HIST362: Modern Revolutions

We can see several similarities between the American and French Revolutions. Both rebellions arose from the financial chaos of the Seven Years' War (1763–1766) when the British and French governments demanded their respective working and middle classes pay for their wartime and personal excesses. The British imposed burdensome taxes on the American colonists, while the First and Second Estates in France did the same to the Third Estate. In fact, the French military and financial support for the American Revolution helped bankrupt France. The ideas and philosophies of the Enlightenment fueled the American and French revolutions. As we explored in Unit 2, the 1700s saw the rise of capitalism, industrialization, secularization, and fundamental changes in class structure. Rousseau argued that legitimate civil authority is only derived from civil contracts, which the governor and governed enter freely. The American colonists and French people demanded this equality and modern change. However, the French experience differed from the American colonists because it was primarily a class struggle brought about by economic disparities. The French revolutionaries wanted to reorder their society, while the Americans wanted to end colonial rule and create a new country based on self-government. The Americans did not want to undermine the basic class structure of their society. They wanted to throw the British out and end their colonial oppression. The revolutionaries in both countries used violence to achieve their ends. After he had witnessed the chaos of the French Revolution, the conservative thinker Edmund Burke (1729–1797) wrote that revolutions cause more problems than they solve. He argued that change should be introduced gradually. He said that revolutions abandon generations of knowledge and experience, and societies should protect themselves from the temptation of revolutionary ideas. For Burke, slow and steady change will win. In contrast, Thomas Paine (1737–1809) argued that people have the right to revolt when their government fails to protect their natural rights. People have an obligation to protect their rights when their government does not. Watch this video, which describes the second stage of the French Revolution. The French revolutionary war began soon after Louis XV and his wife tried to escape Paris in 1791. However, the fighting went badly quickly, and prices rose sky-high. In August 1792, a mob assaulted the Royal Palace in Paris and arrested the King. In September, the Assembly abolished the monarchy and declared a republic.