The French Revolution was a revolution in France from to A result of the French Revolution was the end of the French blogger.com revolution began with a meeting of the Estates General in Versailles, and ended when Napoleon Bonaparte took power in November Before , France was ruled by the nobles and the Catholic blogger.com ideas of the Enlightenment were The French Revolution is one of the most important – perhaps still the historical event of all blogger.com books have been written about it, but I loved your comment, in your presidential address to the American Historical Association that “every great interpreter of the French Revolution – and there have been many such – has found the event ultimately mystifying” Oct 14, · The significance of the American Revolution. The revolution led to the establishment of a republic based on the first written constitution in the world. This was a marked contrast to the other states were Monarchies were still in power. This inspired people across the world to struggle for democratic and republican forms of government
American Revolution - Wikipedia
Make Your Own List. It's a revolution that still resonates and yet it resists easy interpretation. Lynn Huntamerican and french revolution essay, a leading historian of the French Revolution, tells us what the events of and later years really meant, and what relevance they have for us today. The French Revolution is one of the most important — perhaps still the historical event of all time. I think in this regard it may just be a handy exemplar of historical events generally.
People study it, in part, because it is a kind of laboratory model of the really striking event and it takes place over years, instead of being condensed in time the way more recent revolutions, perhaps, are. Many people have tried to explain why the French Revolution is the way it is. What they discover is that the more they find out about it, the more american and french revolution essay have questions.
And as much as one tries to tie that down with rational explanations — social causes, demographic causes, economic causes, political causes, ideological causes — there is a way in which the experience that goes on in an event is very hard to completely explain. How did that happen in that way? I really figured it out, american and french revolution essay.
A king had been beheaded before, as we know, in England, american and french revolution essay. But there was a way in which, in the French case, they celebrate having done it. Your first choice is by one of the greatest interpreters of the revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville.
He was actually born inafter the revolution, american and french revolution essay, but he did a lot of archival research. Tell me about his book, The Ancien Régime and the Revolution. What is so great about Tocqueville is that he looks at archives and studies the events, but he applies to it an amazing american and french revolution essay and analytical intelligence.
But he adds a twist that will remain influential to this day, which is that he points to the weakness of democracy as a form of government. It has an internal, inherent tendency to lead to despotism unless there are certain conditions that prevent that from happening.
This is an incredibly brilliant perception. We have these revolutions in the name of liberty and we end up with a despotic, authoritarian ruler. Why do revolutions in the name of democracy — we see them happening at this very moment — end up having a problem institutionalising themselves as true democracies?
The Tocquevillean answer is still an incredibly important answer, which is that you are more likely to end up as a democracy if you have institutions that support a democratic political life. So the question becomes how do you get from the desire to the reality of democratic political life?
What Tocqueville loves about the United States is that they have this infrastructure already, because of the forms of local representative government that had already developed before they broke from Great Britain. So we have to figure out how you make this transition. My own personal critique of Tocqueville is that he is too negative about what goes on during the revolution, american and french revolution essay. What goes on during the revolution is, in my view, an american and french revolution essay upsurge of new kinds of democratic institutions.
Yes, but he is able to stand back. What explains how this could possibly happen? Why does this keep happening in French society? That is such a great way of saying it. In terms of his specific arguments, american and french revolution essay, he talks a lot about the continuities between the Ancien Régime and the post world, especially in terms of centralisation of government.
Is that an important part of the book? The other thing that jumped out at me as I was reading american and french revolution essay is that Tocqueville seems to rather like Louis XVI. Historical opinion is now in fact much kinder to Louis XVI. He was trying to be the new-style king, but in a situation in which it turned out to be impossible for him to push that through as a project. So much in Tocqueville has had such an enormous influence on social scientific thinking about social and political movements.
This is the problem. He wrote in a sociological mode. So he was a great French historian, elected to the Academie Française in It had a staggering impact on the way historians viewed the French Revolution, because he was an extremely effective polemicist. This was incredibly effective. Needless to say it led many people on the other side to develop a visceral hatred of Furet.
It was partly because he wrote it in a mode that would be much more common in internal debates within the Communist Party, rather than in an academic article.
He knew the people he was talking about really well, and that added to the whole atmosphere that this was more than a difference of interpretation. You say it completely changed the way historians viewed the French Revolution.
