HIST362 Study Guide

Unit 5: The French Revolution and the Birth of Modernity

5a. Provide a concise historical narrative of the French Revolution

  • What were the primary causes of the French Revolution in 1789? Describe its political aftermath.
  • Define the Seven Years War.
  • Define the ancien régime, the estates-general and the third estate.
  • Describe the role the nobility, bourgeoisie, the peasantry, and the church played in the early phases of the revolution.
  • Describe the role of some key figures and groups in the French Revolution: Marie-Antoinette, Louis XVI, Jacques Necker, the Jacobins, Maximilien Robespierre, and Napoleon Bonaparte.
  • What was the Tennis Court Oath?
  • Describe the significance of the taking over of the Bastille.
  • Define the Reign of Terror and thermidorian reaction.

The French Revolution (1789–1799) abolished the monarchy and transformed France's political system into a republic, a government where power is held by elected officials. While elections and many public policy reforms were put into place, the revolution was extremely drastic and violent.

The class system of the French ancien régime (the old regime), was divided into three "estates": the First Estate included the monarchy (the king and queen) and the clergy; the Second Estate included members of the nobility; and everyone else comprised the Third Estate, including the peasants, artisans, lawyers, merchants, and the bourgeoisie (the middle class). 

Although the prior year had witnessed several smaller rebellions, a starting point for the revolution occurred when members of the Third Estate, infuriated by new taxes imposed to pay for the current economic crisis and other grievances, met to sign the Tennis Court Oath on June 20, 1789. They vowed to stick together and withdraw from the Estates General, the French legislature, until the government adopted a written constitution. The key symbolic start of the French revolution occurred on July 14, 1789 when a group of revolutionaries stormed the Bastille, the central prison which was a symbol of the monarch's power and abuses.

The National Assembly, the new revolutionary government which began meeting in June 1789, approved a new Constitution of 1791, and then imprisoned King Louis XVI as a traitor to France. The execution of Louis XVI and his wife Marie-Antoinette followed in 1793. Infighting and mistrust among the revolutionaries prevented them from creating a new functional government and led to the so-called Reign of Terror, where more than 300,000 people were arrested and 17,000 were executed as enemies of the revolution from 1793–1794.

The Thermidorian Reaction describes the liberal-conservative counter-revolution that followed the end of the Reign of Terror with the execution of Maximilien Robespierre on 9 Thermidor (the date July 27, 1794 according to the French revolutionary calendar). To the French people the state had become all-powerful and violent. They purged the government of the revolutionary political forces (led by the Jacobin Club) and they attempted to restore some of the political, social and economic values of 1789. Following several military successes, Napoleon Bonaparte, the statesman and military leader, rose to prominence to become the authoritarian leader of France in 1799. He declared himself Emperor of France in 1804.

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5b. Analyze the immediate and long-term causes of the French Revolution

  • Name some structural and long-term causes of the French Revolution.
  • Describe the ancien régime class system and the stratification of French society on the eve of the revolution.
  • How did the lives of Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI in Versailles promote anger among the French population.
  • What caused France's external debt and its financial crisis?
  • Describe the tax system in France before the Revolution.
  • What was the bread (or flour) crisis and how did it affect the revolution?
  • What were the claims and needs of the different social groups in Paris and in the countryside.
  • What themes did the three colors of the French flag (la tricolores) symbolize to the French revolutionaries?

There were several structural and long-term causes of the French Revolution. From a societal and political standpoint, the people of France were inspired by the calls for equality, reason, and justice that the philosophers of the Enlightenment and the leaders of the American Revolution had proclaimed. The ancien régime and Estates class system could not survive the increasing demands for equality from members of the Third Estate who produced most of the goods, provided the labor, and paid most of the taxes. The French government was virtually bankrupt from participating in so many European wars, such as the Seven Years' War from 1756 to 1753. The Third Estate responded to its financial oppression and lack of political power with rebellion.

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5c. Analyze connections between utopian projects and the use of revolutionary violence

  • How do the similarities and differences reflect the different social and historical contexts of the American and French Revolutions?
  • How does Merriman characterize revolutionary terror and Robespierre's role in the revolution?
  • Explain the arguments that support gradual change (Edmund Burke) and those that support a revolutionary break with the past (Thomas Paine).
  • Describe the distinctions between economic, political, cultural, and sociological causes of revolutionary change.

We can see several similarities between the American and French Revolutions. Both rebellions arose from the financial chaos of the Seven Years' War, when the British and French governments demanded the 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, French military and financial support for the American revolutionary cause helped bankrupt France.

The American and French were also fueled by the extraordinary ideas and philosophies of the Enlightenment. As we explored in Unit 2, the 1700s would witness the rise of capitalism, industrialization, secularization, and fundamental changes in class structure. Rousseau had 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 significantly from the American because it was primarily a class struggle brought about by economic disparities. The French revolutionaries sought to reorder their society, while the American colonists simply 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. The French people were fighting for the best interests of France, while the Americans just wanted to throw the British out and end their colonial oppression.

