates representatives had belonged to one of the three orders of society, and in principle each order had an equal voice before the King. Because nobles dominated the clergy, however, the majority of representatives actually came from the two privileged orders, even though they stood for only 5 percent of the population at most. Because each voter actually would exercise one vote in the assembly, this configuration allowed the nobility two of the three votes. The King subsequently agreed to double the size of the delegation of the Third Estate, but this move failed to appease critics of the political system. Many pamphlets appeared suggesting that representatives should vote by "head" rather than by "order" (meaning all representatives should vote together as a single assembly, rather than as three separate bodies representing three separate orders). 11. The purpose of such pamphlets was not merely to win greater representation for the Third Estate. Their authors were making the case for a new concept of society, in which commoners, especially the educated middle classes, had the same value as the other orders. Despite the social rifts surrounding the political debate of mid-1789, most contemporaries fervently sought social

unity. This suggests that social unrest may not necessarily have been the basic cause of the outbreak of the Revolution. Indeed, one wonders if the nobility's fear of losing its privileges, rather than the assertiveness of the middle classes, might have been the most important factor in the events that followed. 12. Far beyond the deputies' meeting hall in Versailles, another kind of social unrest was brewing in the countryside. Upon hearing about the taking of the Bastille, peasants decided they, too, could press for social change through drastic actions. In the summer of 1789 hundreds of thousands mobilized to attack lords' manors and destroy the bitter symbols of seigneurialism: weather vanes, protective walls, and especially property deeds setting forth feudal dues that peasants were required to pay the lord. When news of this rural unrest reached the newly renamed National Assembly in Paris, its deputies, feeling pressured to stay ahead of events in the countryside, responded by announcing the "abolition of feudalism." Their decrees of 4 August represented the first step toward the destruction of the theoretical basis of old regime's system of privileges. Within the year, the assembly would do away with the whole concept of nobility, setting off a vigorous anti noble propaganda campaign in the press. 13. Urban workers, too, found an opportunity to express their discontent, through elections to the Estates-General. Elections were held in the form of neighborhood gatherings, at which participants collectively designated a representative and compiled cahiers de dolance (lists of grievances) to present to the King, who would communicate them to guide the representatives. Many of these petitions expressed opposition to the privileges of nobles and officeholders. The National Assembly decrees of August 1789 against privilegewhich had been the centerpiece of the French social orderwere no doubt cheered by the populace. 14. For all its momentousness, however, the elimination of privilege did not bring an end to the social conflicts underlying the Revolution. Instead, it marked the beginning of another system of social distinctions, set forth in a new constitution introduced by the National Assembly. The most notable of these was the distinction between "active" citizens, who were granted full rights to vote and hold office, and "passive" citizens, who were subject to the same laws but could not vote or hold office. Membership in one class or the other was determined by one's income level, gender, race, religion, and

profession. With the Le Chapelier Law of 1791, the National Assembly further differentiated workers from property owners and banned worker associations as being harmful to national unity. 15. The National Assembly seemed unwilling to grant workers full political and social participation in the new society. One reason for this reluctance was the widespread fear of further unrest. Another was the strong belief among spokespersons for the Enlightenment that only those with a propertied stake in society could be trusted to exercise reason, or to think for themselves. Furthermore, many reform-minded revolutionaries argued that economicbased "combinations" formed by workers too closely resembled corporate guilds and would impinge on the freedom of the individual. 16. Whatever the assembly's motives, its actions were met with strong opposition. Workers were not untrustworthy or retrograde traditionalists, they retorted, but hard-working, uncomplicated, and honest citizens, unlike the effete and "feminized" rich. Calling themselves sans-culottes to indicate that they wore pants, not knee breeches (a symbol of luxury), they glorified direct action, strength, candor, and patriotism, ideals that radical journalists associated with artisanal work and found lacking in property ownership alone. The fact that such radicals as Elise Loustallot, Jacques Roux, and Jacques-Rn Hbert were educated men who did not exactly work with their hands for a living led some to question whether their discussions of sans-culottes expressed ideas held by workers themselves. Moreover, one may wonder whether the views associated with the sans-culottes extended much beyond Paris. All the same, the sans-culotte concept took on increasing political significance, because those in authority saw reflected in it the genuine working man. Thus the use of the sans-culotte in radical rhetoric led contemporaries to believe that rich and poor were in conflict throughout the Revolution. How this perception influenced the course of revolutionary events may be seen in the case of Gracchus Babeuf. Before the Revolution, Babeuf had been an agent for seigneurial lords, but after 1789, he became increasingly attracted to the idea of social and political egalitarianism. By 1795, he was leading a conspiracy, although his goals and plans remained vague. Nevertheless, the political authorities worried about class war; they considered him a dangerous egalitarian revolutionary and arrested him. At his trial, Babeuf delivered an inspiring attack on private

