Critically assess the relative importance of socio-economic factors, political tension and intellectual currents in the origins of the French Revolution.
An inquiry into the origins of the French Revolution would emanate from a certain understanding of the nature of the French Revolution. The Revolution, arising from the conditions of eighteenth century France, occupies a position of immense symbolic importance in marking the rupture between the “Old” (the ancien régime), and the “New” French “nation”. Late Eighteenth century France, apart from witnessing the intensification of old socio-political struggles, was also characterized by certain forces of change that seemed to confront the Old Order. These forces were represented by new ideas, rising social groups, prospering commerce and increasing political tensions. The question of the nature and thus, the origins of the Revolution can be addressed depending on which of the above features one would see as characterizing the Revolution.
Eighteenth century French society, despite being highly stratified and “feudal”, was dynamic and saw the rise of various social groups. But while distinctions of Estate were becoming increasing anachronistic to view this dynamism in terms of the rise of the “bourgeoisie” is to ignore the complexity of social reality. Social identity, as A Cobban has pointed out, was complex with several determinants – legal status, economic functions, sources of wealth, mode of life, profession etc, all not necessarily distinct.
The ruling elite of France, or the notables, as they were called, comprised of the members of upper clergy (who were powerful nobles), the court nobility, sections of the wealthy “bourgeoisie”, i.e. those living off unearned income and the administrative bourgeoisie at the upper levels of the bureaucratic machinery. Nobility, although was traditionally based on blood, through the practice of ennoblement, started by Louis XIV, could be acquired by wealth. The aristocracy despite all its social prestige, snobbery, distinct ways of life, and its practice of derogating to the ranks to emphasize its superiority, was a disparate group with significant internal divisions. During the course of the eighteenth century, the sections of merchants and financiers that gained in prosperity and wealth through flourishing commerce and lending to the State, found their way into the ambit of political power through purchase of venal offices. In some cases, these offices conferred upon them noble status, which was extremely coveted. The aspiration for upward mobility was also reflected in the purchase of seigneuries by the moneyed, which enabled them to live life nobles, apart from providing a profitable investment. Thus, towards the eighteenth century end one observes the integration of rich at the upper echelons of the society, where wealth blurred social distinctions. The pre-eminence of land as the principal form of property remained, and was adopted by the wealthy non aristocracy.
Commoner entry into the aristocracy was resented, particularly by the impoverished provincial nobles, extremely insecure of their status after having sold off their unviable holdings. The entry of agrarian capitalism in the countryside further sharpened the right between the rich and the provincial nobility, which often translated into the Court and the Provincial nobility, due the latter’s inability to afford to reside in Versailles. Through marital alliances into noble families, members of the wealthy bourgeoisie were further integrated with the nobility. Thus, the eighteenth century had not a “revolutionary bourgeoisie” but one which aspired to noble status and emulated noble lifestyles. However, this section of the “bourgeoisie” was to find the doors of entry into aristocratic institutions and political power closing for itself as the eighteenth century drew to a close. The parliaments, high offices at the court etc. increasingly began to emphasize the nobility of blood for office. This aristocratic reaction in the defense of privileges was to act as a precursor to the future political struggle between the aristocracy and those who began to attack privileges, partly because they could not enjoy it.
At another level, the eighteenth century saw the intensification of the age old political struggle between a centralizing monarchy and an aristocracy resisting this effect, what precipitated into the “aristocratic revolt”. The immediate context for this struggle was provided by the unprecedented fiscal burden that the court faced, though in a sense, the personalized absolutism (at least such a claim, for a number of intermediary institutions exercised considerable influence) created b Louis XIV was unsustainable in the long run, particularly under the personality of such a ruler as Louis XVI. The prestige of the Court under Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who symbolized frivolity, suffered a setback and thus, it became easy to attack it.
