FRENCH REVOLUTION

French Revolution

Table of Contents

Introduction1

Liberty and equality1

Brotherhood2

Hubris2

Economic2

Social & Economic3

Democracy3

Technology4

French Army4

French Revolution

Introduction

The French Revolution, which generally dates from the meeting of the Estates-General in 1789 to the end of the Directory in 1799, or some time to 1815, was part of a more general movement for liberal reform that transformed Western Europe and North America in the late 18th century. This movement for radical reform, whose aims included deregulation of the economy, constitutional limits on the power of the monarch, equality before the law, freedom of speech and of the press, and religious tolerance can be seen as originating in the American Revolution, continuing in several parts of Europe during the 1780s with the reforms of the “enlightened despots,” among them Joseph II of Austria, and intensifying with the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 (Hampson, 1988).

Liberty and equality

One of the many paradoxes created by the French Revolution is the idea that all the people of Europe could be liberated from feudal oppression at the point of a French gun. Another paradox, which debated by liberal historians in the 19th century, was how to explain a movement whose original intentions were to increase individual liberty, deregulate the economy, and limit state power that yet produced the Jacobin Terror and the military dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte. It might well be that every revolution for liberty sows the seeds of an inevitable period of counterrevolution before more stable and workable political and economic institutions emerge in which liberty can flourish (Carlyle, 2002).

Brotherhood

The era of French Revolution was a time when people divided on the basis of color and race. That was the time when the idea of brotherhood came into the revolution so that people can be united. The French Revolution attempted to create a democratic government in place of the monarchy.

Hubris

For numerous conservative Westernizers such as Ivan and Pobedonostsev, the main philosophy of the Enlightenment shaped the intellectual and political hubris of 1789 during the French revolution, when imprudent utopianists botched in their attempt to design an ideal society based on rationalism, secularism, and individuality.

Economic

More than a century before the coronation of Louis XVI (in 1774), the French state had suffered numerous economic crisis due to the long wars waged during the reign of Louis XIV, mismanagement of national affairs in the reign of Louis XV, the heavy losses that billed the French and Indian War (1754-1763) ...