property and endorsed a system of property sharing that many see as a forerunner of socialism. 17. In rural areas, social cleavages were as deeply rooted as in the cities. Peasants, in their lists of grievances of 1789, expressed hostility to noble landlords; and, as noted earlier, this hostility intensified after Bastille Day. From July through September 1789, word of the National Assembly's decisions and of the popular revolts in Paris and other cities spread across the French countryside. It was also rumored that frightened nobles were sending groups of armed "brigands" to burn fields, steal crops, and attack villages in order to keep down the peasantry in this moment of crisis. Propelled by what became known as "the great fear," peasants in various regions of France took matters into their own hands, forming armed groups to defend their fields and their villages. The 4 August decrees, largely a response to this upheaval, initially quieted the countryside and soon cemented the peasants to the revolutionary cause 18. Like the workers and small property owners in cities, peasants questioned the settlement reached by the National Assembly in 1791. In contrast to Parisian artisans, however, who began pushing for a more far-reaching revolution in 179294, large numbers of cultivators hankered for a return to stability in their villages. But this seemed a remote possibility as the Revolution and its wars expanded. 19. For the peasantry, the foremost cause of instability during the Revolution was the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of 1790. The Civil Constitution, like the Revolution itself, originated in the fiscal crisis that the National Assembly inherited from the crown. Needing substantial revenues, the assembly targeted church lands, which accounted for 10 percent of all landed wealth in France. The legislature divested the church of its property and in exchange took charge of its expenses and administration. The revolutionaries, imbued with the Enlightenment's criticism of the Catholic religion, suspected bishops and archbishops of resisting all change. To ensure the loyalty of parish priests, the assembly (in whose employ the priests now found themselves) added to the Civil Constitution a requirement that all clergy swear an oath of allegiance to the nation. However, almost half refused to do so. Because most "refractory priests" (those who refused the oath) lived in the countryside, the Civil Constitutiondesigned to promote national unity and prevent religion from becoming a source of resistance to

the Revolutioninstead generated considerable resentment among the peasantry. This resentment increased with the decree of 9 March 1792, authorizing the confiscation of grain to prevent "hoarding." 20. Thus in both towns and countryside, it seemed that the Revolution was not producing the hoped-for results. Instead of bringing unity and a quick, political resolution to the questions of 1789, as intended by its originators, the Revolution was producing further conflicts. What had happened? Had the revolutionaries expected too much? Did the fault lie with the new political elite, because they excluded the lower classes from the optimistic prospects for change? Or did the leaders, despite their commitment to social equality, find it impossible to avoid making private property (and the differences in wealth it necessarily generated) the cornerstone of the new society? The events of the 1790s brought France no closer to determining how and whether social equality could be achieved through political measures. This very issue continues to vex modern societylong after the social stresses of 1789 have dissolved into the dustbin of history. Indeed, it remains one of the most vibrant legacies of the French Revolution.

THE POLITICAL CAUSES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

1. THE ENGLISH MONARCHY TIGHTENS ITS CONTROL OVER THE COLONIES. After winning the French and Indian War, King George II decided that it was time to tighten Britain's control over the colonies. There were several reasons for this, one was because the Indians still posed a threat to the British government and second, the French and Indian War which lasted seven years had cost Britain a lot of money. The King wanted the colonies to help pay for all those expenses. The first of several laws to accomplish this was the Proclamation of 1763 which forbade the colonists to move westward past the Appalachian Mountains. In 1764, Britain passed a law that prevented the colonies to print and use their own money. These and several other laws passed to tighten the English reign on the colonies brought out a lot of anger and frustration. But the one law that really angered the colonists was the Stamp Act of 1765 which taxed all kinds of printed

King George II

paper from wills, licenses, newspapers, diplomas, even playing cards. The colonists could not take any more so they started speaking out against the new taxes. In October of 1765, nine of the colonies sent their representatives to new York City to discuss what they thought of the Stamp Act. They decided that the Stamp Act and all the other taxation laws were illegal since the colonies were not represented in the British Parliament. "No taxation without representation," was the common cry of all the colonies. The representatives sent a letter to England asking that the Stamp Act be repealed but the British government did not listen. Instead, they imposed more new taxes on the colonies like the Townshend Act. This act placed taxes on tea, glass, paper, and paint. At this point, many colonists were so frustrated and angry that they refused to pay taxes or to buy any products from England. The Americans did all they could to rebel against the monarchy. Traders started to smuggle goods in and out of American ports to avoid paying taxes. And they started moving and settling across the Appalachian Mountains even though the British Parliament said they could not. All this frustration and rebellion led to the formation of a club called the Sons of Liberty. The members broke into the homes of tax collectors, beat them up, and burned tax documents. Britain sent 40,000 troops to aid and protect the tax collectors. The colonists were told to provide housing for the soldiers which angered them even more. They showed it by constantly taunting the British troops, throwing rocks or snowballs at them whenever the opportunity arose. 2. THE BOSTON MASSACRE In 1770, the first real battle between the colonists and British soldiers took place in Boston, Massachusetts. An armed clash like this was waiting to happen from the moment the British troops arrived in Boston. Brawls were a common occurrence between the British soldiers and the colonists, who were constantly taunting and insulting the troops. The Boston Massacre started when a crowd of about 60 colonists surrounded the British soldiers

