French Revolution Review

French Revolution: Who revolted against who?

• The peasants revolted against the privileged
• The "oppressed vs oppressors" dynamic shifted over time as the "oppressed" killed most of their "oppressors"
• The Third Estate revolted against the other two estates and the monarchy
• They then declared themselves the National Assembly, which the king tried to stop
• This led to the Great Fear
• The king began caving to the people's will, which led to the Declaration of the Rights of Man

What is the difference between the Revolution and the Second Revolution?

• The First Revolution was pretty tame
• There were minimal to no murders and no storming of prisons
• Why did it become so radical?
• Transition from words to actions
• The power went to the peasants' heads and they began pushing the limits and they weren't sure what to do with it

"The Laboring men and women of Paris always constituted the elemental force that drove the revolution forward."

• The National Assembly wasn't full of poor people
• It was the upper-end of the lower class
• However, the National Assembly wouldn't have been successful without the support of the common person
• The true common people didn't know what was going on - they just cared about bread 

• The poor people weren't the "elemental force that drove the revolution forward," but they benefitted from it

Were the actions of the people in charge proactive or reactive?

• Reactive
• The people were dissatisfied with events, so they revolted as a reaction

Does the international war play a big role in this?

• France was fighting with basically everyone at this point
• War was started with the Declaration of Pillnitz, as France saw it as a declaration of war
• War made it possible for Robespierre to rise to power 

• To Robespierre, basically everyone was an enemy of the state 

Why didn't anything like the Reign of Terror happen in America?

• France was in a mad scramble for power because of the divide between Girondists and the Mountain
• The American Revolution was more of an "us vs them" situation with clear distinctions
• French Revolution was an internal problem while America was trying to separate from another country

How did Robespierre gain power?

• He banded people together against the common enemy
• The people were used to having a strong leader, which made it easy for him to take all of the power that he did 
• His love of the guillotine made it easy for him to scare people into line

Over the 10 year revolutionary period, have the French improved?

• They were going fine for a while, but then everything spiraled out of control
• The French didn't want someone in charge of them but they then allowed Robespierre to become a dictator
• The younger people took charge and didn't care as much about repurcussions
• The ball was rolling, so they kept running with it
• The French made important social changes but not many legislative changes
• In the end, the price of bread went up again, so there was no improvement

12/13 Class

• The Great Fear led to the Feudal system being abolished
• The declaration was passed because it reinforced the changes that were being made
• What did the national assembly want?
• wanted to give more equality and change the government
• Give more power to the people
• The declaration of man was the foundation for the changes
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  The church is a source of traditional power and had a lot of influence
• The French tried to weaken power of the church because of their large influence
• Tried to give power back to the people
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• International response to the revolution
• Edmund Burke of Britain- he felt the French was throwing the baby out with the bath water
• Meaning they took the revolution went too far with the Revolution
• Jacobin is everyone in the convention
• Separate groups were the...
• Girondists and the Mountain
• Girondists are moderate closer to the center
• The Mountain are radical
• The change of the calendar (10 day weeks) and creation of metric system was to deemphasize the role of the church
• When they divided the land into 83 districts they wanted to get rid of of the land to get rid of the feudal system
• How the revolution that was supposed to be based on equality and enlightenment ideals for all end in a dictator?
• Robespierre got in charge
• He was guillotined in 1794

Bread and liberty are the same thing

What is the National Assembly?

Originally, the National Assembly was known as the Third Estate. According to Sieyés, the Third Estate is everything, it has been nothing, and it wants to become something. The National Assembly formed when the Third Estate elected to call itself the National Assembly, comprising mostly of delegates from the Third Estate who represented the common person. While the other two estates in the Estates General dealt with minority groups of the nobility and clergy, the third estate dealt with a people who were in the majority but underrepresented in the Estates General. By transforming into a National Assembly which had significantly more power and, at least ideally, fairer representation of the common man, the National Assembly aimed to completely change the French government and to give the power back to the people. 

Does the National Assembly actually represent the common person?

The common person at the time did not care about the technical process of gaining liberty and equality. When the National Assembly issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, peasants were guaranteed equality before the law and individual freedom. The problem was this declaration had no real-world effect for the starving and poor peasants of rural France. The economy was not fixed through this declaration; it simply placed the wealthier liberal elites on the same level as the nobility. Even though serfdom was abolished, peasants did not have any land to sustain themselves on their own. The National Assembly did not make any real change for the majority of the people through these declarations- they were just words. 

When the National Assembly put an end to the tithes people had been paying to the church, they cut the funding for women who looked to the church and relied on its assistance in order to survive. These displaced women marched to Versailles and demanded that some real action be taken. One women yelled "That's not the point: the point is that we want bread." This signified the issues that the common person had with the National Assembly: they were making no real changes for the living conditions of the common person. The people did not want revolutionary words that hardly affected them; the common people just wanted bread. 

