I. Claim: From Introduction of Chapter 19 in Spielvogel, 5^th ed., p.523

“Although some historians have called the upheavals of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries a “democratic revolution,” it is probably more appropriate to speak of a liberal movement to extend political rights and power to the bourgeoisie in possession of capital – citizens besides the aristocracy who were literate and had become wealthy through capitalist enterprises in trade, industry, and finance.”

II. Part of the Claim to be addressed: underline this

III. Your position on the part of the claim you will address: circle your position; you may add an explanatory sentence if you wish, and you must add such a sentence if you choose “other.”

a) full or partial agreement

b), full or partial disagreement,

c) partial agreement and partial disagreement

d) other (explain)

B: I disagree with the claim, and propose a revision of the overly simplistic categorization of the 18^th and 19^th century’s upheavals as either a “democratic revolution” or “liberal movement;” instead, I maintain that the liberal movements during the time period proved to be necessary precursors to democratic revolutions – as evidenced by the late 18^th century revolution in France’s Saint Domingue colony.

IV. A. Evidence 1.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ Manifesto of the Communist Party explains the theory that bourgeois, or “liberal,” movements initiate their eventual overthrow (as their market production and power over proletariat labor become excessively exploitative) through a truly democratic revolution by the proletariat. This excerpt from the Manifesto of the Communist Party was written in 1848 and taken from The Marx-Engels Reader, Second Edition by Robert C. Tucker, published by W.W. Norton & Company in 1978, and reprinted in Perspectives from the Past: Primary Sources in Western Civilizations, Vol.2, by James M. Brophy, Steven Epstein, Cat Nilan, John Robertson, and Thomas Max Safley. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003: 281-282.

“Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called by his spells… The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself… it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons – the modern working class – the proletarians… All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interests of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society… cannot raise itself up, without the superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.”

IV. B. Connection with the claim (why it is suitable or pertinent):

The claim asserts that the uprisings of the 18^th and 19^th centuries were liberal movements rather than democratic movements, while the communist theory of revolution advanced by Marx and Engels provides the alternate perspective that liberal movements are only the initial phase of a larger proletarian movement. The Manifesto of the Communist Party suggests that liberal capitalism foments democratic revolution by the masses, which supports my argument that liberal movements in the 18^th and 19^th centuries cannot be viewed as separate from the period’s democratic agitation. Having established this theoretical perspective that democracy is the eventual realization of liberal economic and political movements, it is then necessary to examine specific cases from the time period to determine the concept’s practical applicability.

V. A. Evidence 1.

François Toussaint-L’Overture’s letter to the French naval minister in 1799 explains the reason for the revolt that he led among the black slaves of France’s Saint Domingue colony. While the revolt began in 1791, it was not truly successful until January, 1804, when the French soldiers who had temporary captured the island were defeated, and Haiti declared its independence. This event epitomizes the violent, democratic revolution by the majority of laborers against the minority in control of the system of production, which came to pass only after liberal reforms (the abolition of slavery in France, in 1791) were instituted. Letters is taken from The West in the Wider World: Volume 2, by Richard Lim and David K. Smith. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003: 154.

“… they [the French colonists] wanted to escape from their arbitrary government, but they did not intend the revolution to destroy either the prejudice that debased the men of color or the slavery of the blacks, whom they held in dependency by the strongest law. In their opinion, the benefits of the French regeneration were only for them. They proved it by their obstinate refusal to allow the people of color to enjoy their political rights and the slaves to enjoy the liberty that they claimed … Indeed, the silence of pre-Republican France on the long-standing claims for their natural rights made by the most interested, the noblest, the most useful portion of the population of St. Domingue … extinguished all glimmer of hope in the hearts of the black slaves and forced them, in spite of themselves, to throw themselves into the arms of a protective power that offered the only benefit [independent freedom] for which they would fight.”

V. B. Connection with the claim (why it is suitable or pertinent):

The rationale for St. Domingue’s revolution against French colonial control, as explained by François Toussaint-L’Overture, exemplifies Marx and Engels’ assertion that the proletariat masses will revolt against the powerful, capitalist minority when the minority bourgeoisie becomes too exploitative and dehumanizing. In this case, the slaves saw the French accumulating capital through exploitation of St. Domingue’s population, while France’s domestic population gained from reforms in the course of the French Revolution. The first stage of the French Revolution, marked by the meeting of the mainly-bourgeois Third Estate as a National Assembly in 1789, can be seen as the initial liberal movement that sparked St. Domingue’s democratic revolution. Thus, St. Domingue’s revolt is a concrete case where democratic revolution resulted from a liberal movement: the French bourgeois assertion of political power.

VI. Conclusion: a short statement that explains how your position follows from the evidence you have presented.

While the dynamic events of the 18^th and 19^th centuries present the temptation to generalize according to clear categories, in this case calling upheavals either liberal or democratic, it is instead clear that a larger shift was occurring from first a liberal, capitalist method of revolt to an increasingly democratic conception of revolution. This process is explained rationally, through Marx and Engels’ 19^th century communist ideology that explains democracy in terms of the oppressed majority’s need and ability to revolt – which increases in direct proportion to liberal capitalism’s intensification of production and free-market trade. Accordingly, the slave revolt of France’s St. Domingue colony in the late 18^th century and early 19^th century illustrates just how closely their democratic revolt was linked to their perception of a liberal movement, in France, for greater political freedom against the liberal bourgeoisie’s oppressor: French aristocracy.

This case deserves qualification because St. Domingue’s slaves do not fit into Marx and Engels’ conception of the proletariat, since they were not usually paid wages for their labor. Yet, this divergence with the communist ideology of class struggle does not weaken the historical argument that democratic revolution develops from the initial majority’s awakening to their potential for participatory government due to liberal movements’ granting of greater political rights to a non-aristocratic minority who possess capital.