Week 5 The French Revolution The Birth of the Nation-State

• The French and American revolutions are deeply connected in more ways than one => It can be said that the American independence was in fact one of the direct causes of the French revolution
• This week we'll be looking at the broader meaning and the limitations of the French revolution

American Revolution - Transformations

• First quick reminder of deep transformations initiated by the American revolution
  • Deep transformation of the notions of citizen and of government, the two go together
    • Natural rights: People have natural, unalienable rights
    • Popular sovereignty: Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed
    • Social contract: The constitution is the contract between the people and the government and between the people themselves
    • Right to revolt: If the clauses of the contract are not respected => right to revolt
    • BUT => active citizens vs. passive and no citizens (dynamics of emancipation and enfranchisement)

French-American Connections

• Coincidence of time: American constitution proclaimed 17 September 1787, French attack on the Bastille is 14 July 1789
• Experience of some French in America: Many Frenchmen who fought enthusiastically in the American Revolutionary war would become influential revolutionaries
  • Marquis de La Fayette who was 19 when he went to fight with American Revolutionary
• American intellectuals had very close links with French intellectuals = The Republic of Letters
  • As emissary of revolutionary America in France, Benjamin Franklin befriended Voltaire
  • Thomas Jefferson as Ambassador of America corresponded with the Count of Mirabeau

French Revolution and Modern Politics

• French revolution shaped some of the ideals and ideas of modern politics, including the vocabulary we use in modern politics
  • Vocabulary of modern politics
  • Extension of the democratic franchise (brief disconnection from property)
  • Development, in Europe of nationalism and rise of nation-state through and against French Revolution as the dominant political system and political system of reference

Causes of the French Revolution

• French Revolution occurred when two processes met:
  • Reaction against absolutism => More of a pan-European phenomenon => Within perspective of Enlightenment
  • Financial crisis of France

Absolutist Society and the Three Estates

• Absolutist societies = societies of privilege
  • The three Estates: Nobility, Clergy, Third Estate
    • Biggest is the Third with considerable class differences within it
  • Unequal taxes

Royal Power and Versailles

• This was a society of privilege but above all an absolutist society in which the King had managed to concentrate all of the powers in his own hands, particularly by domesticating the aristocracy
  • Versailles was both a monument to the King's greatness as a useful tool to keep the nobility under close supervision

VIDEO

Bourgeoisie and Political Frustration

• Not everybody was happy with this system, especially the privileged part:
  • Bourgeoise => become economically and socially immensely influential thanks to trade (including slave trade)
  • But political ascension blocked by privilege: they cannot access political power except in few instances

Enlightenment and Rising Bourgeoisie

• The rising economic power of the bourgeoisie and its political frustration coincides with the pan-European movement known as Enlightenment
• Enlightenment = proliferation of ideas and theories 17th and XVIIIth century about the right political system, natural rights of men, and a strong belief in reason as opposed to tradition or religion

Three Impacts of Enlightenment

• All these authors and their ideas => Three long-lasting impacts of the Enlightenment
  • Weaken the hold of traditional religion, particularly the role of the Catholic Church as a public institution in France.
  • Secondly, and related to this, Enlightenment thinkers taught a secular code of ethics, one that was divorced from religious beliefs.
  • Third is that they developed a critical spirit of analysis not to accept routine tradition.
• Politically, they advertised the crazy idea that people should be equal before the law, that all people, independently of their origin, should be treated in the same way by the law.

Social Relevance of the Philosophes

• All this is interesting but why should it be socially relevant? In other words, how were the ideas of the philosophes socially important?
  • Development of the public sphere
• Their ideas were widely debated among the learned public => public who could read (about 30% of the male population). But these people were socially bound to become elite, socially influential:
  • Salons, academies, Masonic lodges, Coffeehouses, etc.
    • Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality is written within the frame of a competition organized by the Academy of Dijon
    • Coffeehouses => mania of coffee from the colonies, globalization of the economy and of the ideas
• Secondly all their ideas were transmitted and vulgarized by a generation of second-rate writers who wanted to imitate the philosophes but who also wanted to make money => mixing knowledge with entertainment
  • Their contribution is not that great intellectually or at least not direct
    • Their main contribution is actually pornography
• But in those writings they stage religious nuns and priests, princes etc. (cf. The Nun in the Nightgown, Venus in the Cloister, Madame la Marquise de Pompadour) => Great deal of abuse against the Queen
  • Remarkably enough this is important because what it does is that it contributes to desacralize the privileged ones => They are not God-protected, they are human
    • A society without a King becomes thinkable
• Everything compounded by the financial crisis =>
  • Farming out of taxes, selling of offices
  • War in America
• France quasi-bankrupt, higher taxes, unrest in the countryside and among peasantry
  • Financial crisis truly the spark that ignited the revolutionary fire, and I therefore turn to my second part about the Revolution as such
• New taxes are needed but problem: The nobles and priests cannot be taxed and the peasants overtaxed
  • So the financial crisis brings up in a glaring way all the injustice of the foundations of the absolutist system

