1

The Question of Citizenship In The French Revolution

2 The French Revolution of 1789 changed the meaning of the word revolution. Prior to this year, revolution meant restoring a previous form of government that had been taken away. Since then, revolution has meant creating a new institution of government that did not previously exist. This required that a constitution be drafted. After a series of four mini- revolutions from May to July, the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen was released on the twenty-sixth of August, 1789. When the French revolutionaries drew up the Declaration, they wanted to end the traditions surrounding hereditary monarchy and establish new institutions based on the principles of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment brought the application of scientific laws and formulas to society through the use of observation and reason rather than religion or tradition. The Declaration brought together two streams of thought: one springing from the Anglo-American tradition of legal and constitutional guarantees of individual liberties, the other from the Enlightenment's belief that reason should guide all human affairs. Reason rather than tradition would be its justification. 1 Men are born and remain free and equal in rights, began the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen, a document that was supposed to be applicable to all Frenchmen. But did the Declaration really apply to the Jews, Black African slaves, and women in the same respect as it applied to its creators, and was it even intended to do so? Historians have taken diverse approaches to the study of the French Revolutionary era. Perhaps this is because the French Revolution impacted different groups of people in quite contradictory ways. The interests of the

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution. Washington, D.C.: the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, and New York: the American Social History Project at the City University of New York, supported by the Florence Gould Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. American Social His tory Productions, Inc., 2001. [cited 4 November 2001.] Available from the World Wide Web: (http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/index.html.)

3 Jewish, black, and female populations sometimes complemented, but other times clashed with one other.
2

In 1787 and 1788 the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences of the eastern city of Metz sponsored an essay competition based on the question, Are there means for making Jews happier and more useful in France? One of three winners was Salkind Hourwitz, who wrote Vindication of the Jews, published in 1789. Hourwitz names the issues and items that the Jews should be allowed under new law, including rights to land, arts and agriculture, commerce, and education. However, Horwitz also says that they should be forbidden to use Hebrew or German [Yiddish] language in business so as to diminish fraud, as Jews were cunning cheats and thieves, and that their rabbis and religious leaders should be forbidden from exercising authority outside of the synagogue. Each of the issues named appears to provide a benefit also to the remaining population of gentiles. For example, his reason for opening the public schools to Jewish children was to teach them French:

which will produce a double advantage: it will make it easier to instruct them and to make them familiar from earliest infancy with Christians. They will establish with the Christians bonds of friendship which will be fortified by living near to each other, by the use of the same language and customs, and especially by the recognition of the freedom that they will be
2

Shanti Marie Singham, Betwixt Cattle and Men. Jews, Blacks, and Women, and the Declaration of Rights and Man. Dale Van Kley, ed. The French Idea of Freedom: The Old Regime and the Declaration of Rights of 1789. (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1994), 114-153; Joan Wallach Scott, A Woman Who Has Only Paradoxes to Offer: Olympe de Gouges Claims Rights for Women. Sarah E. Melzer, and Rabine, Leslie W., editors, Rebel Daughters. (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 102-120; Gary Kates, Jews into Frenchmen: Nationality and Representation in Revolutionary France. Ferenc Feher, ed. The French Revolution and the Birth of Modernity. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1990), 103-116; Raymond Birn, Religious Toleration and Freedom of Expression. Van Kley 265-299; Dominique Godineau, The Women of Paris and Their French Revolution. (Berkely, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1998), 158-174; Joan B. Landes, Representing the Body Politic: The Paradox of Gender in the Graphic Politics of the French Revolution. Melzer and Rabine 15-31; Claire Goldberg Moses, Equality and Difference in Historical Perspective: A Comparative Examination of the Feminisms of French Revolutionaries and Utopian Socialists. Melzer and Rabine 231-255; Marie-Claire Vallois, Exotic Femininity and the Rights of Man: Paul et Virginie and Atala, or the Revolution in Stasis. Melzer and Rabine 178-197; Keith Michael Baker. The Idea of a Declaration of Rights. Van Kley, ed. The French Idea of Freedom: The Old Regime and the Declaration of Rights of 1789. (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1994), 154-196; Dale Van Kley, From the Lessons of French History to Truths for all Times and All People. The Historical Origins of an Anti-Historical Declaration. Van Kley 72-113.

