EDWARD'S LECTURE NOTES:
More notes at http://tanguay.info/learntracker
C O U R S E
The French Revolution
Peter McPhee, The University of Melbourne
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C O U R S E L E C T U R E Unresolved Issues of the Revolution Notes taken on February 29, 2016 by Edward Tanguay |
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one of the great hopes of the Revolution of 1789 was a new era of
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fraternity
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harmony
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regeneration
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where members of the privileged orders would join with members of the Third Estate in creating a new and regenerated France
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everyone could take advantage of their abilities in a new world of liberty and equality
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the National Assembly engaged in the task of regenerating and remaking France
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sources of tension
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abandoning feudalism
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small village: Camps-sur-l'Agly
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in one of the poorest parts of France
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door with carving above it
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someone in that village had decided to recognize what the revolution had achieved
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a rough carving of the Bastille above the doorway
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yet it already indicates one of the tensions yet to be resolved
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the poor believed one of the most important achievements of the revolution was the abolition of feudalism
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the Lords believed that the harvest dues needed to be compensated before they could disappear completely
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was an ongoing issue
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religious freedom
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across the southern part of the country
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many Protestants
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Rights of Man and Citizen made clear that in the future people could not be troubled because of their beliefs
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but in the south there are tensions
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Mountauban and Nîmes
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anxiety and suspicions by the Catholic population who often work in textile houses owned by Protestants
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1790 resulted in violence
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active vs. passive citizens / universal suffrage
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a distinction made by the National Assembly
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Georges Danton
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argued that the people who made the revolution should not be precluded from voting
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in 1791, the Legislative Assembly was chosen by a process of indirect election
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the Electors of the Assembly were themselves elected by active citizens: male citizens whose annual taxes equaled the local wages paid for three days of labor
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this disfranchised about half of the male citizens of France
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even higher economic requirements for the Electors and the members of the Assembly left only about 50,000 eligible men in a country of some 25 million people
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founds the Cordeliers Club
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still standing in Paris as part of the National Institute of Medicine
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in an old convent that is sold off in 1790
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where radical actives to push harder for the rights of passive citizens to be respected
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menu peuple
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starting to demand their rights
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are given a different title, "sans-culottes"
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people who don't wear the fancy knee breeches and stockings
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they simply where trousers
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a term of condescension from the well-to-do but the lower classes increasingly take it as a term of pride
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slavery
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the Declaration of the Rights of Men had said that all people were born equal
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half a million slaves in the French Caribbean countries
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1791 a powerful, divisive debate with speeches by e.g. Brissot said that if there is hesitation on giving blacks freedom than the values of the revolution could not be said to be logical
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or to be in tune with what is desired in 1789
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slavery is incompatible with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen
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others argue that it would be terrible for the French economy to have slavery in those colonies abolished
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others say that slavery is wrong but it will take time to abolish completely
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May 1791, slaves who have become free or born or those born from freed slaves, will be recognized as citizens
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so for the poor and slaves, the revolution is not yet over
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there are unresolved questions
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for many other people, on the other hand, the revolution had already gone too far
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it's already been too radical in the changes that it's introduced