Talk:Causes of the French Revolution

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Cause of the debt[edit]

The following had been recently added at French Revolution. cut it from there, and moved it to this talk page as a more appropriate to discuss it: "This debt was accumulated because of the refusal of Louis' finance minister (Jacques Necker) to raise taxes to pay for France's role in the American Revolution." Besides being uncited, this is, at best, an oversimplification on two counts:

  1. Support for the American War of Independence was only one of the many sources of France's debt.
  2. Necker didn't so much "refuse" to raise taxes as lack the means. The parlements stymied every attempt at raising taxes that would fall on anyone but the poor. This was what ultimately led Louis XVI to call the Estates General, as the only means of overruling the parlements and solving France's revenue gap. (Of course, the long-run effect was a gap between his head and his body, but it seemed like the thing to do at the time.)

Jmabel | Talk 05:19, 24 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. I agree with everything above, I didn't know this page existed and I saw a gap in the main article so I thought I should add it in. Sorry for the mistake I'm still trying to find my way around. Frederick12 22:22, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The article undersimplifies this section a bit. The article makes out that the bad finances culmulated to bankruptcy, yet France was actually in credit between 1774 and 1778. Sonic Mew | [[User talk:Sonic Mew|talk to me]] 19:31, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

First Paragraph[edit]

"only in Great Britain and the Netherlands did the common people have more freedom and less chance of arbitrary punishment"

Is this true? --Horses In The Sky 13:05, 4 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Measures of freedom are pretty arbitrary, but all the other major states, such as Spain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, were quite a bit more despotic than France during this period. Some of the smaller states in Scandanavia or Germany may have been more pleasant. - SimonP 13:46, 4 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Horses In The Sky and the questioning of the validity of this statement. Readings from this time period in England question hierarchical power, show the problems that come from this power, as well as the lack of freedom that is perpetuated. Take a look at religious freedom/oppression (The Gordon Riots, Dissenting taxation), or the laws in place that benefit the elite/wealthy (Godwin's Caleb Williams). Furthermore, "Common people," if viewed as "the poor," is especially incorrect when looking at the social system in place that equated wealth with power (and freedom). The structure of the statement makes it seem like the British were completely free and the French were severely oppressed, however, the social situations in both of the countries were very similar. I would consider a revision to the statement (if not a complete deletion). --Ecnegilid 16:24, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Citations[edit]

I think this page is lacking in citations. Yes, it does say that a large portion of it comes from the encyclopedia, but we need more specific citations. TheDavesr 01:31, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, a secondary school exam revision booklet doesn't speak wonders for the wiki's authority. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.173.30.157 (talk • contribs) 22 August 2006.

Recent addition questioned[edit]

"One must note, however, that virtually none of the revolutionaries was an owner of the means of production, and that Marx fails to show any evidence of political links between the liberal professionals, public employees, intellectuals and journalists who led the revolution and any bourgeois organization or movement."

  1. At least, let's get rid of "One must note, however", which is pure POV.
  2. Uncited "Marx fails to show any evidence": original research.
  3. Then we come to the facts: as I understand it, quite a few of these people were investors in enterprises, and/or (for the lawyers and other professionals), their clients were. Some were tax farmers, clearly a bourgeois role.

I think this would all be worth pursuing, but by finding some solid sources and citing what they say on this, not by making uncited assertions and counter-assertions in the article. - Jmabel | Talk 18:46, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Since no one seems inclined to address this, I'm cutting it for now. - Jmabel | Talk 02:43, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"There is controversy over exactly how deeply stupid ideals penetrated the various classes, and over the degree to which these ideals were simply cover for bourgeois self-interest." Hello, I'm deleting the "stupid" adjective on the ideals. Though I must say this page needs to be flagged because there is some serious disagreement, it is starting to get kind of ridiculous. To call the basic ideals of liberty etc. that were floating around the era stupid is POV. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.65.123.26 (talk) 03:08, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Problems in content at first paragraph[edit]