4 accorded; they will learn from these bonds that the Christians worship a Supreme Being like themselves, and as a result the fraud that the Talmud authorizes in dealings with pagans will no longer be permitted. 3

In supporting the citizenship of the Jews, Horwitz was finding ways to promote their assimilation into French society.
4

During the two-year term of the Constituent Assembly (1789-1791), deputies discussed the status of the Jews at approximately thirty sessions. Some wanted Jews to gain civil status, some found that too dangerous a concept, while others opted for gradual reforms to improve conditions for the Jews. Those advocating legal equality included Robespierre, Mirabeau, Talleyrand, Grgoire, and the trio of Barnave, Duport, and Lameth who heatedly argued against the discriminatory suggestions of some clergymen and anti-Semitic Alsation republican members. The Bishop of Nancy, La Fare, spoke out to the Assembly against the emancipation of the Jews. Representing the interests of the Catholic Church, he took an extreme position and argued against citizenship for all non-Catholics in his Opinion on the Admissibility of Jews to Full Civil and Political Rights. The majority of the debates in the National Assembly were not even about civic equality, since few disagreed that all restrictions on Jewish commerce, residence, education, trades, and professions would be abolished. Rather, the discussion centered around the eligibility of the Jews for full political rights, particularly the holding of public office. Political rights were based on strict economic qualifications regardless of race, although one could argue de facto disenfranchisement. Regardless, most Jews were too impoverished to meet the requirements. Few met the property prerequisite needed to gain suffrage and even less met

Zalkind Hourwitz, The Vindication of the Jews, 1789. Hunt, Lynn, ed. The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History. (Boston, New York: Beford Books of St. Martins Press, 1996), 48-50 4 Petition of the Jews of Paris, Alsace, and Lorraine to the National Assembly, January 28, 1790. Hunt 93-97; Hourwitz 48-50; La Fare, Bishop of Nancy, Opinion on the Admissibility of Jews to Full Civil and Political Rights, Spring 1790. Hunt 97-98.

5 the conditions mandatory of the deputies. With that said, how could any reasonable Jew have expected to be elected into public office? 5 On January 28, 1790, the French revolutionaries officially decreed that all Portuguese, Spanish, and Avignonnais Jews in France could enjoy the rights of citizenship. This amounted to about 3,000 to 4,000 Jews, mostly in the southwestern corner of the country including the cities of Bordeaux and Bayonne. After heated debate and repeated delays, the rest of the Jews in France were emancipated on September 27, 1791. This included about 30,000 Ashkenazim 6 Jews primarily from the northeastern Alsace-Lorraine territory. The motion was proposed and delivered by Adrien Jean Franois Duport, a deputy of the Paris nobility. 7 Across Europe, Jewish thought was dominated by the belief that what happened in France was now possible everywhere else in Europe, and that based on the emerging liberal-secular political order to which the future belonged, continental emancipation would indeed happen. While one contemporary perspective sees the Revolution as a liberation of the Jews from their prior restraints, others view it as the first step along the course of modern anti-Semitism that culminated in the Holocaust of the twentieth century. Contemporary study of Jews and the Jewish Question during the eighteenth century has been dominated by inquiry into the origins of modern anti-Semitism. In this way, the Enlightenment has come to be viewed by some scholars as an emancipatory movement that marks the very antithesis of anti-Semitism and by others as an essential moment in the rise of those forms of anti-Semitism that led to the Nazi Holocaust. 8

Ronald Schechter, The Jewish Question in Eighteenth-Century France. Eighteenth-Century History 32.1 (1998): 84-91. 6 Ashkenazim Jews were among the heirs of those religious and cultural forms that had been fashioned by the Diaspora in central Europe; they were culturally more foreign and thus more hated by gentile neighbors. 7 Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews: (New York, London: Columbia University Press, 1968), 1; Adrien Jean Franois Duport, Admission of Jews to Rights of Citizenship , September 27, 1971. Hunt 99101. 8 Jonathan M. Hess, Introduction: Forum: Jewish Questions. Eighteenth-Century Studies. 32.1 (1998): 83.

