Reference no: EM133733161
Assignment:
So, what was revolutionary about the French Revolution? Raising this question is no mere word game, but takes us to the heart of a major historical debate. Almost immediately after the Revolution erupted in 1789, European (and even American) opinion divided sharply over this issue. While conservatives had recoiled in horror at the very notion of revolution, others (including some initial sympathizers) saw France's revolutionary breakthroughs as yielding very little of lasting value. After all, one common argument went, the Revolution's most radical phases of 1792-94 ultimately gave way to the authoritarian rule of Napoleon Bonaparte. And in 1814, after Napoleon's fall, France was once again ruled by kings (at least for a while). So what was revolutionary about that? Not everyone shared this skeptical perspective. In France and Europe (and the U.S. and across the world), many saw in the dramatic events of the French Revolution the promise of a more democratic future - a promise only partially realized at the time, but which inspired more radical and democratic political ideals and movements ever since.
Readings address these issues from several perspectives, showing how the Revolution opened windows onto a variety of social and political questions - freedom for religious minorities, for slaves and people of color, and for women - that continue to animate our world to this day. These readings suggest, in other words, how we might view the Revolution as less a closed chapter than an open book, showing us how human dignity and freedom might be advanced - if also sometimes laid low - by collective political activity.
About the readings themselves, I propose three options. Choose one (that ought to be enough) and address the questions raised below.
a) the Abbé Sieyès selections point to the key issue prompting the Revolution in the first place: the demand by France's Third Estate to "be something." In the run-up to the French Revolution, no piece of writing was more influential in opening the floodgates to revolution. So what then do you find revolutionary about Sieyès's line of reasoning? And, while Sieyès is here clearly arguing for representative government, do you see him as wholly democratic in his aims? Why or why not?
b) The Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen reflects the attempt, by France's revolutionaries, to balance its demands for universal rights with the need to maintain political order and stability. For all the sweeping affirmation of rights contained in this document, its authors were also trying to establish at least some limits on the exercise of these rights. What would be some examples of this balancing act, and how successful do you think the revolutionaries were in pulling this off?
c) When France's National Assembly declared the "Rights of Man and Citizen" in August 1789, its authors were mostly thinking of men pretty much like themselves - educated and propertied and white. Yet to declare universal rights was to ensure that these ideas might be received by others in more far-reaching, inclusive ways, and debates erupted almost immediately over the rights of Caribbean slaves, religious minorities at home and, to some far-sighted observers, women as well. In broadening this debate over rights, the Jewish petitions and Society of the Friends of Blacks also deepened it, posing the question of human equality in new, more inclusive and challenging ways. How do these documents address the relations between rights, freedom and citizenship?
The relevant readings Documentary Reader:
Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, "What is the Third Estate"; Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizens (1789); Petition of the Jews of Paris, Alsace and Lorraine (1790); and the 1790 "Address" from Society of the Friends of Blacks.