Financial troubles were a recurrent concern for an extravagant court, with an expensive bureaucratic machinery and nobility that measured prestige through the extent of indebtedness. However, it was really the French participation in the American War of Independence that blew the royal crisis out of proportion. With a fiscal deficit of 126 million livres, excluding the interest on this debt, reform was imminent. This reform took the form of the monarchical decision to infringe on the fiscal privileges of the Church and aristocracy, justified on Enlightened principles, since the option of taxing the overburdened masses was ruled out. However, the fear of popular revolts, that would result from such a decision reflect the practical concerns of the monarchy. Any encroachment into their fiscal privileges would inevitable be aggressively resisted by the aristocracy, given the fact that exemption from direct taxation had almost become central to noble identity. The noble struggle against reform was carried forth by the parlements, led by the Parlement of Paris, backed by the Church. With their right of remonstrating royal decrees, the Parlements defended noble privileges, giving them the garb of “liberties”. The Remonstrances reflect the language of Enlightenment that they used, holding the nobility as a bulwark against despotism and claiming to represent the nation, reflecting their interpretation of Montesquieu. The tirade against royal tyranny that they launched was couched in the language of liberty, to stir popular disturbances against the monarchy. Stating that Estates General alone had the right to vote new taxes, they demanded its convocation (defunct since 1628), with the ulterior motive of restoring their own power vis-à-vis the monarchy. The decision to call the Estates General is seen by many as the capitulation of the monarchy.
Thus, the French Revolution seen in this context, as G. Lefebvre puts it, was inaugurated by the aristocratic revolt and was the final episode in the struggle between the aristocracy and the Capetian monarchy. The decision to convoke the Estates General, which was to meet in May 1789, galvanized a political climate, unprecedented in its nature and extent. The coming of the Estates General was a source of optimism to all, for different reasons though, and as seen as the coming of the French nation. This politicization, led to the events that would bring the middle class in the forefront of political debate.
During the months spent in the preparation of elections for the Estates General the political debate assumed a new character, particularly after decision of the Parlement of Paris to 1614 manner of composition of the Estates General. This exposed the intentions of the Parlements and of the conservative majority of the aristocracy who were unwilling to compromise on their privileges. This galvanized the members of the Third Estate against aristocratic arbitrariness giving them a unity they otherwise could not possess, given the diversity of their backgrounds. Even the wealthy bourgeois, alienated by the aristocracy, were forced to look downwards. Thus what had hitherto been a struggle against royal despotism was translated into a struggle against the nobility, an attack on noble privileges and a demand for equality before law. The role of pamphlets, propaganda in shaping this public political opinion cannot be ignored.
As Lefebvre argues, given the state of communications, the local “bourgeoisie” must have played an important role in mobilizing public opinion. Under the clamoring of the middle class, the monarchy acceded to the demand for double representation by the Third Estate though voting by order was retained.
The middle class, especially lawyers, played an important role in the drafting of cahiers or lists or grievances, even of the countryside, and even in the countryside, the peasants mostly ended up electing members of the bourgeoisie as their deputies. While the first two Orders were elected by universal adult suffrage, election to the Third Estate was based on property qualifications. In a situation of growing political consciousness, notions of popular sovereignty emerged as seen in Abbe Sieyes’ pamphlet, “What is the Third Estate?”, which identified the “nation” with the majority of the population, i.e., the Third Estate. The realization for political reform, through a Constitution that would not only establish fiscal equality but also create equality before law, was expressed by the middle class, and the Patriot was formed to discuss Constitutional reform. While nobles by and large were opposed to ideas that would impinge on their privileges, liberal aristocrats like Talleyrand, Lafayette, Condorcet etc joined the Patriot Party and they were an importance force within it. Similarly, many of the young nobles in the Parlement of Paris were in favour of abolition of fiscal privileges. Thus, as Elizabeth Eisenstein has argued, the initiative for political reform did not merely come from the “the bourgeoisie”, but from a group of men diverse in their social backgrounds but sharing similar liberal ideas. Thus, to look at the “bourgeois revolt” as merely “bourgeois” is to give primacy to a class identity (if it existed) over belief in common ideology.
When the Estates General met, nobles remained recalcitrant, the Third Estate belligerent and the Crown indecisive, vacillating. The growing impatience of the Third Estate lead them to declare themselves as the National Assembly on June 17, 1789, and they invited the other two Orders to join them. Majority of the members of the clergy (parish priests) joined the Assembly, splitting the first Order and so did some liberal nobles. Louis XVI’s indecisiveness failed to find a solution to a deadlock, which could otherwise have been solved. The fate of the National Assembly seemed precarious, until popular pressure salvaged it.
The political victory for the Third Estate was enforced by popular pressure, through revolts that broke out in the towns and the countryside. The Fall of Bastille on July 14 saved the National Assembly from dissolution and later in October, the march of Parisian women to Versailles exerted pressure on Louis XVI to return to Paris and accept the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, firmly establishing the Revolution. In fact, the popular movements through their fusion with the political revolution were critical in the success of the ongoing political struggle. The popular movements not only broadened the scope of the struggle, but are inseparable in the understanding of what the Revolution meant, and symbolized the opening of an age of mass politics.