6 The attack on Catholicism impacted the post-war destiny of the Jews. The Jansenist Baptiste Abb Henri Grgoire, president of the National Assembly and an active defender of the Jews, was intent on passing the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. He was afraid that it would be condemned as a Jewish and atheist plot against the Catholic Church, and consequently kept his mouth shut when the issue of Jewish emancipation came up during the session of winter 179091. 9 On January 2, 1792, recently elected political leaders gathered in Nancy for a public ceremony in which 14 of the towns most prominent Jews, including the Grand Rabbi, swore an oath of allegiance to the new government. Jewish community leader Berr Isaac Berr said, The oath that we are about to take, makes us, thanks to the Supreme Being, and to the sovereignty of the nation, not only men, but French citizens. 10 He did stress that emancipation did not mean assimilation. The mayor of Nancy declared that society should not investigate the beliefs of its citizens, but only be concerned with the obeying of the laws, loyalty, and service to the the state. Legalizing citizenship for Jews was not as easy in every town as it was in Nancy. At Bischheimau-Saum, near Strasbourg, the town council prevented at least five well-known Jews from swearing the oath by requiring each oath-taker to perform the sign of the cross on themselves. According to the officials it was the only way they could be certain a person was telling the truth. Naturally the Jews refused to cross themselves because it was a violation of their religious beliefs. Both sides appealed to the Directory, 11 which sided with the Jews, saying the law required simply the obligation of taking the civic oath, without prescribing either the form nor the manner in which it will be made, and told the town to proceed with the ceremonies. When the time came to hold the ceremony, the Jews were told to remove their hats, which they refused
9

Singham 115. Kates 103. 11 A regional authority that spoke on behalf of the central government.
10

7 for religious reasons, and the event was cancelled. Both sides again appealed to the Directory, which once more sided with the Jews, and eventually the five prominent Jews of Bischheim swore their allegiance. 12 At the local level, we find leading Jews stubbornly determined to acquire full political rights and equally determined to maintain their religious identity, wrote Kates. At the same time, we see French revolutionary leaders insisting on the principles of equality before the law and religious freedom, even at the risk of offending local constituencies.
13

For the French, this

meant that their nation was the first in modern Europe to offer the Jews political equality. For Jews, it meant freedom from the ghettos and centuries of separation from gentiles. And for both groups, it meant a new era of free, secular, and tolerant practices. Historical hindsight somewhat sours this notion of religious tolerance for the Jews when we look at the events of the twentieth century from the Dreyfus Affair to the Nazi Holocaust. When those living in modern time reflect upon the development of the Jews as a people over the past several centuries, it is not their liberation but rather their destruction on which the focus is automatically placed. Due to assimilation, murder, and the fleeing from Euorpe, few French and other European Jewish families can even trace their genealogies to the eighteenth century. In his book, The French Enlightenment and the Jews: The Origins of Modern AntiSemitism , Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg took a new stance on the issue. Before this publication, the common view was that modern anti-Semitism was a right-wing trend that developed during the late nineteenth century in opposition to the liberal concepts linked with the French Revolution. Hertzberg said that instead of conflicting with French revolutionary theory, modern antiSemitism actually stems from it. He claimed that the ideas associated with modern, secular anti-

12 13

Kates 103-104. Kates 104.

8 Semitism were characteristic of and included in the Revolution and the Enlightenment in and of themselves.
14

One purpose of the Revolution was to transform French culture and install a free republic, which required a significant break from the past. Changes in customs, habits, and education, took place, including the creation of a new calendar and the restructuring of the language itself in the post-revolutionary period. In an effort to question the dominance of Catholicism, advocates of Jewish and Protestant civil liberties argued for the elimination of words such as toleration that connoted a sense of Catholic superiority. 15 Gary Kates argued that the Jews were a symbol of something else and that they provided revolutionaries with a way to discuss the extent to which the Constitution should be democratic. The Jewish question was a way to test the degree to which the words of the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen would translate to equal political power for all Frenchmen.
16

The two perspectives on the treatment of Jewish people during the eighteenth century have viewed the movement on one hand as a source of liberation, and on the other as a prelude to culturally destructive assimilation and a consequential loss of Jewish identity. Ronald Schechter notes that historians have tended to just accept the Jewish question of eighteenth-century European history as a given and thus disregarded inquiry into why philosophes, reformers, and revolutionaries were interested in the Jews to begin with. Eugene Weber made claim that the Jewish question was no more than that and of little to importance to French gentiles who gave little thought to the Jews as a people. Even Hertzberg admitted that the question of the Jews was never, not in the 1770s and 1780s, of dominant importance in France or, for that matter, elsewhere in Europe. This issue was to become a major storm center only in the nineteenth
14 15

Kates 104-105 Singham 116. 16 Schechter 86.