Estates General Convoked

• With an increasingly tense political, economic and financial situation in the background, King Louis XVI decides to convoke the Estates General in Spring 1789 to find agreement on new taxes.
• Injustice visible also in the composition and the voting system of the Estates General
  • Third Estate is the crushing majority but vote takes place by Estate, placed on equal footing with First and Second Estate

National Assembly Formation

• The meeting of the Estates General happens on 5 May 1789. On June 1789 the Third Estate constitutes itself into a National Assembly and claims to be the true representative of national sovereignty.
  • This is very important because it is one of the most thorough definitions of what being a national in the modern sense means
    • Before, national subjects, bound by allegiance to the monarch
    • Now nationality = participation to the body politic of one country
    • The nation => the people constituting themselves as sovereign (source of power)
  • Claims authority parallel, if not superior, to that of the king himself. They take an oath to stay together until a constitution is established for the kingdom.
    • "We are here according to the will of the people and nothing except bayonets will drive us out."
• Under popular pressure, the King orders the two other Estates to merge with the Third which constitutes itself into a National Constituent Assembly.

Storming of the Bastille and Abolition of Feudalism

• Between 14 July (Storming of the Bastille in Paris) and August 1789 (peasant fears for an aristocratic counter revolution) the first period of the revolution truly begins.
  • In reaction the National Assembly formally abolishes feudalism including seigneurial rights. This is the end of privilege as the fundamental organizing principle of French society.

Declaration of the Rights of Man

• The whole political system is redefined in France:
  • The National Assembly proclaims the Declaration of the rights of Man and of the Citizen, a document which proposes universal principles of humanity.
• The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 26 August 1789 / Reflects ideas of the American Declaration of Independence.
  • Strong influence of the Enlightenment, especially as far as belief in individual freedom, civic equality and belief in reason are concerned.
  • Importance of individualism: not recognition of groups/corporations etc. but of individuals
  • The preservation of property rights assured that differences due to wealth, education, and talent would remain to be considered natural and legitimate.
    • The Declaration made wealth, not birth, blood or legal privilege, the foundation of social and political order in modern France.

Constitution of 1791

• Constitution of 1791 creates a Constitutional Monarchy.
  • Equality before the law is established
• First elections of the Legislative Assembly on October 1 1791.
  • Birth of the modern notions of Left and Right.
    • The Monarchists seat to the right of the Assembly's president, the Republicans to his left. Republicans are in the majority.
• Completely reverses the logic of absolutist regime:
  • The King is no longer Louis, King of France by Grace of God, but Louis, King of the French by the Grace of God and the constitutional law of the state
• The Catholic Church is also very limited in its powers:
  • The Church's property becomes "national"
  • Priests are forced to take an oath to the revolution = Civil Constitution of the Clergy
• But the new constitution also reflects certain limits: not all people are politically empowered/enfranchised
  • Women remain political minors
  • A distinction is made between active and passive citizens
    • Property and wealth remain the guarantee of political rights
    • Poorer classes, including workers also remain political minors and in fact unions are forbidden.
  • Slavery is abolished in France but not in the colonies. Rebellion at Hispaniola in 1790.

Radicalization Factors

• But a revolution often sets things into motion which become difficult to stop and from 1791 two closely interconnected factors will radicalize the revolution:
  • Internal resistance
  • Wars with foreign powers
• Louis XVI through his wife and some influential nobles never accepted revolution
  • Contacts with foreign kings to organize foreign intervention and restoration of absolutism
  • Flight to Varennes in 1791 and open calls for a republic.

Valmy and the Republic

• 20 September the regular and volunteer army stop the invaders at Valmy.
• The first victory of the Republic = Valmy 20 September 1792, army of volunteers
  • Rouget de L'Isle and Marseillaise
  • 21 September 1792, the Republic is proclaimed with universal male suffrage.
  • Its Central body is a National Convention which replaces the National Assembly
• 21 January 1793, the King is guillotined.