Legacy of the French Revolution - Historum

King Caesar I · July 22nd, 2012, 10:06 AM

Do you guys think the French Revolution had an ultimately positive or negative influence on the world. Vote in the poll and explain why.

sans-culottes · July 22nd, 2012, 03:15 PM

The French Revolution played a huge part in challenging the feudal system, priviledge, religion (and in turn the nonsensical Divine right of kings) and social class boundaries. It materialised the new found rationalism of the enlightenment. After Napoleon inset the principles of the revolution liberte, egalite, fraternite across europe with the code Napoleon I can't see how this had a negative effect. Revolution in France would found the basis of inspiration for future revolutions in Germany and Italy in the nineteenth century.

Apart from promoting rational thought and the rights of the individual, one can condemn some of the brutal aspects of the Revolution such as the way it spurns christianity (namely the deportation of the non-juring priests). But negative periods of the Revolution such as the Terror did not have a long lasting influence, as it was induced by paranoia and fear of counter-revolution.

I would say more, but I am quite knackered and am going to bed. Nighty Night.....

**spellbanisher** · July 22nd, 2012, 03:34 PM

I guess it was a step in the right direction. Even though it ultimately culminated in the Bourbon Restoration, there was a change from an Absolute Monarchy to a Constitutional Monarchy. The memory of the French Revolution sparked subsequent revolutions in France. The Napoleonic Conquests did lead to some reforms in the continent, such as the codification of Civil Laws, although that process had preceded Napoleon in Denmark (1687), Sweden (1734), and Prussia (1794). Governments had been reforming in other countries before the French Revolution, so I don't think it had quite the impact on the continent that some people attribute to it. In that regard, the Enlightenment, power struggles between the bourgeoisie, aristocracy, and monarchs, and nation-state competition played a bigger role. I also don't think a bloody revolution was necessary for a constitutional monarchy to emerge in France. But I like what Robert Darnton had to say about the French Revolution

Quote:

Although the spirit of ‘89 is no easier to fix in words than in mortar and brick, it could be characterized as energy—a will to build a new world from the ruins of the regime that fell apart in the summer of 1789. That energy permeated everything during the French Revolution. It transformed life, not only for the activists trying to channel it in directions of their own choosing but for ordinary persons going about their daily business.

The idea of a fundamental change in the tenor of everyday life may seem easy enough to accept in the abstract, but few of us can really assimilate it. We take the world as it comes and cannot imagine it organized differently, unless we have experienced moments when things fall apart—a death perhaps, or a divorce, or the sudden obliteration of something that seemed immutable, like the roof over our heads or the ground under our feet.

Such shocks often dislodge individual lives, but they rarely traumatize societies. In 1789 the French had to confront the collapse of a whole social order—the world that they defined retrospectively as the Ancien Régime—and to find some new order in the chaos surrounding them. They experienced reality as something that could be destroyed and reconstructed, and they faced seemingly limitless possibilities, both for good and for evil, for raising a utopia and for falling back into tyranny.

**Pacific_Victory** · July 22nd, 2012, 03:49 PM

It contributed to the rise of Napoleon.

Larrey · July 22nd, 2012, 10:33 PM

It got enough things right to make sure it had to be repeated, several times.

Duguesclin · July 22nd, 2012, 10:53 PM

Let's listen to Goethe, who says, after Valmy (1792), that "from that place and that day is born a new era une the history of the world".

Through the Declarations of Human Rights and while France abolished the feudal system in many places, this is the beginning of the idea of a european state where every citizen would be equal in rights that emerges. Rousseau said that "there is today no more frenchs, spanishs, germans, even englishs, whatever you say; there are only europeans".

One of the three major ideas of the Age of Enlightenement that will spread across Europe and remain despite the fall of Napoleon is the one of universality: if all humans owns a set of identical rights, the consequence is that they are equal in rights: the demand of equality comes from the idea of universality.

Women should be equal to men, black people should be the equals of white people, slavery should be abolished, children considered as individuals, etc.

The french Revolution undoubtedly contributed to accelerate the spread those ideas across Europe.

Fourteen · July 23rd, 2012, 01:01 AM

It's true that some see the origins of totalitarianism and the seminal areas of excuse for the excesses of violence in 20th century politics in the Revolution. It works to some degree, but such an approach is substantially insufficient and terribly unconvincing to me, let alone compelling.

Think of all the triumphs it saw, in slavery, religion, freedom of speech, greater realisation of rights, its formative part to play in national identity, allowing revolt to take a proper shape and precedent for future governmental disaffection (despite, say, 1688 or 1776, which were no where close in social impact)... the list can stretch on and on.

Brunel · July 23rd, 2012, 04:09 AM

It made the British think: "Blimey, here are the French getting rid of their Absolute Monarchy when we did that back in the 17th Century."

Gudenrath · July 23rd, 2012, 04:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brunel

It made the British think: "Blimey, here are the French getting rid of their Absolute Monarchy when we did that back in the 17th Century."

I thought it made them think: "Blimey, let us get rid of our democrats before the same thing starts happening here!"

Amazon.com: The Friends of Liberty: The English Democratic Movement in the Age of the French Revolution (9780674323391): Albert Goodwin: Books

Larrey · July 23rd, 2012, 04:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brunel

It made the British think: "Blimey, here are the French getting rid of their Absolute Monarchy when we did that back in the 17th Century."

Everything points more to a mindset of:
"We're against , as it's the French doing it."