9 century. 17 Some feel that it was Herztberg who really created the image of an eighteenthcentury Jewish problem. Weber points out that Jews constituted .16 percent of the total population in France, making up about 40,000 Jews, mainly in the northeastern region. Most of them were very poor, and seldom left the Alsation countryside where they were protected by their lords. Given these circumstances, it is not surprising to consider that the French may not have thought about the Jews much at all. 18 The road to Jewish citizenship during the French Revolutionary era was long and hard; the optimal destination was never quite reached either. Enlightenment philosophies inspired the French Revolutionaries to accept a religiously pluralistic society. Still, the very acts which gave the Jews religious freedom in France contributed to the growth of modern anti-Semitism that reached its peak in the Holocaust of the twentieth century and has never completely dissipated since. The question of slavery also played a prime role in the Revolutionary debates on freedom. Some praise the Revolution for abolishing slavery and elevating the black man to the dignity of citizenship; others consider the French abolition of slavery nothing more than an ex post facto reaction to the black armed struggle for autonomy, the first successful slave revolution in Western history. The emancipation of slaves in Saint Domingue 19 was hindered by the importance of sugar raised in the West Indies to the French economy. 20 At the beginning of the Revolution, French colonies were very prosperous due to the replacement of cacao and indigo with the sugar cane crop that produced nearly half of Europes supply. The French colony of Saint Domingue held 30,000 whites, 28,000 freed blacks, and

17 18

Hertzberg 48. Schechter 84. 19 The island of Hispaniola including Haiti and Santo Domingo. 20 Singham 114-115.

10 465,000 slaves who cultivated more sugar than the other West Indian islands. In March 1790, Antoine Pierre Barnave, a lawyer from Grenoble, proposed that, in the interest of the French economy, the Declaration and the Constitution not even apply to the colonies. The Code Noir of 1685 allowed for a substantial class of free mulattoes and blacks in the colonies. In 1789, representatives of this group came to Paris to demand equal status with the whites in the colony. Mulattoes and blacks were subject to segregation and unequal treatment at the hands of the whites, who were constantly reminding them of their alleged racial inferiority. The slaves were treated so harshly that they were unable to produce enough offspring, and a growing number of slaves had to be imported directly from Africa. 21 As a result of the work of writers such as Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire, Filangieri, and Raynal, it was in France that official acts striking a death blow to the most unjust of institutions, [slavery,] would be announced for the first time.
22

In The Spirit of the Laws,

Montesquieu called for the abolition of slavery half a century before the Revolution even took place. Speaking of slavery, Montesquieu said, It is not good by its nature In a monarchial government where it is of sovereign importance never to abuse or defile human nature, there must be no slaves. In a democracy where the laws themselves must provide that everyone shall be as equal as the nature of government can permit, slaves violate the spirit of the constitution.23 Gradually, the words of Montesquieu began to ring true to the minds of the French Revolution. The race issue was complicated further by the question of the colonial mulatto population. Many of them were slaveholders themselves and thus wanted to ally with the white planters. However, the whites feared this would encourage slaves to demand equal status as well.

21 22

Cooper 45; Antoine Pierre Barnave, Speech of Barnave, March 8, 1790. Hunt, Lynn 109-111. Singham 129. Anna Julia Cooper, Slavery and the French Revolutionists, 1788-1805. (Lewistown and Queenston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1988), 35-36. 23 Cooper 36.

11 Vincent Og the Younger, a mulatto slaveholder, made a rather interesting motion to the Assembly of Colonists in 1789. While he avowed that freedom should be given to all men, he did not really mean all men he was just advocating freedom for the mulattos. Considering he himself was half black, it could be considered ludicrous that he owned fully black slaves to begin with, but at the same time it makes sense that he would not want freedom for them because then he could no longer make his living as a slaveholder. This was not the case with all mulattos, as their position tended to range anywhere from totally backing the whites, to remaining independent, to fully supporting rights for the black slave population.
24

Although an ocean separated them, the majority of the French knew, through travel literature and treatises, of the severe difficulties the slaves and free blacks faced in the colonies. In 1770 the Abb Raynal was exiled by the French government for publishing the Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies. The document used factual evidence to demonstrate European greed and misconduct in dealing with her colonies, and was therefore outlawed, denounced as, impudent, dangerous, rash and contrary to good morals and the principles of religion by the French Crown. Regardless, it was published in 20 approved and 50 pirated editions before the death of Raynal in 1796, and gave the people yet another reason to fight for the abolition of slavery. Regardless, even the most adamant defenders of emancipation recognized that there would be consequences for the French economy if the slave trade was abolished. As in the United States during its Revolutionary period, some legislators voiced propositions for gradual end to slavery and the slave trade as well as restructuring of the colonial economies. The Abolition of Negro Slavery or Means for Ameliorating Their Lot from 1789 proposes to the National Assembly that slavery could be

24

Vincent Og the Younger, Motion Made by Vincent Og the Younger to the Assembly of Colonists, 1789. Hunt 103-104.