Did it also have a broader impact? It did in the sense that it shifted the gravitational pull away from Marxism at the very moment when Marxism was coming under much greater fire because of political events.
This was in the s, before the collapse of communism, american and french revolution essay, and it seemed part of a general pulling away from a Marxist position, towards, and the question american and french revolution essay was, what was the towards going to be? Was it going to be towards a kind of neoliberalism that many people associated Furet with in the s and s? It got caught up in the Mitterrand versus Thatcher debate, a general political shift towards the centre and the right in the s and 80s, and to a certain extent the 90s.
It was not just an academic question, but a general political question in the West. So he emphasises politics above all else, rather than the socio-economic environment in which politics takes place. You have to change the world through concrete political programmes. It reveals that if you try to push for democracy without having an adequate institutional basis for it, you will end up with terror, violence, and the suppression of dissent.
In short, you will end up with totalitarianism. My problem with most of the stories is that they tend to be fairly negative. He writes about the woman activist Theroigne de Mericourtwho goes mad. They hold office, they go to meetings, they are sincerely motivated by the idea of establishing a democratic and republican form of government, because it will lead to more equality, american and french revolution essay, more political freedom and more social justice.
They are completely serious and sincere and authentic about wanting to do that. Those people are not in Schama. To me, the revolution is filled with hundreds of thousands of stories of people who find their lives transformed for the better.
They want to make something of it, and come up against a lot of obstacles. Schama is not a specialist on the French Revolution is he? He seems to write about a lot of different things. He was originally a specialist in Dutch history. Simon is a very quick american and french revolution essay and a fantastic writer and speaker. This is about the twelve members of the Committee of Public Safety, who led the Terror and of whom the most famous is probably Maximilien Robespierre.
This is an older book, frombut very readable. He does precisely what I was just talking about. His position is much closer to my own position. He sees this as trying to do something really important, coming up against enormous obstacles in the course of trying to do it, failing, but completely understanding why this would happen in this particular way, american and french revolution essay. He also gives you a sense that these were actually real people. They were not completely out of control.
For the most part, the people on this committee are living incredibly austere lives. And, the fact is, they succeed, american and french revolution essay.
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They are able to reorganise the military under the worst of all possible circumstances, american and french revolution essay. They actually win the war, in a situation in which winning the war seemed totally impossible. One fact he mentions that surprised me, american and french revolution essay, given the number of people he sent to their death, is that Robespierre started out as an opponent of capital punishment. Yes, and as an opponent of war.
He was afraid of what the war would do to the revolution. I read it for the first american and french revolution essay when I was 19, and I just found it mesmerising. Your last book is The New Regime by Isser Woloch, who is Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia.
Isser Woloch was a student of R. This book is a somewhat dry presentation. It is, however, an absolutely crucial book for making you understand that after Tocqueville, after Furet, after Schama — books that focus on all the problems of the revolution — here is one that concretely lays out the staggering number of changes that take place in this period, in every single domain of political and social life.
This is an incredible corrective, because what he shows you is that everything changes. What he shows you is that all these different things change in ways that will never be turned back again. Do you want to give an american and french revolution essay of some of these changes? Is it things like universal elementary school education? They propose doing it and it was a blueprint for the future. One of the things that goes on in the revolution is that things are laid out on the agenda which will remain on the agenda for generations to come.
Divorce is instituted in But certain things are achieved. The rewriting of the penal code, fromis essentially the penal code that will remain in existence ever after. They eliminate torture in the judicial process for ever.
History Today - The American and French Revolution and how they compare
, time: 9:31French Revolution - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
May 23, · Hutson, James H. John Adams and the Diplomacy of the American Revolution. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, Scott, H. M. British Foreign Policy in the Age of the American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, Stinchcombe, William C. The American Revolution and the French Alliance The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in colonial North America between and The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies defeated the British in the American Revolutionary War (–), gaining independence from the British Crown and establishing the United States of America, the first modern constitutional liberal democracy The French Revolution is one of the most important – perhaps still the historical event of all blogger.com books have been written about it, but I loved your comment, in your presidential address to the American Historical Association that “every great interpreter of the French Revolution – and there have been many such – has found the event ultimately mystifying”
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