France at the time of the revolution wasn't AT ALL at a good economic situation. filled with loans to pay and people to feed. but people did not wanted the king out, this is crucial for the very first years of the revolution itself. - Fran loyd

I took a bit of a shot at the lead; have a look.
France was in a poor fiscal situation, but its economy was still, overall, one of the strongest in Europe. -- Jmabel | Talk

Vingtieme[edit]

The vingtieme is currently described as "a 5% property tax". I believe that is wrong, but I don't have a citation. I believe it was more like an income tax than a wealth tax: a tax of 5% of what was produced, not of one's property. In any case, according to Adam Smith [1] there was more than one vingtieme. Unfortunately, the passage in Adam Smith seems to be a favorite for people to muck with, making bogus portal pages for black hat SEO, so online research may be very difficult. - Jmabel | Talk 03:02, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Vandalism[edit]

Reverted--Slogankid 15:37, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"and the country had six of Europe's 35 gayest cities. (p. 943) " Don't know if this is true or not, but its attached to a figure concerning the population of london with improper Citation. I'll call it vandalism and I am going to change 'gayest' to 'largest', which I assume was the original. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.65.123.26 (talk) 14:19, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Vandalism deleted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.198.107.12 (talk) 09:06, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Structural Causes[edit]

There is currently nothing in the article addressing structural factors, i.e., ways that French society evolved that prevented it from adapting to commercialism in ways that would have fostered economic reform rather than revolution. For example, the French nobility did not respond to commercial pressures by pursuing land enclosure as did the English. Instead, they left the peasants in place and tried to extract more revenue. For this they needed the support of the King. In addition to creating festering unrest among the peasants, this prevented the nobility from developing a stronger economic base and aligning itself with bourgeois interests and against the crown, as happened in England (though this is an oversimplification) in the 1500s-1600s. A section on structural causes would be appropriate, it seems to me. My source is Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966).Aldrichio 15:24, 14 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Who wrote this page??? I am enquiring because i am doing a assignment and i would like to know who is the author

There is no single author of the page. If you're asking who wrote the paragraph about structural factors, I did. It's a paraphrase of the material in the cited source.Aldrichio 12:25, 15 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Strong disagreement[edit]

Some of this information is untrue. For example, King Louis XVI was not popular with the people at ALL. Also, it says that France was still one of the richest countries in Europe even with its debt. That is false as well, for its debt was tremendous and its people were starving. Furthermore, your sources are nonexistent besides for one article written my Karl Marx. Please change some of your statements and information on this article, as to not misguide readers. -Ed K. Seattle, WA [March 2007]

I agree that the article is short on citations. Much of it was written (largely by me) before Wikipedia was routinely using inline citations. I do think that it is largely accurate, though.
I've added a citation (Mignet) for the popularity of the king on the eve of the revolution. I'll look for one on the wealth of France (yes, they'd had recent bad harvests, but they were indeed one of the wealthiest kingdoms in Europe). I'm not very active in Wikipedia these days, so I'm not going to go through ant try to cite the article thoroughly, but if you have other specific points where you feel there is enough of a doubt that citation is particularly important, and you cannot find appropriate citation yourself, point them out and I'll follow through. However, I am not maintaining a watchlist these days, so you should also leave a note on my user talk page, or I'll never know you made the request! - Jmabel | Talk 20:36, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]