12 phased out gradually, in the manner of a soldiers compulsory servitude in the military for a set period of time. At the end of the term, freedom would be restored.
25

In addition to supporting citizenship for the Jews, the Abb Baptiste Henri Grgoire also advocated rights for freed blacks. He spoke out for them in his Memoir in Favor of the People of Color or Mixed-Race of Saint Domingue. He argued that granting citizenship to freed blacks would help maintain the institution of slavery since it was they who made up the militias trained to hunt runway slaves in the colonies. However he claimed to still believe in the ultimate eradication of slavery as well.
26

Modeled on the Anti-Slavery Society of London, the Society of the Friends of the Blacks was founded in February of 1788 Brissot, Siyes, and Condorcet. Brissot presented the Discourse on the Necessity of Establishing in Paris a Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade and of Negro Slavery, in which he explained, make men free, and they will necessarily and rapidly become enlightened, and they will necessarily be better 27 . In their Address to the National Assembly in Favor of the Abolition of the Slave Trade from February 5, 1790, the society not only angered those who defended slavery based on the security of the French economy, but were also accused of stirring up rebellion among the slaves, and were later partially blamed for the revolt which broke out in Haiti in 1791.
28

25

Singham 129; Abb Raynal, From the Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies, 1770. Hunt 51-55. The Abolition of Slavery or Means for Ameliorating Their Lot, 1789. Hunt 101. 26 Abb Grgoire, Memoir in Favor of the People of Color or Mixed-Race of Saint Domingue, 1789. Hunt 105-106. 27 Society of the Friends of Blacks, Discourse on the Necessity of Establishing in Paris a Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade and of Negro Slavery, 1788. Hunt 58-59. 28 Cooper 38; Society of the Friends of Blacks, Address to the National Assembly in Favor of the Abolition of the Slave Trade, February 5, 1790. Hunt 106-107. John D. Garrigus, White Jacobins/Black Jacobins: Bringing the Haitian and French Revolutions Together in the Classroom, French Historical Studies 23.2 (2000): 259-275. Carolyn E. Fick, The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990.)

13 Including mulattoes, free blacks, or black slaves in the French definition of citizenship was even more difficult than the addition of the Jews. Unlike the Jews who, as a religious group had, in the eyes of French Christians, the potential to be converted, the black population was a visibly different race. This caused strong and divided tension among the National Assembly. At last on February 4, 1794, the National Convention of the French Republic declared that all slaves in French colonies were to be emancipated. The decree made all men equal regardless of color, and thus entitled to French citizenship and protection under the Constitution. In his February 18, 1794, speech to the Convention, national revolutionary leader Pierre Gaspard Chaumette celebrated the abolition of slavery.
29

France paved the way to freedom for other European empires to follow when it abolished slavery. While emancipation did bring an end to years of suffering on the part of the slaves, this goal did not come without a cost many of the freedom fighters, such as Chaumette, were sent to the guillotine during Robespierres Reign of Terror. Little is known about the exact feelings and grievances of women prior to the meeting of the Estates General in 1789. They lacked the right to assemble, draft grievances, and vote in the preparatory elections, with very few and select exceptions. However, some wome n did record their thoughts and grievances, expressing that, they did not wish to overturn mens authority; they simply wanted the education and enlightenment that would make them better workers, better wives, and better mothers. 30 They expressed their concern the notion of women working outside the household not be misconstrued as prostition. On January 1, 1789, the Petition of Women of the Third Estate to the King was submitted. In it, the women of the Third Estate presented their plight and then told the King what could be done to improve their conditions.
29

Cooper 36; Chaumette, Speech of Chaumette Celebrating the Abolition of Slavery, February 18, 1794. Hunt 116118. 30 Hunt 60.