However, these popular movements had an autonomous course and objective, were not merely the tools of the revolutionary leadership summoned at their will, even though the middle class played an important role in raising their level of political consciousness. Popular unrest was closely allied with economic realities and tended to flare up in times of economic crisis. Though the French Revolution occurred in a broad context of overall growth of the French economy, the years 1787-89 were that of economic slowdown and the crop failure of 1788 worsened the conditions of the impoverished, overburdened, rural and urban masses by raising the price of bread. Through bread riots, attacks on food convoys, bakers, millers, speculators the starved masses had expressed their grievance.
However, 1789 provided a new hitherto absent political context to popular revolts, which were in search of a political solution for their objectives. The calling of the Estates General in 1789 presented the peasantry with “The Great Hope”, an anticipation that the King would address their economic misery by reduction and abolition of taxes, their principal source of misery. As the peasant cahiers reflect – seigniorial dues, particularly the banalities or noble monopolies, indirect taxes, the misuse of the tithe, and the new taxes that the nobles raked up under the feudal reaction, were greatly resented by the peasantry. The calling of the Estates General coincided with the peasant suspicion of an aristocratic conspiracy meant to unleash brigands in the countryside to sabotage their produce. Not only did they refuse pay taxes, but taking defensive measures, began to attack noble chateau’s storehouse and property, which is often taken as symbolic of their attack on the feudal order. However, peasant attack on feudal property cannot be taken as an attack on feudalism per say, since rarely were aristocrats attacked in person. The peasant revolts of 1789 were also significantly directed against capitalism in the countryside – the enclosure edicts are opposed in the cahiers, and common rights were reclaimed in the course of peasant insurrection. Peasant action in a sense determined the legislation of the revolutionary government, at the cost of the interests of some seigniorial bourgeois proprietors, reflected in the abolition of seigniorial dues between August 4th-11th 1789, primarily prompted by fear of peasant revolt and thus the need to pacify the countryside.
The urban movements were more closely allied to the political ideals of the revolutionary clubs (that the Revolution fostered), often adopting their political slogans, through the propaganda of pamphlets, etc circulated for the urban educated. The elite intellectual culture of Enlightenment, when percolated down to the lower classes, assumed a different nature and began to attack the very salón society which fostered the philosophers. Guided by a moralistic sense of frugal virtue, consciously juxtaposed with aristocratic decadence, or rather the exaggerated myth of it, the lower class attacked the aristocratic elite with a savagery that cannot be otherwise explained. The popular results also tended to be anti-clerical, attaching Church symbols. However, the constant underlying motive of most popular movements was concerned with economic circumstances – the revolt against the increasing price of bread or wages declining in their purchasing power in a worsening inflationary situation. The lower urban classes – of artisans, journeymen, shopkeepers – heterogeneous in composition but were unanimous in their attack on the tax burden, particularly the franc fief levied by the crown. Coupled with this was a resentment towards the rich, and large property, which it was feared would wipe the lower urban classes out of existence. Thus one can see the same conservatism among the lower urban classes in their assault on capitalism.
The urban movements began to find cohesion and became more radicalized from 1792 onwards, often dictating terms to the Revolutionary government. The growing popular resentment against the monarch (particularly after his flight to Verannes), translated into —ands for a Republic. With the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1792, and growing suspicion of Louis’ loyalty to the Revolution under increasing pressure, particularly after the march of the Parisian crowds to the Royal Palace, the king was forced to abdicate. This more or less spelt the end of the Constitutional monarchy.
Thus, the political crisis that had opened up as an attack on privileges demand for fiscal equality, removal or arbitrariness from governance, decentralization, through a cohesion of circumstances determined to an extent by popular pressure, led to the establishment of the French Republic. The war, carried forth through the propaganda of preserving the Revolution from the “counter revolutionaries” not only radicalized the political atmosphere but also reopened the economic crisis.
The political between the Girondins and Jacobins within the Assembly intensified and the latter were able to capture power because of the Girondins’ inability to deal with the economic crisis. Through a strategic alliance with popular forces, represented by the sans-culottes, most radicalized at the time, they retained power. Holding the reins of the Revolutionary leadership during the course of the war, they justified terror and dictatorship in dealing with the crisis that France faced. The adoption of General Maximum in 1793 and many such legislations, which make this the most radical government that the Revolution was ever to see, were dictated by the sans-culottes. Although this alliance shared a common reverence to political ideas of democracy, they diverged significantly in economic beliefs.
