Causes of the French Revolution
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The causes of the French Revolution, the uprising that brought the regime of King Louis XVI to an end, were manifold. France in 1789, although facing some economic (and especially fiscal) difficulties, was one of the richest and most powerful nations in Europe; only in Great Britain and the Netherlands did the common people have more freedom and less chance of arbitrary punishment. At the time Louis XVI called the Estates-General of 1789, he himself was generally popular, even if the nobility and many of the king's ministers were not.
Nevertheless, the ancien régime was brought down, partly by its own rigidity in the face of a changing world, partly by the ambitions of a rising bourgeoisie, allied with aggrieved peasants and wage-earners and with individuals of all classes who were influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment. As the revolution proceeded and as power devolved from the monarchy to legislative bodies, the conflicting interests of these initially allied groups would become the source of conflict and bloodshed.
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[edit] Absolutism and privilege
France in 1789 was, at least in theory, an absolute monarchy, an increasingly unpopular form of government at the time. In practice, the king's ability to act on his theoretically absolute power was curtailed by the (equally resented) powers and prerogatives of the nobility and clergy, remnants of feudalism. Similarly, the peasants covetously eyed the relatively greater privileges enjoyed by townspeople.
The large and growing middle class — and some of the nobility and of the working class — had absorbed the ideology of equality and freedom of the individual, brought about by such philosophers as Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Turgot, and other philosophers of the Enlightenment. The example of the American Revolution showed them that it was plausible that Enlightenment ideals about governmental organization could be put into practice. Some of the American revolutionaries, such as Benjamin Franklin, had stayed in Paris, where they were in frequent contact with the French intellectuals; furthermore, contact between the American revolutionaries and the French troops who had assisted them resulted in the spread of revolutionary ideals to the French. Many in France attacked the undemocratic nature of the government, pushed for freedom of speech, and challenged the Roman Catholic Church and the prerogatives of the nobles.
There is controversy over exactly how deeply Enlightenment ideals penetrated the various classes, and over the degree to which these ideals were simply cover for bourgeois self-interest. For example, Karl Marx writing in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung shortly after the Revolutions of 1848 wrote that in both the English Revolution of 1648 and in the French Revolution "the bourgeoisie was the class that really headed the movement. The proletariat and the non-bourgeois strata of the middle class had either not yet evolved interests which were different from those of the bourgeoisie or they did not yet constitute independent classes or class divisions. Therefore, where they opposed the bourgeoisie, as they did in France in 1793 and 1794, (that is to say, during the Reign of Terror) they fought only for the attainment of the aims of the bourgeoisie, albeit in a non-bourgeois manner. The entire French terrorism was just a plebeian way of dealing with the enemies of the bourgeoisie: absolutism, feudalism and philistinism."[1]
[edit] Economics
[edit] Debt
French monarchy had operated for many years without resorting to a legislature. Since 1614, French Kings had managed their fiscal affairs by increasing the burden of the ancient and unequal system of taxes, by borrowing money, and sometimes by selling noble titles, government offices, and other privileges; however, because noble titles exempted the holder from future taxes, the purchasers of titles were effectively buying an annuity.
This led to the long-running fiscal crisis of the French government. On the eve of the revolution, France was deeply indebted, so deeply as to be effectively bankrupt. Extravagant expenditures by Louis XIV on luxuries such as the Palace of Versailles were compounded by heavy expenditures on the Seven Years' War and the American War of Independence.
Britain too had a great debt from these conflicts, but Britain had a far more advanced fiscal structure to deal with it. France was a wealthier country than Great Britain, and its national debt was no greater than the British one. In each country the servicing of the debt accounted for about half the annual expenditure of the government. Where they differed was in the fact that the rate of interest in France was almost double the rate across the Channel. This implied a much higher level of taxation and less scope for any increase to deal with a specific emergency.
Edmund Burke, no friend of the revolution, was to write in 1790, "...the public, whether represented by a monarch or by a senate, can pledge nothing but the public estate; and it can have no public estate except in what it derives from a just and proportioned imposition upon the citizens at large." Because of the successful defense by the nobles of their privileges, the king of France lacked the means to impose a "just and proportioned" tax. The desire to do so led directly to the decision in 1788 to call the Estates-General into session.