14 Most women were born into poor families, and if they were offered any education at all, it proved quite inadequate just enough to fulfill the first duties of religion. They went to work making meager salaries. If they were not beautiful, they were often married to poor artisans, only to bear and raise children in this insufficient environment, thus perpetuating the downward cycle. Women who were pretty regularly fell prey to seduction and were then tossed aside and forced into prostitution. Furthermore, girls were often written off from the very beginning simply because of their sex; parents tended to place all of their value in a son who could carry on the family name. To prevent this cycle from continuing, the women requested to be left at least with the needle and the spindle, in which case they would promise never to handle the compass or the square. In other words, they were asking to be provided with sufficient and appropriate employment opportunities that would not interfere with the jobs of their male counterparts. Further, so as to not be confused with prostitutes, they asked that such women be forced to wear a specific mark of identification. Finally, they requested the establishment of free schools to learn the language on the basis of principles, religion, and ethics and to preclude the ignorance of their children by providing them with a sound and reasonable education. The goal of all of this was, of course, to produce subjects better fit to serve the King. 31 Condorcet argued that if these natural rights were truly universal, they should apply to all adults. In his debates he included Protestants, Jews, argued for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade, and even went so far as to say that women should also receive political rights. 32 In his publication On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship from July 1790, Condorcet hit the nail on the head when he wrote, Have they [the philosophers and legislators] not all violated the principle of equality of rights by quietly depriving half of mankind of the

31 32

Petition of Women of the Third Estate to the King, January 1, 1789. Hunt 60-63. Hunt 119.

15 right to participate in the formation of the laws, by excluding women from the rights of citizenship? Although it was (and often still is) assumed that women are emotional beings while men are rational beings, Condorcet argued that since women have the same ability to acquire knowledge, feel emotion, and use reason that men possess, they too should be granted the natural rights that men have. He claims that there is no truth in the assumption that women use emotion instead of reason, and their feelings rather than their consciences, to guide themselves in decision- making; and therefore, these cannot be justifications for the denial of rights to women. 33 Etta Palm dAelders, originally of the Dutch Republic and a member of the Cerce Social, (Social Circle) that included Condorcet, addressed the Discourse on the Injustice of the Laws in Favor of Men, at the Expense of Women, to the Confederation of the Friends of Truth on December 30, 1790. The first organization to allow female members, the Confederation argued for the legalization of divorce, and equality for women as well as men. In the address, dAelders claims that, Justice must be the first virtue of free men, and justice demands that the laws be the same for all beings, like the air and the sun. Through her activism, dAelders managed to gain the respect of the Revolutionary crowd.
34

While the Enlightenment philosophies leading up to the French Revolution and the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen symbolized a step forward for humanity, they did fail to recognize half of the worlds population. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen held out the promise of a political coming of age for all humanity. However, the Declaration left indeterminate the question of whether universal rights of man were rights of woman and

33 34

Condorcet, On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship, July 1790. Hunt 119-121.

Etta Palm dAelders, Discourse on the Injustice of the Laws in Favor of Men, at the Expense of Women, December 30, 1790. Hunt 122-123.

16 whether, or in what sense, woman was a citoyenne.

35

Debates during the writing of the

Constitution(s) included this issue. In 1791 women were denied the political rights of active citizenship and two years later were denied democratic citizenship.
36

In response to the complete lack of recognition, Marie Gouze produced The Declaration of the Rights of Woman in September of 1791. Using the name Olympe de Gouges, Marie published pamphlets and plays on societal issues including slavery, which she denounced to greed and blind prejudice.
37

In the Preamble to her version of The Declaration, de Gouges

mocks the male writers of the first Declaration by using the same exact terminology but inserting woman instead of man, or adding woman to places where the word man is used showing how simple it could be to include the female race in granting citizenship. de Gouges calls out for women to wake up and recognize their rights. She says, Women, when will you cease to be blind? What advantages have you gathered in the revolution? A score more marked, a disdain more conspicuous. This quote represents a thought common among women in the revolution that while they played a significant role, they did not really gain any lasting or immediate benefits out of it. She goes on to make an interesting comparison regarding women in commerce and marriage when she says, Can reason hide the fact that every other road to fortune is closed to a woman bought by a man, bought like a slave from the coast of Africa? de Gouges somehow knew that although it might be impossible for people then to accept the equal advancement of women, some day in the future it would happen, and until then women should

35

Darline Gay Levy and Harriet B. Applewhite, Women and Militant Citizenship in Revolutionary Paris. Melzer and Rabine 79. 36 Levy and Applewhite 79-101. 37 Hunt 124.