The Stamp Act

The Tea Act

The Boston Tea Party

guarding the customs house. The colonists began throwing snowballs and rocks at the troops. Suddenly, a single shot was heard and was followed by more shots. Five colonists were killed and many more were wounded. Two of the British soldiers were found guilty of killing the five colonists. They were punished by having their thumbs burned and then released. The colonists were angered by this light punishment and considered it a slap on the face. 3. THE BOSTON TEA PARTY In 1773, protests in the colonies against the Stamp Act had died down but the British Parliament passed the Tea Act. This revived all the pent-up emotions in the colonists. The Tea Act granted the British East India Company the monopoly of the tea trade in America. The tea company started delivering tea to America exempt from British taxes. This angered the American colonists because all the other tea traders still had to pay taxes to Britain. The Americans refused to buy any tea and refused to unload the tea from the British ships in the American ports. About 50 colonists belonging to the Sons of Liberty boarded a tea ship in the Boston Harbor one night. They were dressed as Mohawk Indians and Paul Revere was their leader. These men threw 90,000 pounds of tea into the water while hundreds of colonists cheered them on from the port. This event became known as the Boston Tea Party. Many would agree that this was the most important event that led to the start of the American Revolution. 4. THE HESSIANS In 1775, although things have really heated up between Britain and the colonies, there was still hope of reconciliation and preventing the war. That was until King George hired soldiers from Germany called the Hessians. These soldiers were mercenaries known for their brutality and cruelty. This was a point of no return for the colonists because now they had to really fight and defend themselves form the British troops and the Hessians combined. All hope of averting the war was lost after the Hessians arrived on American soil. 5. COMMON SENSE

The Boston Massacre

In 1776, an Englishman named Thomas Painepublished a book titled Common Sense. The book claimed that all monarchies, especially the King of England, were bad. The book also stated that America deserved to be free and run its own government without Britain interfering. The book became a bestseller and made the Americans believe that they should be free and independent from England. 6. THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. Also in 1776, the Second Continental Congress met at the Pennsylvania State House to discuss the situation they were in. Many of the leaders wanted to secede from England and to become a free and independent nation. Some wanted America to have some independence while remaining a colony of England. Some were not sure what they wanted. Because he was a good writer, Thomas Jefferson was given the job of writing the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson completed the document in three weeks and presented it to Congress. The documents were argued over and some of the words were changed. By July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was approved by the Second Continental Congress. Fifty-six men signed it, John Hancock being the first one. The Declaration of Independence showed England and the whole world that America was determined to become a free country. It established a new nation and was intended to gain complete independence from British control.

16th century[edit source | editbeta]

Montaigne became the father of the anti-conformist French spirit.

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (15331592) may have been Catholic, but his anti-dogmatic stances made him the father of the anti-conformist French spirit. His work consists of little trials for his beliefs, filled with autobiographical and casual anecdotes. His intention with these papers was to leave something by which family could remember him. He was the first person to use the word essays, and his writings came to be highly influential upon Shakespeare, Rousseau and Nietzsche. His radical scepticism, summed up in the phrase Que sais-je?, served as one of the catalysts for Ren Descartes' oeuvre.

17th century[edit source | editbeta]

Ren Descartes is considered as the founder of modern philosophy.

Modern philosophy began in France with the philosophy of Ren Descartes(15961650). His Meditations on First Philosophy changed the primary object of philosophical thought from ontology to epistemology and overcame the Aristotelian dogmatism inherited in philosophy from Scholasticism, the dominant form of thought in preceding centuries, while simultaneously raising some of the most fundamental problems for future generations of philosophers.

