The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement that occurred during the 18th century. Enlightened thinkers were inspired by the Scientific Revolution. One of the areas in which Enlightened thinkers wrote about was politics. The most famous of these political thinkers was an Englishman named John Locke, considered by many to be the first modern political scientist. In 1689, he published Two Treatises on Government, in which he set out to answer the question, “What is the nature of government?”
Locke said that governments exist because of an agreement between the rulers and those they rule, which Locke called a political contract. Locke wrote that before governments existed people lived in a state of nature, which means that they had full control of their own life, liberty, and property – called natural rights because all people have them. According to Locke, people in a state of nature will form governments to protect them and their natural rights. In order for a government to protect its people, the people have to give up some control over their rights. If a ruler or government violates these natural rights, then the people have a right to overthrow the government and replace it with something better. In other words, people have a right to revolution. Locke’s ideas influenced a lot of people – especially the writers of the American constitution.
The American Revolution
In 1764 the British Parliament passes a number of taxes that the American colonists were to pay, and the Americans resisted every one of them. This was when the Americans declared that the British government had no right to tax Americans because Americans had no representation in Parliament. One thing led to another and on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence declared that America would henceforth be a republic.
The most amazing thing to the Europeans was that the Americans seemed to be taking the political contract ideas of John Locke and others and putting them into practice. The Declaration of Independence was a perfect example of how the political contract was supposed to work. The Declaration of Independence said that the responsibility of government is to guarantee certain rights and protections of the people it governs. And, if the government fails in that responsibility, the people have the right to turn that government out and get another one. The Declaration of Independence then declared that the British government was a government that had failed to protect these rights.
French Unhappiness
Meanwhile in France, there was a growing unhappiness with the government. The government was an absolute monarchy. But it seemed to be growing increasingly inefficient. There was growing feeling among the French that absolutism had outlived its usefulness, and it needed to be replaced by a government that had a greater participation from the people.
A Bad Economy
What started the ball rolling toward revolution in France was the American Revolution. The American Revolution contributed to the French Revolution directly because the French government looked upon the American Revolution as a way to get back at its old enemy, Britain. In 1778, the French signed an alliance with the Americans and sent aid.
But all of this cost money. And after it was over, the French government came to the realization that it had spent so much cash on the American Revolution it was broke. Most governments would simply raise taxes. In France, however, the tax system was unequal and society in France felt that government had to open up. Watching the American Revolution and reading Enlightenment writings on the political process convinced Frenchmen that there should be more popular participation in government.
In 1787 the king and his government decided that the only way to solve the financial crisis was to bring representatives to Versailles and talk to them about what should be done. So, in that year Louis XVI called a meeting of prominent people from around France in a body that became known as the Assembly of Notables. But this Assembly could not come up with a good recommendation. Louis XVI then went to the Parlement of Paris to see if he could raise taxes, and the Parlement said it could not. After the encounter with the Parisian Parlement, Louis XVI and his ministers threw up their hands and decided to call a meeting of the Estates General, the French version of British Parliament. The only problem was that it last met in 1614, 175 years ago. No one could remember how it was really chosen, how it had conducted its business, or how it had reached decisions.
The Estates General
So Louis XVI has to call a meeting of France’s parliament, the Estates General so that he could raise taxes. The members of the Estates General, however, did not debate taxes. Instead they argued about voting and other issues. On June 17, 1789, the members of the Third Estate, who represented the largest percentage of the population, walked out of the Estates General and across the street to a tennis court. It renamed itself the National Assembly and announced that they were the only legitimate legislative assembly in France. In the meantime, France is falling apart and things go from bad to worse, culminating in the execution of January 21, 1793, and the formation of the Republic of France.
Sources:
Kreis, Steven. The Origins of the French Revolution. The History Guide (accessed July 10, 2009)
Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration. McMath University Faculty of Social Sciences (accessed July 10, 2009)