17 prepare the way with national education, with the restoration of morals, and with conjugal agreements.
38

In his February 12, 1791 oration On the Influence of the Revolution on Women, Louis Marie Prudhomme recognized tha t the traditional roles of women have been defined by society and that there is no real reason why they should not receive equal rights under the law. For the most part, however, the prime justification for those against political rights for women was womens traditional role to remain faithful to their husbands, raise children, and maintain a peaceful, well-kept household. The ideal woman was to be gentle, reserved, and timid. It was partially for this reason that the National Convention made a decree to prohibit clubs and popular societies of women under any denomination. In his October 30, 1793, speech to the Convention, Jean Baptiste Amar said that women were not nearly as fit as men to partake in governmental and public affairs which demand knowledge, impassiveness, and abnegation. Further, he stated that in no way should women be put in the position of having to sacrifice their traditional duties to home and family.
39

In one discussion of citizenshipas it related to women, Pierre Guyomar suggested in April 1793 that the word citizeness either be banned from the language or have reality put into its meaning. Guyomar was saying that if the legislators were not planning to give political rights to women, the women should be referred to as what they were wives or daughters of citizens, not

38 39

Olympe de Gouges, The Declaration of the Rights of Woman, September 1791. Hunt 124-129. Prudhomme, On the Influence of the Revolution on Women, February 12, 1791. Hunt 129-131; Olwen H. Hufton, Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution. (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 89-130; Chantal Thomas, Heroism in the Feminine: The Examples of Charlotte Corday and Madame Roland. Petrey, Sandy, ed. The French Revolution 1789-1989: Two Hundred Years of Rethinking. (Lubbock, Texas: Texas Tech Press, 1989,) 67; Chaumette, Speech at the General Council of the City Government of Paris Denouncing Womens Political Activism, November 17, 1793. Hunt 138-139; Godineau 268, 270; Jean Baptiste Amar, Discussion of Womens Political Clubs and Their Suppression, October 29-30, 1793. Hunt 135-138.

18 citizens themselves. While women of the popular classes and some from the middle-class claimed citizenship, it was under a more general, non-political definition.
40

Women were excluded from the army during the Revolution. Some called for women to abandon their traditional domestic roles and take up arms in a counterrevolution. Examples of such militant citizenship include the womens march to Versailles in October 1789, womens participation in armed demonstrations and their demands for the right to bear arms during the spring and summer of 1792, and the organized uprising of women in the Society of Revolutionary Republican women from spring to fall of 1793. In Prudhommes radical political journal Rvolutions de Paris, he urged women to claim their rights, responsibilities, and power of citizenship through political education and vigilance. Prudhomme recognized the complaint that it seemed as though there was only one sex in France, and that the entire female population was being ignored. Women were designated only a few benches in the National Assembly, and if they were allowed to speak at all it was only for a brief few minutes, after which time they were quickly dismissed. During the reign of the Gauls, women were given the same civil and political rights as men. Prudhomme argued that there was never a reason to take these rights away in the first place.
41

The Rousseauian account of womans influence on the Revolution claims that The revolution that eventually established principles and practices of democratic politics for men also would, and should, clarify differences between mens and womens natures, sharpen the divisions between their roles in the public and private spheres, and overall drastically narrow the

40

Guyomar, The Partisan of Political Equality Between Individuals Discussion of Citizenship under the Proposed New Constitution, Hunt 133-135; Levy and Applewhite 79. 41 Godineau 269-270; Prudhomme 129-130; Levy and Applewhite 83-84; Darline Gay Levy, Womens Revolutionary Citizenship in Action, 1791: Setting the Boundaries. Waldinger, Renne; Dawson, Philip; and Woloch, Isser; editors. The French Revolution and the Meaning of Citizenship. (Westport, Connecticut and London: Greenwood Press, 1993) 169-184.

19 parameters of womens citizenship. 42 However, accounts of women reading and critiquing political news tended to break down the Rousseauian (and common) view of women as frail beings, intellectually dependent on men. 43 As far as women were concerned, during the French Revolution few tangible benefits were achieved. Although women began to come together and speak out more for their rights, any small advances made during the Revolutionary period were crushed by the restrictive Civil Code of Napoleon a few years later. 44 It was not until about a century later that women across the [First] world began to make any significant political and economic strides. Inspired by the philosophies of the Enlightenment, the French revolutionaries broke with traditional symbols of power and authority, and struggled to create new images of a culturally advanced society. No issue passed the Assembly, or the public for that matter, without a heated debate. The four stages of the Revolution culminated in the creation of a new institution of government that had not previously existed in France. Some historians have written it off as a failed revolution for various social, political, and economic reasons, while others have praised it as a vast step forward for humanity. Over time the historiography of the period has changed as patterns of human thought have evolved, but the notion of the French Revolution as a revolution for the people has remained undisputed.

