Name- Amisha Choudhary

Roll no. – 19/413

Class-3rd year 5th sem
Assignment-factors that led to French Revolution
Professor-Levin sir
Factors led to French Revolution

 Historians have identified multiple causes of the French

Revolution, both long and short term. Early, royalist and
clerical interpretations of the Revolution cast it as a
conspiracy orchestrated by Enlightenment philosophes.
From the late nineteenth century, explanations based on
the theories of Karl Marx became dominant.
 In this reading the Revolution resulted from a
struggle for power between the old feudal nobility,
whose status was based on the ownership of land, and
the bourgeoisie, who acquired wealth through trade,
finance and the professions. In 1789 the bourgeoisie
made common cause with the peasantry and the
urban labouring classes to begin the Revolution.
The Marxist interpretation of the French
Revolution was increasingly challenged
after 1945. Critics pointed out that there
were many nobles amongst those
clamouring for reform in 1789. Moreover,
the distinction between noble and
commoner was not as clear as once
supposed. Nobles were also involved in
trade and finance, whilst many wealthy
bourgeoisie purchased patents of nobility. 
Indeed, the French nobility was relatively open and rich
commoners bought and married their way to social mobility.
Economic and social status were, therefore, revealed to be a
poor guide to political behaviour and the idea of monolithic
‘classes’ out for their own economic interests increasingly
untenable.
This critique increasingly led historians to move
away from social and economic causes as
explanations for the Revolution. Instead, they
focused on the role political and cultural causes
played in fomenting the Revolution. The
emergence of a revolutionary political culture has
been identified.
This culture was expressed in the increasing
number of journals, newspapers, pamphlets and
books and found a forum in the spread of coffee
shops, salons, societies and clubs. It was this
culture, these revisionist interpretations argued, that
prompted the events of 1789.
The post-war period also saw interest in the Revolution
shift to encompass previously overlooked groups. The
spread of second and third wave feminism led to more
interest in the role of women in the French Revolution.
There was also more interest in events outside of Paris
and in the French Empire.  
Nevertheless, historians acknowledge that the
Revolution was caused by a multiplicity of factors.
The rest of this essay will provide an overview of
these factors.
La Grande Nation: France as a Great Power

 At first glance eighteenth-century France was the

powerhouse of Europe. It was the foremost of the
five Great European Powers (France, Britain,
Austria, Russia and Prussia). It was the largest state
in western Europe. Moreover, its population was
almost 28 million, making it the most populous
state in Europe after Russia.
France also had a colonial empire in the Caribbean and outposts
elsewhere. It’s colonial possessions were not as extensive as those of
the British, but by 1780s they comprised the richest colony in the
world in Saint Domingue (later Haiti). In 1780 Saint Domingue
supplied half the world’s exports of coffee and sugar and generated
twice as much revenue as Spain’s richest colony, Mexico. In the late
1780s France sent more trading vessels to India than Britain and,
between 1787 and 1791, even shipped more slaves from Africa than
the British. 
 The most vibrant economic sector in France was,
therefore, the slave/sugar trade that operated out of
the Atlantic ports of Nantes and Bordeaux. However,
other areas of the economy also underwent
expansion in the eighteenth century. In the Paris
basin commercial farming had spread, whilst Lyon
remained the centre of banking and the silk trade. 
The Weaknesses of the Eighteenth-Century
French State 

 Despite the advantages, however, the French state

suffered from several structural weaknesses that belied its
great power status. First, France suffered from financial
problems throughout the eighteenth century. The nobility
enjoyed many tax exemptions. They were exempt, for
example, from the taille, the principal land tax. 
 Second, numerous attempts were made to reform the tax
system and the economy in the eighteenth century, but all
failed because of the resistance of the nobility and
the parlements. Resistance was fostered by the
widespread system of venality, whereby wealthy
individuals could purchase certain public offices, such as
seats on the parlements. 
 Third, although parts of the French economy, such
as its colonial trade, were flourishing, economic
development elsewhere was hindered by guild
restrictions, internal customs barriers and tolls. The
development of manufacturing and early industrial
enterprises therefore lagged behind other countries
like Britain. 
 Although new crops and agricultural techniques,
such as potatoes and crop rotation, were introduced
they were slow to spread across France. A series of
harvest failures in the 1770s and in the late 1780s
led to increased food prices, poverty and hardship
for large sections of the population.
 Fourth, French structures of administration and governance
were not uniform. The French state had expanded from the
early middle ages through a mixed process of conquest,
marriage and inheritance. As a result law codes varied
between different regions and provinces. In the pays
d’election regional autonomy had been subordinated to the
Crown, but in the pays d’états provincial estates continued
to exist.
 Fifth,demographic and social changes also created their own
problems. The growth of the population and the widespread
system of partible inheritance, whereby land was divided
among sons, created pressure of agricultural land. Some
peasants were able to purchase extensive tracts of land and
enjoy considerable prosperity, but a much larger segment led
a more precarious existence. Around half the peasantry were
landless or farmed just a small plot. 
STAGNATING AGRICULTURAL
PRODUCTION AND RISING
INFLATION FURTHER ERODED
THE PURCHASING POWER OF
THE PEASANTRY. AS BREAD
PRICES ROSE AND REAL WAGES
FELL INCREASING PROPORTION
OF THE POOR’S INCOME WAS
ALLOCATED TO SUBSISTENCE.
THIS UNDERMINED DEMANDS
FOR MANUFACTURED GOODS
FELL, WHICH IN TURN HAD A
NEGATIVE IMPACT ON TEXTILES
AND OTHER INDUSTRIES. IN
TROYES, FOR EXAMPLE, SOME
10,000 TEXTILE WORKERS WERE
UNEMPLOYED BY 1788. 
 Meanwhile, the traditional nobility was often resentful of the
entry of rich commoners into the ranks of the aristocracy. This
was particularly the case amongst the old ‘sword’ nobility,
many of whom had seen a deterioration in their fortunes over
the last century. Meanwhile, rising land rents meant that those
aristocrats with larger estates were becoming less dependent
on royal appointments, sinecures and pensions, than they had
been in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century.
The failure to reform taxation meant that although
France was a wealthy country the Crown had to
turn increasingly  to borrowing to meet its
expenditures. To make matters worse the costs of
waging war rose exponentially in the eighteenth
century as France’s global commitments expanded.
Military and Diplomatic Defeats

