Background in 1780s

1) World both smaller and larger

a) “known” world smaller-what was known
i) main outlines of continents but little of interiors
ii) Population distribution in 1800
(1) 2 of 3 humans Asian
(2) 1 of 5 Europeans
(3) 1 of 10 Africans
(4) 1 of 35 American
b) Much vaster because of sheer difficulty of travel and communication
i) by land
(1) London to Glasgow postal service
(a) in 1760, 10-12 days
(b) in 1800, 62 hours
(2) Most goods moved by carts
(a) Even by early 19th C in France, 5/6 of all goods transported by cart
ii) by water
(1) much easier and safer
(2) Plymouth “closer” to London than a village in East Anglia
(3) World capitals “closer” than English Midlands
iii) Mobility
(1) As late as 1861 9 out of 10 people in 70 out of 90 French departments lived in the
departments of their birth
2) World overwhelmingly rural
a) really divided urban, provincial and rural
b) provincial tied more closely to rural economy than urban
c) agrarian world divided into three types of economic relationships
i) colonial worked by slaves
ii) feudal worked by serfs
iii) “modern” freeholders or tenant farmers
3) Into this “Enlightenment”
a) Reason is the most significant and positive capacity of the human
b) reason enables one to break free from primitive, dogmatic, and superstitious beliefs
holding one in the bonds of irrationality and ignorance
c) in realizing the liberating potential of reason, one not only learns to think correctly, but to
act correctly as well
d) through philosophical and scientific progress, reason can lead humanity as a whole to a
state of earthly perfection
e) reason makes all humans equal and, therefore, deserving of equal liberty and treatment
before the law
f) beliefs of any sort should be accepted only on the basis of reason, and not on traditional
or priestly authority
g) all human endeavors should seek to impart and develop knowledge, not feelings or
character

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French Revolution
1) Why the French Revolution is so Fundamental
a) France the most populous (except Russia) and most influential (excepting none) state in
Europe
b) A mass social revolution with very radical elements
c) Ecumenical—leaders sought to export revolution (literally) through its Army; was
exported as an idea
2) What brought it about?
a) Failure to reform
i) Turgot, Louis XVI’s finance minister sought to enact reforms (1774-6)
(1) more efficient use of land
(2) free enterprise and trade
(3) a bureaucratic state (rational procedures)
(4) single homogenous national territory
(5) equitable treatment for all areas of nation
ii) reforms failed because
(1) opposed by vested interests: noble landowners; clerical landowners
(2) opposed by king
h) The “Feudal Reaction”
i) Monarchy ruled absolutely—stripped nobles of all power
ii) Nobles (about 400,000 out of 23 million French in 1780) enjoy some privileges
(exemption from certain taxes, able to levy dues on peasants) but are barred from
earning income in any profession
iii) Therefore they increasingly take government jobs although they are not trained to do
them, thus squeezing out the middle class more capable of performing these tasks
iv) Nobles also attempt to increase income by further squeezing peasants
v) Peasants (about 80% of population) were free and some even owned land, but
majority were landless and powerless—they paid dues (sort of like rent but unlike
rent not tied to market) to nobles, tithes to the church, and taxes to the king
vi) French economy a disaster waiting to happen
i) Financing the American Revolution
i) France’s help to US (to defeat its most significant rival England) bankrupts the state
ii) Royal extravagance, popularly cited as cause of French bankruptcy but it was not; in
1788
(1) Court expenditure 6%
(2) Armed Forces 25%
(3) Debt service 50%
4) The Various Revolutions
a) 1788-1789
i) Nobles attempt to use bankruptcy to restore noble power—parlements and so forth
ii) National Assembly formed to write constitution
iii) Counter-Revolution produces real revolution—threat of pro-monarchy forces moving
against nobles and bourgeosie lead to mass social revolution
(1) Bastille falls
(2) “Grande peur” of July/August 1789
(3) French gov’t in fragments
b) 1789-1791

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 i) Constituent Assembly formed
ii) King resists reforms, flees, and is captured
iii) Institution of free market principles produces price fluctuations and widespread
hardship and panic
iv) Rise of radical factions opposed to moderate attempts at reform
(1) Sans-culottes pushes for “little man”—essentially return to idyllic past free of
private property
(2) Jacobins—far left, radicalize revolution
c) 1792
i) War pushed by extreme right and moderate left
(1) Extreme right, monarchists, sought foreign intervention to restore monarchy;
foreign states worried about domino-effect—the spread of revolutionary ideas to
their own states
(2) Moderate left wanted to spread the revolution to all of Europe
ii) War declared in April 1792; France defeated within months; Duke of Brunswick with
troops at the edge of Paris issues an ultimatum to the French people
iii) Defeat seen as responsibility of royalist sympathizers
iv) Result
(1) Royal palaces overrun
(2) Monarchy overthrown
(3) King imprisoned
(4) Mob violence exacted on “sympathizers” of the king (1200 publicly executed)
v) Girondins come to power, but as moderates in a polarized state they cannot hold
power for long
d) The Terror
i) Jacobins overthrow Girondins; Terror begins
ii) Committee for Public Safety under Robespierre becomes most powerful ministry
iii) 17,000 executed in fourteen months (including all of royal family)
iv) Eventually Jacobin leaders themselves (Danton, Marat, Saint-Just, Robespierre) are
executed
e) Jacobin Success
i) Preserved country and revolution
(1) brought all of France under central control
(2) Repelled foreign invaders
(3) stabilized currency and economy
ii) mobilized mass support for revolutionary principles
(1) abolished all remaining feudal rights
(2) abolished slavery
iii) Policies win war, but overall masses alienated
iv) Jacobins overthrown in Ninth Thermidor (July 1794)
f) Thermidor
i) Government by the Directory—a weak unpopular gov’t that relied on the Army
ii) Army rises in power
(1) looting finances gov’t
(2) open to talent (democratic institution)
(3) Myth of Napoleon—common man who becomes world leader