The question to be really asked here is as to what extent was the Revolution and the revolutionaries rooted in the dominant intellectual current of the time, represented by the Enlightenment, without undermining the complexity of what either represented. The opening of the political atmosphere in 1789 fostered liberal ideas associated with the Enlightenment, particularly under political clubs. This political liberalism, rationality that ran through the Enlightenment, the belief in the enjoyment of in alienable natural rights by all men, freedom of thought and expression was reflected in the Declaration of the Rights of the Man and the Citizen. The secularization of politics, by removal of the Church from the arena of political life, the opening of clerical posts to election, may be rooted in the thought of the philosophes, Voltaire particularly. The dissolution of Church lands however, might have been meant to address the fiscal crisis.
But the origin of notions of popular sovereignty, of the redefinition of the nation that emerged during the course of the revolutionary crisis is more complex. It is argued by Cobban, that if any of the Enlightened thinkers even came close to popular sovereignty, it was Rousseau, but his thought on general will an idealized will did not imply popular sovereignty on the extensive scale that it emerged during the Revolution. Robespierre was steeped in Rousseau, and believed in a single sovereign will reflecting virtue, and used this argument to justify terror against all political opposition and create his dictatorship. However, even though a revolutionary idealist like him borrowed the vocabulary of the Enlightenment, his actions reflected practical necessities imposed by war, though war does not justify them. Even though ideas provided symbols for political struggles, beginning with the defence that the Parlements present for their privileges, the course of the Revolution is dictated by circumstances and material concerns. Lefebvre too has argued that despite a streak of genuine idealism among the revolutionaries, material concerns dictated the course of the Revolution.
In fact, practical circumstances influenced ideas and political theory. The Revolution in that sense can be seen as a dialogue between ideas and circumstances. Thus, the Revolution does not merely partake in Enlightenment vocabulary; it creates its own ideologies in the process, which begin to be identified with the Enlightenment.
Given the complexity of social background of the Revolution it cannot be seen to represent the economic ideas of a “class”. Thus to speak of it in terms of the challenge of incipient capitalism to decadent feudalism is to undermine historical reality. Industrial capitalism was an insignificant force in France, vis-à-vis, commerce and remained so well into the nineteenth century. Moreover, A Cobban has argued that the revolutionary leadership was in the hands of the declining officer class and the “men of talent” – lawyers etc, and not in the hands of the rising commercial class (if at all they represented “capitalist interests”). The socio-economic struggles both in the towns as well as the countryside that attacked the Old Order in the opening year of the Revolution also tended to be anti-capitalist. Although certain internal barriers to trade were abolished, free trade per say, did not emerge.
The Revolution although abolished seigneurial rights, established the inalienability of the right to landed property, reinforcing the importance of land as source of wealth and thus, social prestige, if not privilege. Even though privileges were abolished, career opened to talent, in effect, wealth replaced birth as a criterion for power. The class of ruling elite that emerged from the Revolution was a landed class, since the Constitution of 1795 re-established their supremacy, reversing the achievements of the previous Constitution based on universal adult suffrage. Thus, in terms of affecting any profound social or economic changes the Revolution achieved little and did not effectively prepare France for an “advance of capitalism”.
In this sense, the crisis of 1788-1789 and the subsequent convocation of the Estates General really opened the Pandora’s Box for the Old Order in France. The crisis of 1788-89 in turn was instigated by the political deadlock between the despotic monarchy and the privileged groups over the solution to the fiscal crisis. This crisis paved the way for the opening of a new political atmosphere within which new ideas and socio-economic struggles were to grow. Popular participation won the political struggles that characterized the Revolution in all its stages – the struggle between monarchy and aristocracy, between the Third Estate and the aristocracy, between the monarchy and the National Assembly, between Revolution and what was perceived to be counter-revolution. Although rooted in socio-economic factors, popular participation in its new political context transformed mass movements to mass politics, though not strictly in the modern sense of the term. The new political context also bred ideas, intellectual currents that not only shaped the minds of the revolutionaries but also provided its vocabulary to the Revolution, which was more than a mere tool for political struggle. Thus while the Revolution originated from a diversity of factors – social, economic, intellectual, if these had any unity, it is due to the fact that they operated within a political framework.