[edit] Taxation
As France was not one of the major trading nations, external tariffs generated only a very limited portion of the French government's income. Therefore, tax revenues had to be generated internally. While average tax rates were higher in Britain, the burden on the common people was greater in France. Taxation relied on a system of internal tariffs applied to commerce between distinct regions of France, and the internal trade barriers thus created prevented a unified market from developing in the country. In addition, taxes such as the extremely unpopular gabelle were contracted out to private collectors ("tax farmers") who were permitted to raise far more than the government requested. These systems led to an arbitrary and unequal collection of many of France's consumption taxes. Other taxes imposed on the peasants included a 10% tax on income or produce, paid to the church (tithe), a (taille) paid to the state, a 5% property tax (vingtieme), and a poll tax (capitation). Further royal and seigneurial taxes were collected in the form of compulsory labor (the corvée). The peasants also had numerous obligations to their landlords - rent in cash (cens), a payment related to their amount of produce (champari), and taxes on the use of the nobles' mills, wine presses or bakeries (babalites). In good times, the taxes were burdensome; in harsh times, they were devastating.
Many public officials bought their positions from the king, as well as the right to keep this position hereditary; they used various methods to recover these expenses and make a profit out of their appointment. For instance, in a civil lawsuit, judges levied substantial fees on the parties (the épices); this put justice out of reach of everybody but the wealthy classes.
The system also excluded the nobles and the clergy from having to pay taxes (with the exception of a modest quit-rent). The tax burden was thus paid by peasants, wage earners, and the professional and business classes. As these groups were also cut off from most positions of power in the regime, the unfairness of the tax burden contributed to unrest.
[edit] The failure of economic reform
During the régimes of Louis XV (reigned 1715-1774) and Louis XVI (reigned 1774-1792) several ministers, most notably Turgot and Necker, unsuccessfully proposed to revise the French tax system to tax the nobles. Such measures encountered consistent resistance from the parlements (law courts). Members of these courts bought their positions from the king, as well as the right to transmit this position hereditarily (the so-called Paulette tax). Membership in such courts, or appointment to other similar public positions, often led to the elevation into the nobility (the so-called noblesse de robe – "gown nobility", as opposed to the nobility of ancestral military origin, the noblesse d'épée). While these two categories of nobles were often at odds, they both sought to keep in place their privileges.
Because the need to raise taxes placed the king at odds with the nobles and the high bourgeoisie, he typically appointed as his finance ministers, (to use François Mignet's term) "rising men" [2], usually of non-noble origin. Turgot, Chrétien de Malesherbes, and Jacques Necker successively attempted to revise the system of taxation and to make other reforms, such as Necker's attempts to reduce the lavishness of the king's court. Each failed in turn.
In contrast, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, appointed finance minister in 1783, restored lavish spending more reminiscent of the age of Louis XIV. By the time Calonne brought together the Assembly of Notables on February 22, 1787 to address the financial situation, France had reached a state of virtual bankruptcy: no one would lend the king funds sufficient to meet the expenses of government and court. According to Mignet, the loans amounted to "one thousand six hundred and forty-six millions... and... there was an annual deficit... of a hundred and forty millions [presumably of livres]." [3] Calonne was succeeded by his chief critic Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne, archbishop of Sens, but the fundamental situation was unchanged: the government had no credit. To try to address this, the assembly "sanctioned the establishment of provincial assemblies, a regulation of the corn trade, the abolition of corvées, and a new stamp tax; it broke up on the 25th of May, 1787." [4]
[edit] The nobility's reaction
The subsequent struggle with the parlements in an unsuccessful attempt to enact these measures displayed the first overt signs of the disintegration of the ancien régime. In the ensuing struggle, Protestants regained their rights and Louis XVI promised an annual publication of the state of finances, and a convocation of the Estates-General within five years.
Despite ancien régime France being, in theory, an absolute monarchy, it became clear that the royal government could not successfully effect the changes it desired without the consent of the nobility. The financial crisis had become a political crisis as well.
[edit] Famine
These problems were all compounded by a great scarcity of food in the 1780s. A series of crop failures caused a shortage of grain, consequently raising the price of bread. Because bread was the main source of nutrition for poor peasants, this led to starvation. The two years previous to the revolution (1788-89) saw bad harvests and harsh winters, possibly because of a strong El Niño cycle.[5]) A normal worker earned anywhere from 15 to 30 sous a day while skilled workers received 30 to 40 sous. A family of four would need about 2 loaves of bread a day to survive. The price of bread rose by 88 percent in 1789, going from 9 sous to 14.5/15 sous[citation needed]. Many peasants were relying on charity to survive. The peasantry became a class with the ambition to counteract social inequity and put an end to food shortages. The 'bread riot' evolved into a central cause of the French Revolution. Mass urbanization coinciding with the beginning of the industrial revolution led residents to move into French cities seeking employment. French cities became overcrowded and filled with the hungry and disaffected. The peasantry suffered doubly from the economic and agricultural problems.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Karl Marx, The Bourgeoisie and the Counter-Revolution', Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 169, Translated by the Marx-Engels Institute, Transcribed for the Internet by director@marx.org, 1994
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- ^ Richard H. Grove, “Global Impact of the 1789–93 El Niño,” Nature 393 (1998), 318-319.
