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French Revolution: Events
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The essays in this collection, drawn from a Hofstra University bicentennial conference on the French Revolution, seek to come to terms, often from conflicting points of view, with the complex relationship between events and their representations. The question "How did the lived experience that eventually became known as the French Revolution come to be organized?" provides a common thread for the collection. Individual chapters examine the Revolution from the vantage points of theology and philosophy, theater and literature, as well as politics and history.
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The French Revolution of 1789 was a pivotal event in French history. The tradition of the absolute monarchy was shaken to the core when France declared itself a republic, and the king was guillotined. Almost overnight, France transformed itself into a political system largely modeled on the American Constitution and Bill of Rights. The leaders of the French Revolution first envisioned a representative government. Philosophically, the American Declaration of Independence heavily influenced the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. However, one striking difference between the American and French Revolutions foreshadows the very different outcomes. The main goal of the American Revolution was liberty, whereas the French wanted much more: "liberte, egalite, fraternity!"
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North Americans showed special interest in the French Revolution, believing the events of 1789 drew heavily on their own experience with Britain. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen seemed to borrow strikingly from the states' bill of rights. Even more direct influence took place when American Thomas Jefferson, resident in France at this time, passed along specific ideas to the legislators through the Marquis de Lafayette. Although the French Revolution took a far different path than the North American variety, this interaction was close, so it is not surprising that the initial U.S. reaction to the French Revolution was positive.
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The French Revolution was... one of the greatest events in human history. It is an inexhaustible source of lessons for the labour movement even today. Yet here the first note of caution must be sounded. The French Revolution was a bourgeois revolution, and it would be entirely mistaken to attempt to draw exact parallels between the processes involved and the movement of the modern proletariat. To attempt to do so would end up in all kinds of anachronistic and unscientific conclusions.
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From the start of the French Revolution, contemporary observers were struck by the overwhelming theatricality of political events. Paul Friedland argues that politics and theatre became virtually indistinguishable during the Revolutionary period.
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The French Revolution has been seen by most authors as predominately a political, social or (under Marxist influence) even as an economic event. Burke, Young, Rush, as well as other British and American visitors to France before the revolution point the finger at the aristocracy, the clergy and the upper classes; ... both skepticism and atheism had made inroads into the highest circles, and there existed among the clergy what Spengler called the "priestly rabble," or what we would call today our left-catholic "progressives." Censorship in the hand of the forerunners of the liberals, who suffered from moderno-snobbery, favored the left-wingers and persecuted the right, so as not to be labeled "reactionary. " All that gradually influenced the middle and lower classes as well.
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