Class 12/11

FRENCH REVOLUTION !! 

What were the causes of the French Revolution?

• So France is super in debt from the 7 Years War. Who is the French Crown depending on get money from to pay back these war debts? --> the 3rd estate.
• The nobility is exempt from paying taxes. Therefore, people bought patents of nobility because if they are a noble then they don't have to pay taxes.

• 'Merica contributed
• America borrowed a ton of $$ from France during the French and Indian War.
• The French who went over to America to help fight were inspired by our ideas of liberty and government system in which a larger amount of people had a say. The fact that there were no divisions(like the estates in France) was also appealing. The French were inspired and brought back these ideals which spread. 
• Enlightenment influence 
• Ideas about representative government, individual rights, political freedom were appealing.

But what actually starts the French Revolution? What group?

• Louis XVI inherited all the problems which Louis XV left behind. Because France is in such great debt, Louis XV imposed a general tax to basically keep France running. Meanwhile, a large portion of the money that France does have is going toward Versailles and paying back war debts. This general tax requires everyone to pay taxes, including the nobility who were previously exempt. The nobility is not happy about this and tells Louis XVI that he needs to get approval from the estate general, who had not been summoned for an extremely long time before this. Louis XVI doesn't care and does whatever he wants--> nobility very mad 

What is the Tennis Court Oath?

• Basically, all vowed to protest together until they got what they wanted. --> what do they want?
• Before, there was one big vote during which each estate got 1 vote. The 3rd estate thinks this is unfair because the first 2 estates can always overrule the 3rd. They want 1 vote per person. 
• What was the King's response?
• "disastrously ambivalent"--> he seemed as if he was going to comply but then used violence 

Why is the French Revolution seen by some as the "Revolt of the 3rd Estate"?

• The 3rd estate is angry about each estate getting a single vote. They believe that each person should get 1 vote because the majority of the population is in the 3rd estate. 
• However, some see the French Revolution as Poor vs. Wealthy
• This implies that the connections between the rich in all 3 estates and the connections between the poor in all 3 estates were stronger than the connections between people in the same estate. 
• Not everyone in the 3rd estate(everyone besides clergy and nobility) was necessarily poor just as not everyone in the 1st(clergy) and 2nd estate(nobility) were rich. 

Class 12/5

How do you justify Enlightenment thought and how they treated people in the New World? How do you justify spreading Christianity while practicing slavery? 

• During the Enlightenment, a person's worth became more important. Unfortunately, most Europeans did not view Africans and Native Americans as people because of racial differences. Because of this, they were perfectly fine with practicing hypocrisy. 

"Us vs. Them." Is it the same in America as it is in Europe?

• In America, the primary divide was by race, and in Europe, it was by country. However, there were often distinctions made between whites born in Europe and whites born in America. In this case, the "us vs them" is the white (Europeans) against the Native Americans and slaves. 

How can you Christianize people who don't have souls (Native Americans/Africans)?

• Europeans used religion as a tool for controlling people. By eliminating old, tribal based religions, they made it more difficult for slaves/Native Americans to band together over similar interests. 

The Protestants weren't that interested in conversion. Why?

• After the Reformation, the Catholics felt like their religion was under attack. As a result, they tried to prove their dominance with numbers by forcibly converting native people and slaves in the Americas

What major European powers controlled Asia at this time? 

• In the beginning, the Portuguese and Dutch controlled Asia. However, England soon replaced both of them as the leading European power in Asia. 
• France held a lot of territory in Asia, but they ceded most of it to England in the Treaty of Paris. 
• India was under English control while Southeast Asia (particularly Vietnam) was controlled by France. 

11/29 class

11/29

What were Guilds and why did they become controversial in the 18th century?

Guilds

• 3 levels of guilds
• Where you lived depended on the protection of interests the Guilds offered
• German guilds were more powerful and exclusive
• They were very exclusive which provided more protection
• Benefits of a guild- honor, respect, good worker
• They had to be christian and have a lot of work experience
• Why were the guilds so controversial?
• The people who didn’t like them (peasants, people not allowed in, Adam Smith) opposed them
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Adam Smith

• Adam Smith was the opposite of priming the pump
• He thought if the government had a lot of power, it could take away the power of the people
• Economic Mercantilism --> The invisible hand- the collective self interest of the people in a society that makes the market move
• He didn’t like Guilds because they regulate the market and he doesn’t believe that should happen
• It should be a free market which the Guilds don’t allow

Mercantilism- more exports than imports, more money is more power

• Under mercantilism economic activity under mercantilism is a zero sum game
• If someone is making a lot of money, another will make less
• If you’re getting more, someone is getting less
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• Free trade everyone has an opportunity to make more money

Were the Navigation Acts for mercantilism truly economic warfare?

• Yes Britain used them for control over goods so they could get all the money from the raw materials and finished products
• They weren’t enforced until William and Mary after the Salutary Neglect in America
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