I have several major problems with this article. As a professor of French history currently teaching a course on the French Revolution, it is extremely aggravating to see my students read (and mention in class) the falsities on wikipedia. This article completely mischaracterizes the current research on the origins of the French Revolution. The Marxist interpretation ("rising bourgeoisie") has been dead and buried since the fall of Communism. I suggest restructuring the article into the following categories: 1) Short-term causes of the Revolution (with an explanation of the administrative and financial conflicts that led up to the gathering of the Estates-General, using Peter Campbell, etc), and 2) Long-term causes of the Revolution. The latter section could be subdivided into the following categories: intellectual and political origins (using the work of Keith Baker), cultural origins (using Roger Chartier), religious origins (using Dale Van Kley). You might also add a section on the historiographical traditions of the Revolution. It is here where you could explain that the Marxist interpretation has been supplanted by a 'revisionist' take on the period (itself now challenged by the 'post-revisionists'). All of this would better serve the average reader (and my wayward students). I'll make many of the changes tomorrow. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Framca (talk • contribs) 00:05, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The quotation for which the popularity of good old Louis is based off of is Original Research. It should be removed. It is not our task here to find causation or correlation of popular will for a monarch based on cheers and clapping mentioned in some esoteric text. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.65.123.26 (talk) 03:18, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Size of French economy[edit]

I've been looking for sources to validate the claim about the size of the French economy relative to others in Europe. Something that is not quite what we need (because it does not compare to other economies), but may be of interest, is Émile Lavasseur, "Recent Commercial Policy of France, Appendix II: Tables of French Industry and Commerce", The Journal of Political Economy (University of Chicago), Vol. 1, No. 1 (Dec., 1892), DOI: 10.1086/250128, pp. 152-155. If you have a JSTOR subscription, it can be accessed at http://links.jstor.org/sici?0022-3808(189212)1:1%3C152:AITOFI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-6 Most of the statistics are post-1827, but the following might be of interest vis a vis the Revolution. All of these statistics are Lavasseur's estimates rather than official figures:

General commerce of France in millions of Francs:

1789: 1,018
1792: 1,732 (best year in the Revolutionary era)
1799: 553 (worst year in the Revolutionary and Imperial era)
1800: 595
1806: 933 (best year in the Imperial era)
1814: 585

What this says, in effect, is that prior to the War of the First Coalition and The Terror, the French economy boomed (over 60% growth in 3 years!). It then contracted drastically, losing not only that growth but almost half of its pre-revolutionary size, from which (looking at the rest of Lavasseur's numbers) it did not really recover until well after the Restoration. So any understanding of the size of the French economy on the verge of revolution must look specifically at that pre-revolutionary economy, not at the much smaller economy of the next quarter-century. - Jmabel | Talk 20:02, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the 1989 Bairoch paper I've now cited at length covers our statement about the size of the French economy. It also calls into question the validity of estimations such as Lavasseur's above. - Jmabel | Talk 05:56, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I do not believe that there were detailed statistics in those days, but from all my academic sources, it seems that France was the leading great power of the 18th century. I will look up and source.

One Reference?[edit]

This is pathetic. 216.165.4.178 (talk) 10:02, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted incoherent "industrial development" para from Economy section[edit]

I deleted the following point from the Economy section. It's unreferenced, and seems to be a complete non-sequitur. Does it make more sense to anyone else? — FIRE!in a crowded theatre... 23:28, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is also possible, that 13 years in to the Industrial Revolution, the french regime arrived at the same conclusion like the soviet union in the year of 1928, that in order to turn round a huge agricultural economy in to an industrialized one, then the head count of the farming community had to be reduced and the resources redirected to industrialization. That lead to the Holodomor in Soviet Ukraine between 1928 and 1933, while the Magnitogorsk complex was under construction.

page #'s?[edit]

Why are there page numbers in the middle of the "Economics" section? Those should go in the Reference section, or included as footnotes for citations like this[1] -- Ketchup Krew Heinz 57! 17:20, 8 March 2008 (UTC) Just fix those page numbers, and correct all the red links, and this could very easily become a featured article. -- Ketchup Krew Heinz 57! 17:37, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

wrong figures ?![edit]

The article states: "France had 260,000 square kilometres under cultivation; the entirety of Europe outside Russia — that qualifier will apply unless otherwise noted — had no more than 100 million. (p. 945)- France had 5.3 million of Europe's 30 million male peasants. (p. 945)" This means that France had about one sixth of Europe's peasants but only about 0.25% of its land under cultivation (260.000 of 100.000.000 square kilometres). Yet Europe, including the European part of Russia, is only about ten million square miles in size ... so somebody please check the source and correct the figures. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.188.250.52 (talk) 22:34, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Enlightenment as a cause[edit]

