Download Outcomes of the French Revolution

Outcomes of the French Revolution
While major historical interpretations of the French Revolution differ greatly, nearly all agree that it had an extraordinary influence on the making of the
modern world. Outcomes are both short term and long term, positive and negative, affecting France and rest of Europe and in the long term much of the rest
of the world. Although many of the short term outcomes directly affected the lives of people, both rich and poor, what they did and how they lived, it is the
ideas from the French Revolution that have had the greatest long term influence on modern thinking and the way many nations aim to organise their
governments and societies.
Short Term Outcomes (1789-1815)
FRANCE
Political change
Feudalism was destroyed and laws of the Old Regime were cancelled.
The word 'nation' was given a new meaning which stressed on the people being the
source of all power and authority, the divine right of kings is rejected.
In 1792, all non-propertied classes (workers, peasants, artisans) were given equal
political rights.
Established the precedents of such democratic institutions as elections,
representative government, and constitutions.
Created a new system of administration of local government.
When Napoleon took power many political rights were lost or restricted. Napoleon
retained voting and an assembly but he allowed it little power.
Social change –
All privileged classes were abolished.
The idea of three ‘estates’ was abolished, as were noble and church privileges
The ideas of social equality and socialism became popular and remained popular.
The rigid old structure is gone.
The social place of the middle classes becomes more important
Nationalism and loyalty to the nation replace loyalty to church, king or local nobility
Separation of church and state
Napoleon signed a Concordat with the Catholic Church but the old power was not
restored.
Economic Change
A massive redistribution of land especially from the Church.
Capitalism became the new economic system.
Economic Hardship - currency inflation,
standardisation of weights and measures across all of France
EUROPE
The Revolution played a role in establishing ideas such as elections, representative
government, and constitutions.
The Rise of the State - the French Revolution was instrumental in making the role of
the state central to political affairs, replacing in many cases local authority whether
nobility, merchant princes or the church.
The Rise of Nationalism - The French nation showed the rest of Europe what could
be achieved by arms, and thereafter, countries conquered by Napoleon went on to
create their own national armies, based on the idea of loyalty to the State.
Little change in the short term
Economic forces related to the growth in trade and the industrial revolution also
feed into social change throughout western Europe
Napoleon's armies were destructive in lands they invaded, requisitioning supplies
and imposing taxes on those conquered territories.
Napoleon’s army looted treasures from Europe and Egypt. Many became the basis
of the collection at the Louvre.
Legal Change –
The Jacobins gave to all the right to vote and to have their grievances settled.
Social order and contractual relations were consolidated by the Code Napoléon,
which became the basis of France’s legal system, took away gains women and some
workers had got during the revolution.
Growth of the military
War - more than 20 years of nearly continuous wars for France, initially against
Austria, Prussia and their allies, and then more broadly across Europe, estimated 3
million people died throughout Europe during the wars, which ended in 1815 with
Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo.
The Code Napoleon influenced the development of modern legal codes in many
European countries.
Europe experienced a war which would last until 1815 and which would see the map
of the continent, and the types of governments ruling it, changed a number of times.
Millions died and everyone was affected to some degree. The Holy Roman Empire, a
thousand years old in 1800, ceases to exist in 1806 and never resurrected.
In order to fight the war, nations had to marshal their resources like never before,
leading to governments which were more centralized and more authoritarian.
Increase in violence
Sanctioned by the state: Reign of Terror - January 1793 to July 1794, a period of
extreme violence where the supporters of the new government tried to crush
resistance to the Revolution. As many as 40,000 people were executed by the
guillotine, before large crowds.
At the same time the chaos, economic difficulties and lack of a clear authority
structure led to a great increase in general violence and crime in France, especially in
the rural areas which were less under Paris’s control.
National identity
A sense of collective identity grew amongst the French people through the use of art
and symbols, like the tricolour (French flag) and ideas of la patrie (the fatherland)
and le citoyen (the citizen)
As a result of war with Napoleon, national identities began to coalesce like never
before, with more people believing in their country rather than their monarch, and
the nationalist ideology emerged.
Medium Term Outcomes (1815 – 1918)
FRANCE
Social Change, Legal and Economic Change
A significant percentage of nobles able to reclaim land and wealth.
Most classes, those who managed to survive the Revolution…experienced a real
improvement living standards especially middle classes and skilled workers;
Greater equality before the law. One result was a change in inheritance laws, giving
all sons equal shares of an inheritance, and even daughters a portion, lead to
splitting up family lands into several smaller plots was that it would become
impossible for all the heirs to support their families. Therefore, French peasants in
the 1800s had a lower birth rate to avoid splitting family lands.