42 43

Levy 170. Levy 169-170; Landes 15-37. 44 The Napoleonic Code, or Civil Code of Napoleon during his reign in the early 1800s, placed many restrictions on women and reinforced the notion of their alleged inferiority to men.

20 WORKS CITED BOOKS Cooper, Anna Julia. Slavery and the French Revolutionists, (1788-1805.) Lewistown, Queenston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1988. Francis Richardson Kellers translation of Cooper, a black American of the 1920s, who studied the French Revolution and its relations to slavery in French Santo Domingo and the West Indies with good attention paid to the international relations of the races.

Fick, Carolyn E. The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990. Discusses the background to the revolution, the revolts of 1791, and the south.

Fehr, Ferenc, ed. The French Revolution and the Birth of Modernity. Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1990. A collection of essays by scholars of the French Revolution. Quite notable is Gary Kates Jews into Frenchmen: Nationality and Representation in Revolutionary France.

Godineau, Dominique. The Women of Paris and Their French Revolution. Berkely, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1998. Thoroughly discusses the roles of various types of women during the revolution, including the working women, the Sansculottes Movement, etc.

Hertzberg, Arthur. The French Enlightenment and the Jews. New York, London, Columbia University Press: 1968. The first book to look at the origins of modern anti-Semitism in the Enlightenment and the French Revolution; discusses the position of the Jews in France prior and up to the period of the French Revolution during the Enlightenment.

Hufton, Olwen H. Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1992. Focuses on three aspects of women in the French Revolution through four chapters: women and politics; poverty and charity: revolutionary mythology and real women; in search of counterrevolutionary women; and the legacy: myth and memory.

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Melzer, Sarah E. and Rabine, Leslie W., editors. Rebel Daughters. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Through various essays by female scholars of the revolution, discusses the formation of female revolutionary ideology, the paradox of gender in the politics of the revolution, etc.

Petrey, Sandy, ed. The French Revolution 1789-1989: Two Hundred Years of Rethinking. Lubbock, Texas: Texas Tech University Press, 1989. Collection of various scholarly essays on the revolution.

Van Kley, Dale, ed. The French Idea of Freedom: The Old Regime and the Declaration of Rights of 1789. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1994 Another collection of scholarly essays on the French Revolution; one that particularly stands out is Singhams Betwixt Cattle and Men: Jews, Blacks, and Women, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

Waldinger, Renee; Dawson, Philip; and Woloch, Isser; editors. The French Revolution and the Meaning of Citizenship. Westport, Connecticut and London: Greenwood Press, 1993. A collection of scholarly essays on the French Revolution.

Wells, Charlotte C. Law and Citizenship in Early Modern France. Baltimore, London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. Discusses the practices and theories of citizenship in the sixteenth century, the transformation of citizenship in the seventeenth century, and the fortunes of citizenship in the eighteenth century.

ARTICLES Desan, Suzanne. Whats after Political Culture? Recent French Revolutionary Historiography, French Historical Studies 23.1 (2000): 163-196. Looks at the socialist French historiographies of Furet and other historians surrounding the bicentennial of the 1789 French Revolution in 1989.

22 Garrigus, John D. White Jacobins/Black Jacobins: Bringing the Haitian and French Revolutions Together in the Classroom, French Historical Studies 23.2 (2000): 259-275. Connects the Haitian and French Revolutions by discussing the conditions in each prerevolutionary state.

Hess, Jonathan M. Introduction: Forum: Jewish Questions. Eighteenth-Century Studies 32.1 (1998): 83-84. Looks at the Jewish question during the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment periods, and discusses Hertzberg and Schechter.

Schechter, Ronald. The Jewish Question in Eighteenth-Century France. EighteenthCentury History 32.1 (1998): 84-91. Discusses the plight of the Jewish people during the Revolutionary period.

Swenson, J. A Small Change in Terminology or a Great Leap Forward? Culture and Civilization in Revolution. Modern Language Notes, 112.3 (1997): 322-348. Discusses the paradoxes and ambiguities of the so-called steps forward of the French Revolution.

PRIMARY SOURCES Hunt, Lynn, ed.. The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History. Boston, New York: Bedford Books of St. Martins Press, 1996. Very useful collection of primary sources including from the French Revolution including The Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen and the Declaration of Rights of Woman among others, with good biographical references.

WEBSITES Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution. Washington, D.C.: the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, and New York: the American Social History Project at the City University of New York, supported by the Florence Gould Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. American Social History Productions, Inc., 2001. [cited 4 November 2001.] Available from the World Wide Web: (http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/index.html.)

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