I'm thinking of making a new headline to explicitly discuss the role of French Enlightenment ideas as a cause of the French Revolution. Currently this is mentioned in the first paragraph of the Absolutism and privilege section, but doesn't go into very much detail. It has major gaps at the moment, the article doesn't even mention the contributions of Rousseau or the influence of these ideas on the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The paragraph currently lists Turgot as a major Philosopher, can anyone justify including him along with Voltaire and Diderot? I think that I will completely rewrite this paragraph to elaborate on the influence of specific enlightenment thinkers on the early revolution. The second paragraph in this section, on the Marxist interpretation, can be left under the Absolutism and privilege title, or under a new heading. Agreatnate (talk) 16:51, 12 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Tectonic Forces in the Anglo French Sprachraum[edit]

Didn't find any mention of two very strong forces leading to the 1789 collapse of the Regime Ancien. First it was contemporary with the successful conclusion of a bourgeois revolution in the 13 colonies whose ratification in the formation of the new nation state occurred at the same time and after thirty years of on and off war between France and England. Secondly, the English had overthrown and subjected their monarchy almost exactly a hundred years earlier, after beheading Charles I and subjecting the restored Stuarts and their successors to increasing control by Parliament, with the final exercise of anything like a real Royal Prerogative fading forever with George IIIs failure to suppress the American Revolution. Lycurgus (talk) 16:14, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

While the American Revolution undoubtedtly had some influence on the French Revolution (though it is disputed how much), I don't think I have come across any historian that has posed a theory about the fate of Charles I having any influence on it whatsoever. Seems a bit Anglo-centric to me, frankly. And it turns a blind eye to the growing continental adherance to the theory of the Social contract during the later 1600s and the 1700s. This theory formulated that any government existed solely on a basis of a contract between the ruler and the people, something quite different than the theory of a God given king so popular on the continent in the early to mid 1600s. --Saddhiyama (talk) 19:30, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, to be sure internal forces were the determinants. Nonetheless in 1789 the kingdom persisted on an (albeit modernized) medieval basis while it was surrounded on three sides by protestant states which had established bourgeois rule in republican or semi republican governments in Britain, the Netherlands and various city states of the future Germany. These served as both a refuge for various left thinkers throughout the 18th century as well as an inspiration for what would happen in France itself. Of these, my argument is that the relation between England and France is an especial one for the reasons cited and the unmentioned historical relations going back to the formation of France and the time when England and Western France were one kingdom. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 07:07, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, les belles baguettes ![edit]

Le Traité de la Police
by Nicolas de La Mare (1707)

The photo of french bread is realy nice (I would love to eat one of them), but I'm quite sure that French people during the Revolution were not eating "Baguettes"...
An article of Wikipedia in French about the "Baguette" http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baguette_(pain) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Geremy78 (talk • contribs) 10:27, 9 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • The Wiki lemma on baguette says that this shape was invented under Napoléon. Nevertheless, I have seen pictures by the chemist Paul Jacques Malouin (died in 17778) showing baguettes. So, the picture seems quite ok, although one from Malouin would have been more fitting. Riyadi (talk) 11:23, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • But the lemma is not about bread or its shape. It's about the Ancien Régime's control of the bread price, supply and quality. More specifically, that the abolition of that control caused social unrest. I propose to replace the baguettes picture by the Traité de la Police, Nicolas de la Mare's instructions containing these price regulations and their enforcement. Riyadi (talk) 14:50, 7 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Enlightenment ideas[edit]

