Enlightenment’s Contribution to Revolution

New views of good government, the rights of individuals, and the social order were espoused by a number of writers in England and France principally. As a result, the traditional understanding of government and established institutions such as the church were questioned in light of “enlightened” reason, which was believed to be able to solve longstanding social problems. These new way of thinking were especially geared to the common “man” in a broad way to appeal to the masses that were becoming more literate. The thought leaders who opened the way included David Hume, Emmanuel Kant, and John Locke, who each in their own way laid important planks in the Enlightenment foundation (O’Grady, 2018).

Foremost was the notion of a firm belief in the power of human reason, much as was the case in the creation of the scientific revolution. Nature offered laws which could be studied and recognized for their truth, casting suspicion on the burden of tradition and pre-existing authority. This break with the old established system led Hume’s effort to sever ties with previous philosophies that were not supported by reason that required independence from past authority and the freedom to reason autonomously. Kant echoed this intellectual independence from political and religious precedent of crown and church with the exclamation, “Dare to know!” These thinkers also drew on Lock’s belief in the perfectibility of humans, honoring the role of education to assist in perfecting humanity’s goodness and potential. In the educational vein, Enlightenment thinkers wished to bring about the orderly organizing of all categories of knowledge. The empirical approach of scientific methodology would yield in natural laws in all areas of human inquiry and endeavor, in both the natural sphere as well as human affairs such as law, economics, and politics. Such new views were understandably upsetting to the status quo of the aristocratic and ruling class in government and church. Efforts to promote egalitarianism and the common good, political checks and balances on authority, and other reforms to undermine absolute and arbitrary power were met naturally with disdain. The response by the English monarch George III was to impose greater control over his subjects domestically and in the colonies (O’Grady, 2018).

An American Revolution

W.D. Cooper’s “Boston Tea Party,” 1789.

As the ancient view of the “divine right of kings” was yielding to views of the inherent rights of the individual (Thomas Paine: Common Sense, 1775; Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 1791; Fruchtman, Paine, & Hook, 2014), governments in the colonial world were erected on distinctly more democratic principles. Leaders there promoted the notion of self-government and the “will of the people” over the will of the sovereign. Representative government and consent of the governed were infectious ideas that readily took hold on North American soil and subsequently in France and beyond. Commitment to these principles would be tested as colonial opposition grew to British attempts to impose control over the colonies by means of a series of taxes to pay for the costs of the French and Indian War (1754–1763). Opposition led to estrangement and rebellion with colonial refusal to pay burdensome taxes imposed without consent and the collective cry of “No taxation without representation” was raised. Protests in Boston over the tea tax led to the shedding of blood in the Boston Massacre. When the Boston Tea Party led to dumping British tea into Boston Harbor, a blockade ensued as punishment for these actions. Known as the Intolerable Acts, a number of punitive new laws were passed. Rather than bringing about compliance and calm, these acts further united the colonies against the Crown. By 1774 a majority of the 13 colonies sent representatives to the First Continental Congress to petition King George III to repeal the Intolerable Acts. When no response followed, a wide boycott of British goods was established (Werner, 2000).

Hostilities began in 1775 when British troops were sent to arrest American leaders and disarm those in rebellion. The War of Independence was entered into on April 19, 1775, when shots were exchanged at the Battle of Lexington and Concord, leading to casualties on both sides. On July 4, 1776, the formal Declaration of Independence was adopted as the Continental Congress voted for independence from Britain. When the hostilities ended with the British defeat and surrender at Yorktown (October 19, 1781), it resulted in the signing of the Treaty of Paris on September, 3, 1783, formalizing cessation from Britain and its recognition of the United States as an independent nation. Ultimately, this new nation emerged from these events and established its government on the principles of the Enlightenment and inscribed them within its Constitution and in time the Bill of Rights (Werner, 2000).

A French Revolution

In just a few years, similar sentiments to be free of monarchical rule arose not within a colony but among French citizens, starting in 1789 and continuing to the arrival of Napoleon Bonaparte in the late 1790s. Falling out of favor and to be replaced were French institutions that were intrinsic to France’s national life for centuries: namely, an absolute monarchy and the feudal system of political alliances. Popular uprisings against King Louis XVI and his queen Marie Antoinette ended this rule, which was replaced by a constitution that made the nation, not the king, the highest authority. What distinguished the discontent with Louis and his economic track record was the extent of the popular resentment and the cruel actions taken against the nobility, Catholic leadership, and privileged classes in France after some 20 years of poor harvest, drought, and ever-increasing costs of food. Contributing to the nation’s fiscal distress was the support it had offered the American Revolutionary cause. Economic conditions continued to deteriorate right up until the outbreak of rebellion in June of 1789 (Doyle, 2001).

“The Storming of the Bastille” by Jean-Pierre Houel, 1789

Those who made up the so-called Second Estate as elites aligned with the middle class commoners were similarly minded as American colonialists when asked to pay increased taxes to alleviate the impoverished condition of the poor lower classes, which the king sought to bring about as well as bring an end to the use of torture. This failed when the parliaments in the provinces defeated such attempts. Social unrest accompanied the declining financial situation, and weak as his rule was, Louis could not effect change to this chaotic situation, which led to his overthrow by peasants of the Third Estate when reform efforts failed. Angered at the king’s withdrawal of the peasants, they formed a National Assembly and on June 20th in a meeting known as the Tennis Court Oath committed themselves to writing a new constitution as delegates of the National Assembly (Doyle, 2001).

Armed conflict and violence broke out on July 14th when mobs of peasants attacked the ancient Bastille to obtain arms. Some 100 attackers were repelled and killed, but in the end the prison was taken and the prison governor himself was beheaded. This act of revolt was the beginning of overthrow of the established order by the nation’s peasantry. Continued uprisings led to the death of the king, attacks on property of the upper class, and a rearranging of laws that governed society, framed by those who exercised their newfound rights (Doyle, 2001).

In the meantime, the National Assembly deliberated and issued a document outlining principles of liberty, known as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, in August 1789. Enshrined in its clauses were rights to property, liberty, security, and “resistance to oppression,” along with the rights of free speech, religious toleration, and freedom of the press. A decade of political unrest, crises, and polarization ensued until Napoleon became “First Consul” after the coup of 1799. He would crown himself emperor in 1804 when the nation began to regain some semblance of being a nation once more with the Napoleonic Code enshrining a single uniformity of law and the preservation of individual rights. Gone were the ancient rights and privileges across social classes, as a coherent law code oversaw commercial law, civil law, and an improved criminal code. Changed forever were the institutions of the church and clergy, nobility, trade guilds, and local parish structures that had held together the social bonds. Replacing these was a new sense of nationality and patriotism where citizens were committed to supporting one national cause (Doyle, 2001).