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Causes of the French Revolution
There are many social, political and economic reasons the Third
Estate rose up against the leaders of France in the late 1700s
bringing about the French Revolution. Being in the lowest caste of
French society, the Third Estate was a life sentence. There is no way
to better yourself and rise above the poverty you were born into. As
hard as you worked you would always be in the lowest social group, you
had to be born into the top two tiers of French society. There emerged
a group, generally in London and Paris, who wanted to teach the world
a new way to think. They believed they were smarter than a everybody
else and they wanted to teach them how to be “enlightened” like
they were. This group of enlightened people believed that you could
use the power of your brain and not war, superstition, or the church
to build a better world. They spent a great deal of their time going
after the church and the aristocracy. Paul Brians in his article, The
Enlightenment, said “the chief obstacles to the reshaping of Europe by the merchant
class were the same as those faced by the rationalist philosophers:
absolutist kings and dogmatic churches”.
There were many political causes of the French Revolution. The
church and the aristocracy ruled all aspects of society. Kings ruled
by absolutism and had great power. They were supported by the idea of
the “Divine Right of Kings”. Church leaders used religion to say
that God detested revolution or that God did not want them to fight
against their God-given power. The church was teaching geocentricity,
or that the Earth was the center of the universe, and that God had a
physical place in it. The church fought hard against reformation. The
church did not want to change their ways, the hierarchy enjoyed being
at the top of the economic pyramid in France. People that did fight
were considered going against the church and were put in jail or
killed. People that organized to try to fight the church or the state
were banned or punished. The aristocracy ruled by right of birth and
the church ruled because God said so, and in the end the common man
had very little say in what happened in his life. The French
philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau said in his book, The Social
Contract, that “a doctrine which party has a long history in the
struggle against the older view of the
Divine right of king's, namely, that government gets its authority
over us by a willing consent on our part, not by the authorization of
God”. Philosophers like Rousseau ignited people's passions to try to
change their lot in life. People began to wonder if there was a better
way to live.
Merchants became more powerful and individualism became a core
value. Individuality began to replace religion and authority in the
daily lives of the people of Europe. The monarchy became smaller and
smaller and their power base began to dwindle to almost nothing. In
the late Middle Ages people began to move from the country to the
cities. This not only changed the way people receive their information
but there economy went from a mostly farm-based rural economy to a
merchant base city economy. Trade and communication got better during
the Renaissance and people started to realize that it didn't have to
be this way forever that new laws could be passed and new governments
could be formed. This makes sense because as you meet new people who
live a different way of life you would compare the way you lived to
the way they lived and realize it can be different and still be
successful. In his book Future Progress of the Human Mind philosopher
Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Condorcet predicted a future with the
removal of inequalities among nations and social classes. He went on
to predict the improvement of people intellectually, morally and
physically
A new class of merchants started taking over. They began taking
away the power from old aristocracy that used to own the land. These
new merchants became powerful and changed the culture. As people began
to earn their money instead of inheriting it they wanted to keep more
and more and not give it away to Kings or to taxes. Slowly
a middle-class emerged ,called the bourgeoisie, who resented
paying taxes to support the crazy, expensive lifestyle of the
aristocracy. The church also lost power because people did not want to
pay the church for promises they couldn't see in their pocketbook. The
French peasants were incredibly poor. A man named Arthur Young talked
about the plight of the French peasants in Travels in France: Signs
of Revolution. He highlighted the incredible poverty that existed
in rural France. He talked about taxes being so high people literally
could not afford bread. The aristocracy and the church had done little
to help the common man. As communication got better people realized
that non-Christians built entire societies without a church. These
merchants had to fight the church and the aristocracy for power. After
realizing that the aristocracy was using money to live a lavish
lifestyle common people in the third estate stopped wanting to give
taxes to them to further this lavish life when they could not afford
to eat.
France in the late 1700s had many social, political and
economic inequalities. As information became easier to get the
“have-nots” started looking more closely at the “haves” and
they did not like what they saw. The very rich King's and aristocrats
lived a lavish and extravagant lifestyle that seemed unimaginable to
the French peasants who couldn't even afford to buy bread. There were
very few ways to change your lot in life in France during this time
and that seemed terribly unfair to people. I believe the French
Revolutions main cause was the accessibility of information. If the
French peasants, who could not afford bread, never learned that there
were Kings throwing lavish parties every night they wouldn't feel so
desperate to change things and make them more equal. There was
information in the form of books, pamphlets, speakers and through
word-of-mouth. There was so much information available that showed
people the massive inequalities and quality of life differences
between the rich and poor. It also showed the poor how very few rich
people there were. Just by sheer numbers the poor had a very good
chance of overthrowing their government. As well armed as you are 1000
people will always beat one. Of course the numbers in France were even
worse. 98 percent of the population lived in incredible poverty while
2 percent of the population was wealthy. People moving to cities also
aided them in receiving information about what was going on with the
Kings and aristocracy. The French Revolution was just a matter of time
once information became clear how unfairly the third estate was being
treated.
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