The section labelled "Enlightenment ideas" is very problematic. It only focuses on the Marxist school interpretation, a theory which has long since been abandonded by the majority of historians. It thus seems to be very much undue weight. However the premise that there is a dispute amongst historians about if, and if so, how big a role enlightenment ideas played as a cause of the revolution is correct. This section needs to focus on the issues as covered and debated by notable contemporary historians such as Robert Darnton, Samuel Moyn and Jonathan Israel. --Saddhiyama (talk) 19:41, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Event Interpretation in the First Paragraph[edit]

I feel that in the introductory summary, the second-to-last paragraph vastly overplays the role of the American War of Independence and its effect on both troops and the intellectual community in Paris. Granted the ideas mentioned are important, but a large number of these came from earlier works, such as Rousseau's The Social Contract etc. Does anybody else feel the same? Wneaverson (talk) 22:00, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Tocqueville?[edit]

Pretty hard IMHO to talk about this and not even mention Tocqueville's L'ancien régime — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.73.32.105 (talk) 02:09, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You are more than welcome to add a section about it. Just keep in mind Wikipedias policies about citing reliable sources when you do. Cheers. --Saddhiyama (talk) 12:05, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Justice[edit]

For instance, in a civil lawsuit, judges required that both parties pay a bribe (called, with tongue-in-cheek, the épices, the spices); this, effectively, put justice out of the reach of all but the wealthy.

The word bribe is a translation of the contemporary meaning of "pot-de-vin". It unjustly depicts Ancien Régime justice as corrupt (as was e.g. Voltaire's intention, see Benoît Garnot C'est la faute à Voltaire... : Une imposture intellectuelle 2009). Pot-de-vin, in court designated fees, collected by the court of justice (not by the judges) to defray the costs of the judges' counsel staff (rapporteur, who prepared the judgments). Poor people could ask for exemption.
See Laurie Fréger: Le coût de la justice civile à travers les archives judiciaires : l'exemple des épices des magistrats. [2]

Riyadi (talk) 08:11, 20 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Historiography[edit]

Since the identification of the "causes" of the Revolution is a deeply historiographical issue, shouldn't the article place the historiographical debates front and center? One gets the sense from this article that the causes are clearly known, understood, and agreed upon. Even the opening sentence states the issue in a highly matter-of-fact manner: 

The causes of the French revolution can be attributed to several intertwining factors:

Yet the reality is hardly so simple, and historians do not all agree on the Revolution's root causes. To take one example: 

Cultural: The Enlightenment philosophy desacralized the authority of the monarchy and the Catholic Church, and promoted a new society based on reason instead of traditions.

This is totally at odds with Roger Chartier's The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution (Duke University Press, 1991), which explicitly argues that desacralization and dechristianization had nothing to do with the Enlightenment. Yet the three paragraph segment heading the section on "Enlightenment Ideas" is entirely based on a book from 1989, before Chartier's work was released. This article probably is in need of some attention from an expert, who is familiar with the historiography and can add a bit of nuance to the article. Chamboz (talk) 01:37, 17 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

enlightment and women of 1750s[edit]

What we know about these women is staggering for which olympe de georges gave a great deal to this posistion and movement  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rmssoulrisingglady (talk • contribs) 17:58, 26 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Section titled "Results of the revolution"[edit]

The section titled "Results of the revolution" does not have any material actually pertaining to the results of the revolution! It only treats of events leading up to the beginning of the revolution (1789). Please re-label this section to reflect what its contents are: Pre-revolutionary conditions. Cycloguy (talk) 03:01, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Planning to replace this...[edit]

Hello everyone, To me, this article seems somewhat poorly formatted and has some extraneous information? As such, I've written the basis of a possible replacement - User:KukaiKoboDaishi/sandbox - and would appreciate any feedback. Obviously, criticism is very welcome.

Thank you, KukaiKoboDaishi (talk) 13:58, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I've given it a few hours, and am going to replace the article. Feel free to undo the revision, if you feel it necessary, and we can move forward from there. Thanks KukaiKoboDaishi (talk) 16:52, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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