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Revolutionaries in the twentieth century looked to 1789 as a model for revolutionary events. Could modern revolutions follow a similar scripted path to authoritarianism if Robespierre could follow Lafayette before yielding to Napoleon? Did all revolutions begin with hope and zeal, only to devolve into violence and hand power over to an authoritarian, even dictatorial figure? Were revolutions manifestations of a particular type of political fever? These issues are still being debated by academics and political activists. Regardless of how they are interpreted, the Revolution’s lessons and impact are still at the centre of several historical and contemporary political debates.
History
Contemporaries were both energised and repulsed by the events of the French Revolution. “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive/ But to be young was very heaven!” wrote English poet William Wordsworth in his poem French Revolution As It Appears to Enthusiasts. (1804; also included in Prelude). The French celebrated and commemorated the overthrow of the old regime and everything it stood for in songs, engravings, poems, paintings, and music. Wordsworth, for example, travelled to France to witness events firsthand. Others, on the other hand, saw a darker side to the unfolding drama from the start of the Revolution. Edmund Burke’s lively polemical tract written just months after the Bastille’s fall sparked the first major debate about the French Revolution outside of France. Burke, a member of the British Parliament, became known for supporting American revolutionaries against the British monarchy.
The French Revolution, on the other hand, left him cold. In Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), he questioned the revolutionaries’ reliance on reason as the sole norm of rule, and predicted that the French would eventually resort to violence to impose their judgments. Burke went beyond criticising the French revolutionaries to present the first systematic defence of “conservative” ideals, arguing that gradual change and organic continuity in society across generations were preferable to violent, rapid changes in government structure. From the start, the French Revolution sparked intense political debate and a rethinking of government structure. Because the revolutionaries sought to rebuild government from the ground up, replacing reason with tradition and equal rights with privilege, they elicited a wide range of reactions.
North Americans kept a close eye on the French Revolution. According to Americans, the events of 1789 were heavily influenced by their personal experiences. The French Declaration of Man’s and Citizen’s Rights appeared to be heavily influenced by state constitutions. Even more direct influence was exerted when Thomas Jefferson, who was living in France at the time, communicated specific ideas to legislators via the Marquis de Lafayette. Despite the fact that the French Revolution took a very different path than the North American Revolution, this relationship was close, so it’s not surprising that the initial reaction to the Revolution in the United States was positive. John Adams, who, like Burke, expressed his reservations early on, was virtually the only dissenting voice among America’s top leaders. Indeed, the Republican Party, led by Jefferson, remained mostly favourable during the revolutionary decade, despite the Terror. Others, especially the Federalists, became hostile. Despite its waning influence in American politics, this party prevailed in French policy. Conflict over land and borders between these two ostensibly friendly states had soured many Americans on France and its revolution by the late years of the revolutionary decade.
Conclusion
Politicians, philosophers, poets, and novelists all felt compelled to weigh in on the French Revolution. Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher, followed events with interest, sometimes enthusiasm, and sometimes concern. As his treatises show, he understood the underlying power of the concept of right. French aristocrat François-René Chateaubriand was harsher. In his Historical, Political, and Moral Essay on Revolutions, Ancient and Modern, he attacked the Jacobins as “infuriated men” who had erected “a thousand sanguinary guillotines” in all of France’s villages and towns. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a German philosopher, built his ideas about history’s inherent, inner significance on the French Revolution. This use of the Revolution as a springboard for philosophical and political investigation highlighted the extent to which contemporaries saw the Revolution as both a turning point and a break with previous methods of doing things.
