When American colonists won independence from Great Britain in the Revolutionary War, the French, who participated in the war themselves, were both close allies and key participants.
Several years after the revolt in America, French reformers faced political, social and economic hardships that mirrored the colonists’ struggles. While the French Revolution was a complex conflict with numerous triggers and causes, the American Revolution set the stage for an effective uprising that the French had observed firsthand.
Although the French and American people had several distinct and differing motives for revolting against their ruling governments, some similar causes led to both revolutions, including the following:
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Economic struggles: Both the Americans and French dealt with a taxation system they found discriminating and unfair. Additionally, France’s involvement in the American Revolution, along with extravagant spending practices by King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette, left the country on the verge of bankruptcy.
Monarchy:Although the American colonists had lived in a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system, they revolted against the royal powers of King George III just like the French rose up against Louis XVI.
Unequal rights: Like the American colonists, the French felt that specific rights were only granted to certain segments of society, namely the elite and aristocrats.
What Can We Learn From The French Revolution Today?
During the war in North American colonies, some allied Frenchmen fought side by side with soldiers of the Continental Army, which allowed for the exchanging of values, ideas and philosophies.
One key ideological movement, known as theEnlightenment, was central to the American uprising. Enlightenment stressed the idea of natural rights and equality for all citizens.
The ideas of the Enlightenment flowed from Europe to the North American continent and sparked a revolution that made enlightened thought all the more popular back across the Atlantic.
Social Science Class 9
The French people saw that a revolt could be successful—even against a major military power–and that lasting change was possible. Many experts argue that this gave them the motivation to rebel. The newly-formed government of the United States also became a model for French reformers.
Ideas that were once just abstract thoughts—such as popular sovereignty, natural rights, constitutional checks and balances and separation of powers—were now part of an actual political system that worked.
Though most historians agree that the American Revolution influenced the French Revolution, which lasted from 1789-1799, some scholars debate the significance and extent of its impact.
The Impact Of The French Revolution On America
France, a country on the verge of financial collapse with an outdated feudal system and a wildly unpopular monarchy, was a powder keg waiting to explode, with or without the American war to serve as an example.
Though there were clear differences between the motives for each revolt and how the two wars were fought, most experts believe that the war in America at least partly paved the way for France’s own uprising. The Americans provided a working model of revolutionary success that cannot have been lost on the French.Throughout the colonial period of the three Americas, the respective mother countries were governed by a regime that, some differences aside, is known generically as the Old Regime. This was the system European countries implanted in their colonies.
With the successive proclamations of independence by the American nations, this regime ceased to exist in the New World. In effect, the several independence movements worked as so many “French Revolutions, ” for they almost entirely demolished the Old Regime in the Americas. To a greater or lesser degree, the Old Regime was supplanted by regimes with goals and “ideals” stemming from the French and the American Revolutions.
Students Compare And Contrast The Glorious Revolution Of England, The American Revolution, And The French Revolution And Their Enduring Effects Worldwide.
It is illusory to think that these movements in the colonies sought only to proclaim independence from their respective mother countries. They also intended to make the Revolution1 which was not merely a revolution for independence but the egalitarian Revolution for the overthrow of the Old Regime and the installation of egalitarian democracies in every country.
A widespread myth exists in the Americas that at a certain moment fiery explosions of republican and egalitarian sentiment erupted spontaneously consuming the last remnants of colonial traditions. This is obviously an exaggeration.
Clearly, there was a common revolutionary ideology behind these revolutions and it is obvious that they exerted an influence on each other. A victorious revolution in one nation heightened the conviction that a similar movement could succeed elsewhere and imparted an élan to revolutionaries, a precious factor in their ultimate victory.
Effects Of The French Revolution On The Us
It would be a mistake however, to think that this revolutionary conflagration flamed across the hemisphere without resistance. On the contrary, important points of resistance often forced revolutionary movements to abandon the direct path in favor of a circuitous route replete with twists and turns, and even surprises.
As we have noted, such a course can be observed in the early history of the United States, the model democratic country of the Americas, where a strong monarchist and aristocratic resistance forced the egalitarian republican movement to advance with prudence and to implement its more radical goals only gradually.
Another myth is that the revolutions of the Americas were sparked by class struggle. The opposite is true. Not infrequently, the initial revolutionary impulse took on an aristocratic character and strived to gain the support of the aristocracy. The presence of numerous aristocrats at the forefront of the revolutionary movements in many American countries is noteworthy. The republican revolutions often succeeded precisely because men who enjoyed the public’s confidence as aristocrats led them. The people trusted these men not only because of their social status and influence, but also because of the tone of seriousness and morality that they assigned to public life. This respectability predisposed the people to accept a populist democracy in the United States and other countries of the Western Hemisphere. Moreover, in the revolutionary ferment, many of the aristocrats themselves became accustomed to a state of affairs that led them to voluntarily and even happily relinquish their privileges.
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Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira , Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of PiusXII: A Theme Illuminating American Social History (York, Penn.: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, 1993), AppendixI, pp.283-284.
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