History 151  The French Revolution: Causes, Outcomes, Conflicting Interpretations

Why was there a revolution in France at the end of the 18th century? Connecting developments in international relations, internal politics, cultural change, social and economic developments.

Causes of the Revolution:

• Geopolitical challenges: For France the cost of war for hegemony and empire outstripped the fiscal resources of the state, in contrast to Great Britain which had a more effective system of state finance, in which nobles and landowning gentry paid substantial taxes and government loans underwritten by the Bank of England.
• The failure of fiscal and political reform: repeated attempts to increase tax revenues by raising taxes on the privileged classes (nobles and upper bourgeoisie) failed, generating increasing resistance to the crown's reforming efforts by the nobility, especially those in the parlements (sovereign courts).
• The Enlightenment and the growth of public opinion as an independent political force.
  • Nobles in the Parlement of Paris advance the argument for aristocratic constitutionalism, drawing on Montequieu’s Spirit of the Laws (1748); they described themselves as the defenders of the people and the nation against the despotism of royal ministers.
  • Rousseau's Social Contract (1762) advances the argument for democratic constitutionalism based on popular sovereignty and defining "freedom" as participation and the duty to obey laws one has a hand in making.
  • The impulse for reform is widely shared but nobles generally had a different view of the future (more noble power) than the educated bourgeoisie (status and rights to be based on merit and talent, not birth).
  • Criticism of the queen, the king, the aristocracy, the court erodes confidence in the governing classes and institutions. Embued with different visions of the future; of the privileged and the monarchy. The attack on the regime was openly hostile in the popular press of hack writers, the literary underground of the old regime.
• Economic expansion from the 1730s expanded the ranks of the well-off middle classes: many sought to rise into the nobility by buying titles and offices; others began to criticize a social order built on privilege by birth and argued instead for rights and status based on merit and talent.
• Economic crisis and hardship in 1788-89 generated insecurity and popular discontent and disorders caused by severe food shortages.: impact on ordinary people.
• Ineffective rule at the top: Louis XVI.
  

Revolutionary situation, June 17-20, 1789

• A revolution begins when the government's monopoly of power is effectively challenged by some groups who no longer recognize its legitimate authority, no longer grant it loyalty, and no longer obey its commands. Dual or multiple sovereignty is the identifying feature of a revolutionary situation - the fragmentation of an existing polity into two or more blocs, each of which exercises control over some part of the government and lays claim to its exclusive control over the government. A revolutionary situation continues until a single, sovereign polity is reconstituted.
• The Third Estate’s Oath of the Tennis Court in June 1789 and its claim of representing the sovereignty of the nation creates a revolutionary situation in France.

Liberty Trees then and today

The Revolutionary Process in Stages

Themes

Historian's conflicting interpretations

• The creation of modern democratic republicanism (desacralization of kingship)
• The establishment of the concept and model of modern revolution
• The strengthening of the central state
• The emergence of the nation-state
• The emergence and strengthening of the propertied middle class or bourgeoisie as a part of the social and political elite.
• The creation of a revolutionary tradition centered on the belief that revolution was a means for bringing progressive change and further extension of popular participation and popular sovereignty.

A Longer List of Outcomes

1. Representative government vs. authoritarianism (the Terror, Napoleon): two different models of government
2. Stronger, further centralized state with a larger, more effective and more intrusive administration.
3. Abolition of special fiscal privileges, seigneurial dues owed by peasants to lords, internal tariffs, and the establishment of uniform tax system based in principle on one’s income.
4. Creation and extension of new civil rights:
a. equality before the law
b. careers open to talent
c. participation in elections or certain government positions based on property qualifications
5. Socio-economic changes
a. single commercial code
b. abolition of guilds, i.e., workers right to organize in “unions”
c. business becomes an honorable profession
d. (wealthier) peasants acquire land and more peasants become independent proprietors
e. increase in the size and influence of the bourgeoisie, through the acquisition of church lands, greater wealth, and offices as political representatives and government officials
6. Changes in ideas and political culture:
a. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity ; popular sovereignty : sovereignty rested with the “people” not in the king, or any narrower group such as the aristocracy; democratic republicanism
b. Nationalism -
c. decline in religiosity, in the influence and authority of the church -
d. formation of a revolutionary tradition centered on the belief that revolution was a means for bringing progressive change and further extension of popular participation and popular sovereignty.

Comparison with the Russian Revolution, 1917-1936

Some Key Events:

• June 17-20, 1789: the Third Estate at Versailles declare's itself to be the National Assembly and vows not to dissolve in the face of Louis XIV's order to do so.
• August 1789, the abolition of feudalism (August 4th) and the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen (August 26)
• July 12 1790, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which makes the church subordinate to the state and calls upon the clergy to swear an oath of loyalty to the new State. Many clergy refuse.
• June 20-21, Louis XVI and the royal family attempt to flee the country but are captured at Varennes and returned to Paris: the faith in the King declines sharply.
• April 20, 1792. France declares war on Austria, and subsequently on Prussia, Britain, and Russia.
• August 10, 1792. Tuillery palace is attacked by Parisians, the monarchy is overthrown in a 'second' revolution.
• September 21, 1792. The monarchy is abolished and the Republic is declared.
• January 21, 1793. Louis Capet, former Louis XVI, is executed
• August 1793. Levee en masse, the mobilization of the country to secure the Republic and defeat invading armies.
• September 1793-July 1793, authoritarian rule of France by the Committee of Public Safety, in which Robespierre is one of 12 members but often thought to be the leader.
• July 28, 1794, the 9th of Thermidor. Overthrow and execution of Robespierre and other members of the Jacobin Committee of Public Safety.
• August 22 1795. The reorganization of the Republic into a regime known as the Directory, a collective executive. A new constitution attempts to turn the clock back to 1789 by, among other things, limiting the franchise to men of property. The sans-culotte movement is subsequently repressed.
• November 1799, Napoleon's coup d'etat.