Both revolutions used violence as a means to their end. After witnessing the chaos of the French Revolution, the conservative thinker Edmund Burke wrote that revolutions cause more problems than they solve and argued change should be introduced gradually. Revolutions abandoned generations of knowledge and experience, and societies should protect themselves from the temptation of revolutionary ideas. For Burke, slow and steady change will win. On the contrary, Thomas Paine 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.

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5d. Analyze how the French Revolution changed pre-revolutionary Europe

  • Compare the French Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789) with the English Bill of Rights (Unit 3) and the American Bill of Rights (Unit 4).
  • What rights did the Admission of Jews to Rights of Citizenship (1791) extend to Jews in France? What is the difference between individual and communal rights?
  • Compare de Gouges' argument for extending rights to women in The Declaration of the Rights of Woman (1791). Where does she focus on gender equality and gender differences?
  • Compare the constitution of the first French Republic with the American Declaration of Independence.

Prior to its revolution, France was one of the world's most powerful nations. The French Revolution initiated a transformation that affected Europe and the rest of the world. The revolution solidified the ideas of the Enlightenment and cemented the notion of natural rights. Since the revolution, many more groups fought for – and have been granted – these rights. The idea that governments should extend full citizenship to Jews and women in France in 1791 were two examples.

Government authority was no longer legitimate simply because it always had been. Citizens began exercising their perceived natural right to choose their preferred form of government. The rise of nationalism supported the belief that citizens should be loyal to the nation-state rather than to a particular ruler or institution, such as the monarchy or church.

The 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen is a founding document of modern liberal thought, a political philosophy based on extending liberty and equality.

Review this material in The Influence of the Enlightenment on the French Revolution by Rick Brainard and in these primary documents:


5e. Critically evaluate the legacies of the French Revolution in nineteenth-century Europe

  • How was France organized politically and administratively after the Congress of Vienna in 1815?
  • What were the primary causes of the French Revolution of 1830?
  • What were the primary causes of the series of political upheavals that occurred in Europe in 1848, the Revolutions of 1848 in France, Italy, Germany, and the Austrian Empire?
  • How did the revolutions in 1848 compare to the French Revolution in 1789? Why didn't Britain experience a similar type of revolution?
  • How did the French Civil Code represent the relationship between men and women? How does it compare to the vision of women's rights Olympia de Gauges proposed in her Declaration of the Rights of Woman?
  • Describe the Paris Commune.

The French Revolution has had a mixed impact on France and the world. Some argue that its most lasting innovation was its support radical social change, progress, and modernity. However, others argue that its violent and destructive revolutionary zeal led to reduced respect for tradition, disregard for the achievements of previous generations, and political instability. For example, France has had nearly 11 constitutions since 1789.

Legacies of the French Revolution include the demise of feudalism, the end of absolute monarchy, support for modernization, the rise of nationalism, the disestablishment of the church, the promotion of human rights, and support for democracy.

The French Revolution ended with the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, who declared himself Emperor of France in 1804. Napoleon instituted several lasting reforms including centralized administration of the départements, higher education, a tax system, a central bank, codes of law, and road and sewer systems. His set of civil laws, the Napoleonic Code or French Civil Code, combined several legal principles (many supported during the revolution) into one document: it formalized equality under the law, the right of property, and the abolishment of the feudal system. Several countries, including Italy, Germany, and Switzerland, have since adopted these legal standards into their own legal traditions in various forms.

When France's monarchy was restored in 1814 at the end of the Napoleonic Wars after the Congress of Vienna, King Louis XVIII, who ruled France until 1824, created a constitutional monarchy and preserved many of the revolutionary liberties.

However, as John Merriman explains in his lecture, rebellions and conflicts over competing ideas continued in France and several other European countries, only to heat up again in 1848.

The readings below describe two by-products of the French revolution: slaves in Haiti were heavily influenced by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen during the first successful modern slave revolution in 1780, and the Paris Commune, a short-lived and violent socialist government, ruled Paris for a few months in 1871. 

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Unit 5 Vocabulary

  • Admission of Jews to Rights of Citizenship
  • Ancien régime
  • Bastille
  • Bread Riots
  • Declaration of the Rights of Man
  • Declaration of the Rights of Woman
  • Estates-General
  • French Civil Code
  • French Republic
  • French Revolution of 1798
  • French Revolution of 1830
  • Jacques Necker
  • Jacobins
  • La tricolores
  • Louis XVI
  • Marie-Antoinette
  • Maximilien Robespierre
  • Napoleon Bonaparte.
  • Monarchy
  • Paris Commune
  • Reign of Terror
  • Republic
  • Revolutions of 1848
  • Seven Years War
  • Tennis Court Oath
  • Thermidorian Reaction
  • Third Estate
  • Versailles