France suffered a series of military and diplomatic reversals in second

half of the eighteenth century. In 1756, in the so-called ‘Diplomatic
Revolution’, France broke its alliance with Prussia and allied itself
with its traditional rival, Austria. Between 1756 and 1763 it fought
both Britain and Prussia in the Seven Years’ War in Europe.
Simultaneously, it was at war with Britain and its colonies in North
America in the French and Indian War, whilst a proxy war was
conducted by the French and English East Indian Companies in India.
 France suffered a serious of heavy defeats on all fronts in this first
global conflict. The British conquered New France to create the
colony of Canada. The French East India Company’s influence in
India was greatly reduced and Britain would come to dominate the
sub-continent. In Europe, meanwhile, the French army was
humiliated by Frederick the Great and the Prussians at the battle of
Rossbach in 1757. Napoleon Bonaparte would later claim the
Revolution had began 1757, when Prussia had humbled Bourbon
military might.
 France enjoyed more military success in the 1780s
when it allied itself with the American rebels
against the British Crown. However, King Louis
XVI’s hopes that this alliance would lead to
preferentially trading rights after the war were
dashed as the new American Republic renewed its
trading links with Britain.
 Fiscal and diplomatic problems came together in
1787. The international prestige of the monarchy
was undermined when it was unable to intervene
in the conflict between republican and Orangist
forces in the neighbouring United Provinces
because of a lack of funds.
The Enlightenment and the Rise of the
Public Sphere

 The French involvement in the American War of Independence

had an impact beyond the financial. The American rebels had
fought under the slogan of ‘no taxation without representation’.
Yet the French officers and soldiers did not enjoy the same
political rights that their American allies were fighting for. The
incongruity of an absolute monarchy fighting in defence of a
republic founded on universal male suffrage (excluding slaves)
was not lost on many commentators in France and Europe. 
The Fall of the Bastille and the October
Days

 In July, however, Louis XVI appeared to change

course. Orders had been issued on 26 June for
regiments to march on Versailles and Paris, whilst
the garrison of the Bastille was reinforced.
Meanwhile, on 12 July Louis XVI dismissed
Necker as finance minister.
 Louis XVI, meanwhile, was warned by his generals that his
soldiers were unreliable and might not disperse the crowds
in Paris. Louis was forced to order his regiments to stand
down and recalled Necker on 16 July. On 17 July he visited
Paris with the National Assembly. At the city hall he was
handed a tricolour cockade which blended the red and blue
colours of the city of Paris with the white of the Bourbon
monarch.
 On 5 October market women gathered at the city hall to demand action on bread prices. Possibly
orchestrated by the Duke of Orleans and the Comte de Mirabeau an armed crowd set out for Versailles
to press their case on the National Assembly. A deputation met with the King to demand action on
prices. On 6 October a small group of protestors broke into the palace and invaded the Queen’s
apartments. Marie-Antoinette escaped just in time, but Lafayette, now commander of the National
Guard, persuaded the royal family that the crowd would only disperse if addressed directly.
Conclusion

 The so-called October Days marked the end of what has often been
described as the ‘liberal’ phase of the French Revolution. Thereafter, the
Revolution would be characterised by growing levels of violence and
factionalism. There were multiple causes to the French Revolution. France
was not unique in facing difficult economic, social and political conditions
in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. All Europe states faced similar
challenges. Britain faced rebellion in America. The Dutch Republic had its
own revolutionary movement. There were peasant uprisings in Central
Europe too. It was, however, the particular constellation of these challenges
in France that lead to the Revolution.