Unlock document.
This document is partially blurred.
Unlock all pages and 1 million more documents.
Get Access
LONG-DUREE CHANGES IN EUROPE III
● Social: shifting and expanding social groups
○ The “nation’: an “imagined community” coming into being through print capitalism
○ Wider social networks through increased trade and communication
○ Growing cities(but still only about 20% of Europeans live in cities)
○ “Aristocrats”(rich landowners) joining the old “nobility” (landowners with ancient
titles and lineage)
○ Growing merchants bourgeoisie (middle class)
○ Peasants (seigneurial workers) becoming proletarians (wage workers)
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION:
THE RADICAL DISCONTINUITY
“Republicanism, democracy, terrorism, nationalism, and military dictatorship all took their
modern form during French revolution.”
These ideas were spread by french armies, and by revolutionaries in other countries.
For europe, the french revolution marks the beginning of “beginning of” modern history”-
or “modernity” the
Not finished with notes
CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION
Fiscal crisis of the french monarchy
Social tensions within the estate system in France
Critical ideas spread through the Enlightenment, circulated in book, pamphlets, posters,
discussion.
A mismatch in the distribution of political, social, and economic power- and the means and
opportunity for various groups to attempt to change that mismatch
THE COURSE OF THE REVOLUTION
The “moderate” Phase, 1789-92:
● From 1789, the fiscal crisis spirals into a political crisis, which broadens into a wider
social crisis
○ The tennis Court oath, the declarat
Not finished with notes
The radical Phase, 1792-4:
● The King tries to flee but is caught; France goes to war against Austria and Prussia;
economic crisis in rising food prices
● In response, the Jacobins seize control, execute the King and Queen, end the
monarchy, implement price controls and a levee en masse (widespread draft)
● Cultural Revolution; the jacobin Calendar (year 1=1792), reformed family laws and
religious toleration
● The terror and the Thermidorian Reaction
The reactionary and Napoleonic Phases: 1794-1815
● Return to some kind of stability from 1794-99
● Napoleon seizes power through coup d’etat, 1799, rules as first council until declaring
himself Emperor in 1804
● Steady rollback of most Revolutionary changes:
○ Democracy ended
○ Progressive family laws rescinded (though some changes remained in divorce
and property rights)
○ Political speech and associations suppressed
● But simultaneous exportation of Revolutionary principles
NEW POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES
●Conservatism (the revolution was terrible):
○ Fear of radical change; questioning the notion of equality of all humans
●Liberalism(the revolution started out okay, but then went bad):
○ Reforms rather than revolution; defense of right of liberty in the economic sphere
●Radical democracy (the revolution was okay, but didn’t go far enough):
○ Free, equal, universal male suffrage (and eventually female) suffrage
●Communism ( the revolution much include economic change):
○ Equality could not be achieved without moving beyond the political to the
economic realm
Frankenstein
Cioc
Scott
Social class
Nobility/aristocracy = land owners
bourgeoisie/ middle class = Capital
Proletariat =land less, capital less, labor
(peasants)
Bourgeoisie starts to take over nobility through the french revolution
Industrialization
7x more people
10-15x more stuff
200 years
Possible because energy
Organic economy (anything that relies on the sun)[flow of energy], mineral economy(coal, oil,
gas, chemicals)[stockpile of energy], flow of energy
Liberation
Individual commerce most natural way to interact
● The Ancien Régime (Old Regime or Former Regime) was the social and political
system established in the Kingdom of France from approximately the 15th
century until the latter part of the 18th century under the late Valois and Bourbon
dynasties.
● The estates of the realm were the broad orders of social hierarchy used in
Christian Europe from the medieval period to early modern Europe. Different
systems for dividing society members into estates evolved over time. The
best-known system is the three-estate system of the French Ancien Régime.
● The First Estate comprised the entire clergy, traditionally divided into “higher”
(nobility) and “lower” (non-noble) clergy. In 1789, it numbered around 130,000
(about 0.5% of the population).
● The Second Estate was the French nobility and (technically, although not in
common use) royalty, other than the monarch himself, who stood outside of the
system of estates. It is traditionally divided into “nobility of the sword” and “nobility
of the robe,” the magisterial class that administered royal justice and civil
government. The Second Estate constituted approximately 1.5% of France’s
population
● The Third Estate comprised all of those who were not members of the above and
can be divided into two groups, urban and rural, together making up 98% of
France’s population. The urban included the bourgeoisie and wage-laborers. The
rural included peasants.
● The French estates of the realm system was based on massive social injustices
that were one of the key factors leading up to the French Revolution.
Ancien Régime
The Ancien Régime (Old Regime or Former Regime) was the social and political system established in
the Kingdom of France from approximately the 15th century until the latter part of the 18th century under
the late Valois and Bourbon dynasties. The term is occasionally used to refer to the similar feudal social
and political order of the time elsewhere in Europe. The administrative and social structures of the Ancien
Régime were the result of years of state-building, legislative acts, internal conflicts, and civil wars, but
they remained a patchwork of local privilege and historic differences until the French Revolution ended
the system. Despite the notion of absolute monarchy and the efforts by the kings to create a centralized
state, Ancien Régime France remained a country of systemic irregularities. Administrative (including
taxation), legal, judicial, and ecclesiastic divisions and prerogatives frequently overlapped (for example,
French bishoprics and dioceses rarely coincided with administrative divisions).
Social Injustice
The population of France in the decade prior to the French Revolution was about 26 million, of whom 21
million lived in agriculture. Few of these owned enough land to support a family and most were forced to
take on extra work as poorly paid laborers on larger farms. Despite regional differences and French
peasants’ generally better economic status than that of their Eastern European counterparts, hunger was a
daily problem and the condition of most French peasants was poor.
The fundamental issue of poverty was aggravated by social inequality as all peasants were liable to pay
taxes from which the nobility could claim immunity, and feudal dues payable to a local lord. Similarly,
the tithes (a form of obligatory tax, at the time often paid in kind), which the peasants were obliged to pay
to their local churches, were a cause of grievance as the majority of parish priests were poor and the
contribution was being paid to an aristocratic and usually absentee abbot. The clergy numbered about
100,000 and yet owned 10% of the land. The Catholic Church maintained a rigid hierarchy as abbots and
bishops were all members of the nobility and canons were all members of wealthy bourgeois families. As
an institution, it was both rich and powerful. It paid no taxes and merely contributed a grant to the state
every five years, the amount of which was self-determined. The upper echelons of the clergy also had