Ren Descartes[edit source | editbeta]

Main article: Ren Descartes Ren Descartes was concerned with the uncertainty in the sciences and the radical scepticism which spread across Europe when publications of Sextus Empiricus became available. Descartes desired to find indubitable ground on which all the sciences could be placed and progressively built. Thus he rejected anything which appeared uncertain and decided to only accept apodeictic knowledge as truth. After invoking the possibility of an omnipotent deceiver to reject the external world, the information given to him from his senses, mathematics and logic, Descartes discovered at least one thing could be known apodictically. If he himself was doubting, then he had to exist. Thus Cogito Ergo Sum - I think, therefore I am - became the first principle of Cartesianism.

Descartes then claimed that because he discovered the Cogito through perceiving it clearly and distinctly, anything he can perceive clearly and distinctly must be true. Then he argues that he can conceive of an infinite being, but finite beings cannot produce infinite ideas and hence an infinite being must have put the idea into his mind. He uses this argument, commonly known as an ontological argument, to invoke the existence of an omni-benevolent God as the indubitable foundation that makes all sciences possible. Many people admired Descartes intentions, but were unsatisfied with this solution. Some accused him of circularity, proclaiming his ontological argument uses his definition of truth as a premise, while his proof of his definition of truth uses his ontological argument as a premise. Hence the problems of solipsism, truth and the existence of the external world came to dominate 17th century western thought. Another famous problem arises from Descartes substance dualism. For Descartes, a substance is that which can be conceived independent of everything else and exist independent of anything else. Since Descartes conceived of the mind independent of everything else when doubting everything uncertain, and because if he wanted to God could produce a world in which only the mind existed, he came to define the mind as a different substance from that of body. For Descartes, the mind is defined as an unextended substance and the body as an extended substance. This raised the fundamental question of how it is possible that mind and body interact with one another.[3]

Nicolas Malebranche[edit source | editbeta]

Main article: Nicolas Malebranche One solution to the mind-body problem came from Cartesian Nicolas Malebranche (16381715). Malebranche maintained that created substances of a different kind cannot interact with one another. In fact, he believed substances of the same kind could not interact either because no necessary causation could be perceived. He proposes then that it is God, an uncreated substance, who brings it about that each time one perceives a 'cause', one also perceives an 'effect'. Hence the doctrine is named occasionalism. Malebranche was well-known and celebrated in his own time, but has since become somewhat of an obscure figure in the history of western philosophy. His philosophy had a profound effect on it, however, through its influence upon Spinoza and Hume, whose problem of causation was influenced by Malebranches occasionalism. Its possible that Malebranche also influenced George Berkeley, although he rejects any association with Malebranche beyond superficial similarities.

18th century[edit source | editbeta]

Voltaire came to embody the Enlightenment.

French philosophy in the 18th century was deeply political. It was heavily imbued with Enlightenmentprinciples and many of its philosophers became critics of church and state and promoters of rationality and progress. These philosophers would come to have a deep influence on the politics and ideologies of France and America. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu (16891755) was a social commentator and political philosopher. His theories deeply influenced the American Founders, especially his belief that the state powers should be separated into legislative, executive, and judicial branches, which formed the basis forseparation of powers under the United States Constitution. In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu outlined the view that man and societies are influenced by climate. He believed that hotter climates create hottempered people and colder climates aloof people, whereas the mild climate of France is ideal for political systems. [citation needed] Voltaire (16941778) came to embody the Enlightenment with his criticisms of Church dogma and French institutions, his defence of civil liberties and his support of social reform. The civil liberties for which he fought were those of the right to a free trial and freedom of religion. He is best remembered for his aphorisms and his satire of Leibniz known as Candide, which tells the tale of a young believer in Leibnizian optimism who becomes disillusioned after a series of hardships. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (17121778) distinguished himself from the progressive scientism of the Enlightenment with his proclamation in Discourse on the Arts and Sciences that art and science are corruptors of human morality. Furthermore, he caused controversy with his theory that man is good by nature but corrupted by society, which is a direct contradiction of the Christian doctrine of original sin. Some of his theories continue to be controversial, such as his idea called the general will, which has been both accused of fascism and praised for its socialist ideals. Rousseaus thought highly influenced the French Revolution, his critique of private property has been seen as a forbear to Marxist ideology, and his picture was the only one to grace the home of Immanuel Kant. He was so highly praised by the French revolutionists, that in 1794 his remains were moved to the Panthon in Paris.

Denis Diderot (17131784) was a key collaborator in the creation of the Encyclopdia. A systematic collection of all the information of the arts and sciences, the Encyclopdia caused great controversy. Diderot was harassed repeatedly by the police, and was even arrested. The ecclesiastical party disliked the Encyclopdia, which was a threat to the aristocracy because it asserted that the state should care of the people and not itself, religious freedom, freedom of thought and the value of science and industry. In the end, the bookseller began removing all articles he deemed controversial in fear of punishment. The Encyclopdia that Diderot had worked on for twenty years was ruined beyond repair.