EUROPE
Political and social
With the defeat of Napoleon kings and emperors were secured in power for longer,
although their states had been altered by the ideas of the French Revolution and the
invasions of Napoleon’s armies, which also changed how warfare was carried out
leading to the era of modern warfare.
Some historians view the Reign of Terror as an ominous precursor of modern
totalitarianism
Few French people emigrated to places like the Americas compared to other
European peoples. Likewise, there were fewer people available for factory work,
which slowed France’s rate of industrialization.
The end Church aid for the poor and sick meant that, in 1847, there were still over
40% fewer hospitals in France than before the revolution.
Revolution and the demand for political rights re-emerged in a series of revolutions
that engulfed France and much of Europe in 1830 and 1848.
The notion of a political system that was popular and participatory began to take
hold in Europe.
Nationalism led to the unification of the Germany and Italian States into modern
countries. The French Revolution re-introduced republicanism as a realistic model of
government, and showed that a European state didn’t have to be officially Christian;
indeed, it could be completely anti-religious. Equality before the law, freedom of
speech, and a sovereignty of the people rather than the monarch all took fertile
hold. Modern liberalism emerged.
By 1923, the three largest multi-ethnic states in the world had dissolved. These were
Imperial Russia, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, all of which had given
way to a number of individual nation states.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen is a key document of the
French Revolution, that, along with the American Bill of Rights, established the
notion of universal human rights.
With the French as an example, attempted and sometimes successful revolutions
would take place after 1815 across Europe, especially in key years like 1830 and
1848, and later in Russia in 1917.
Long Term Outcomes
FRANCE
Democratic country with aspects of its political
organisation, especially provincial government
(departments) going back to the Revolution and
Napoleonic period.
Structure of the legal system based on Code Napoleon
EUROPE
Most of Europe now has democratic government and
the concept of human rights.
Modern states in Europe based on nationalism and
national governments. Nationalism is perhaps the
strongest and longest lasting idea to come out of the
French Revolution as it affected European states that
had a range of political organisations and beliefs.
The Russian Empire underwent revolution and change
later but many of the basic ideas from the French
Revolution contributed to both communist ideology
and the eventual demand for democracy.
standardisation of weights and measures – the metric
system
REST OF THE WORLD
The concepts of nationalism, human rights and
democracy spread to many parts of the world resulting
in revolutions, anti-colonialism, and aggressive war as
well as the creation of many new nations. Some are
still working out the application of these basic ideas.
The notion of human rights and national sovereignty
become central to the formation of the League of
Nations and the United Nations.
France /Napoleon to a large extent invented modern
“total war” and France suffered from this in World War
1 and World War 11.
The growth of Nationalism and the need to modernise
armies is thought by some historians to create
conditions of competition of resources between nation
states that is one of the causes of World War 1.
It has also been argued that the example of the Terror
led to secret police terror found in Nazi Germany and
Stalin’s Russia.
One touchstone by which to analyse the Revolution’s results is its motto: “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity (Brotherhood). The power of these three ideas quickly spread to
the rest of Europe, especially after Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815, and eventually across the globe. Liberty refers to the basic civil rights we often take for granted as being
the natural rights of people everywhere, such as speech, press, assembly, religion, and voting for officials and laws, etc. The last of these, voting, was typically among the
last to be extended to all members of society, in particular women. The idea of equality or equal access to society’s structures and institutions also happened much more
slowly for some groups than others, women and minority groups have had more difficulty in obtaining equality.
Brotherhood (AKA nationalism) was the idea that a people united by a common language; history, culture and geography should have the sovereign right to choose their
own destiny. This would also prove a mixed blessing. On the plus side, nationalism included everyone sharing the traits just mentioned, bringing them into both a larger
and more cohesive group. However, it also tended to exclude people not sharing the same nationalistic traits. In some cases this has led to the extremes of “ethnic
cleansing”. In other places attempts have been made through legal and political systems to include diverse groups in the “national identity”
Another good news/bad news aspect of nationalism was the competition of the nation state with older institutions, in particular the family and religion, for the loyalty of its
citizens. Out of this also came the idea of a secular state that is not aligned with any particular religion. Most states claim to be secular but there are still arguments
(sometimes violent) about the place of religion and what is “ethical” or ‘moral” in a secular society. While some argued legalizing divorce and implementing civil marriages
and mandatory public education helped nations get past some of the more regressive attitudes and narrow loyalties of the family and religion, the state has often had
difficulty adequately replacing those institutions in terms of moral and ethical education, social stability, and providing social services that used to be the task of church and
family.