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English Responses
1) France finally taking steps already taken by English—“revolution” of 1688
2) Unfinished revolution of 1688: Dr. Richard Price “On the Love of our Country” (4 Nov
1789)
a) 1688 based on
i) liberty of conscience
ii) right to resist power when abused
iii) Right to choose and reject rulers
b) Unfinished business
i) should abolish Test and Corporation Acts (which violate (1) above)
ii) should reform representation in Parliament
3) Dangers of Revolution: Burke
a) responds to Price sermon
b) best societies and political structures were organic—grew and matured over time
c) political societies were partnerships between the dead, the living, and the yet born
(mortmain)
d) best arrangements sanctified by custom and tradition
e) Other Loyalist Responses
i) Burke’s support of war—war as ideological; English constitutionalism under threat
ii) Anti-Jacobin Review—gov’t sponsored satiric “journal”
iii) Hannah More—class training: Cheap Repository Tracts
iv) Church and King mobs
4) Support for Revolution: Paine
a) men had the right to decide for themselves on their form of gov’t
b) this could not be set by prior generations
c) no justification for custom or tradition in gov’t
d) Other Radical Variations
i) Thomas Spence—Spenceans: abolition of private property; supported armed
insurrection
ii) John Thelwall—natural rights: responsibility of society to workers
iii) William Godwin—human perfectability: not natural rights, but future perfectability of
humanity; “universal benevolence” will rule; no one had the right to use his/her
talents for his own benefit; no ties stronger than universal ties
iv) Mary Wollstonecraft—early “feminism”: calls for education for women so that they
might be better partners for men and better mothers to children
5) These responses part of larger argument between ideas of
a) The Enlightenment—Reason
b) Romanticism—more than reason? (note that this division does not hold up)
c) Whig historiography implies that the radicals “won the intellectual arguments of the
1790s, but that they were repressed by a British ‘terror’ . . . [however more recent work]
suggests that a strong faith in the virtues of the British constitution, together with a
general resistance to chance, meant that radical ideas were defeated as much, if not more
so, by the appeal of an innate conservatism rather than by government-sponsored
repression” (Emsley 20)

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Edmund Burke
1) Revolution Contradictory to nature
a) Revolution is out of nature (103)
b) “spirit of innovation” contrary (105)
c) True gov’t in line with nature—organic (105)
2) Conservation
a) liberty an “entailed” inheritance (i.e. comes with conditions)
b) mortmain—our responsibility to the past and to the future (105)
3) Real rights
a) equal rights but not to equal things (106)
b) open to talent, but subject to inheritance—present equality built on historic inequality
4) Death of Chivalry
a) gothic images, language—polluted palace (107)
b) lurid image of Queen’s arrest (107)
c) Age of Chivalry dead (108)—paternalistic view
d) “swinish multitude” (110)

Thomas Paine
1) Rejects heredity and mortmain
a) “Man has no property in man” (122)
2) Revolution rational and principled
a) Distinguishes between practice of despotism and principles—must eliminate principles
not just practice
b) rational contemplation of the rights of man (125)
c) All history points to “unity of man”—born equal (127)

Arthur Young
1) Initially supportive of Revolution
a) paints dismal picture of France before Revolution
i) backward country
ii) extreme poverty
2) Opposes Revolution—too far
a) “the legislation of wolves”
b) “the mob of Paris”
c) results dismal (148)
3) The threat to England
a) justifies war as needed to protect England (149)

Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative

1) Shocking descriptions
a) of beatings
b) of forced eating
c) hints at sexual abuse of females
2) Who’s the Savage?
a) repeated references to savagery of whites
b) description of slavers and slave-traders as cruel and barbaric

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 c) encounters some kindness (like Daniel Queen) but is frequently betrayed
3) Not just slavery, but racism
a) even freed slaves encounter troubles
4) Gains freedom
a) powerful description of moment (218)
b) curious inability to let go of former master (219)

Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince

1) Pathetic descriptions
a) owners hearts harder than stones (220)
b) savage beatings (Hetty 220)
c) mothers separated from children (223)
2) Madness of slavery
a) effect of beatings on instigators
b) sadism?
3) Brutal work
a) Hetty’s labors (220)
b) the salt ponds (223)

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