'In the context of the period 1715-1815 to what extent were economic factors the cause of the French Revolution?'

Jack Harrison

In the context of the period 1715-1815, to what extent were economic factors the cause of the French Revolution?

The French Revolution came to a head in 1789, because of the ongoing socio-economic conflict between the French government, nobility and the ‘Third Estate’. However, it is debated amongst historians about what was the main cause of the French Revolution. One reason for this is that the ‘Third Estate’, held responsible for the Revolution, was made up of such a wide variety of social groups: peasants, industrial city workers and a rising bourgeoisie, throughout the period from 1715, all of whom had separate grievances and desired different outcomes from the Revolution. Some of these complaints were economic, but others social and political. The peasants were in desperate plight following famines and food shortages in the 1780s, industrial workers were fighting the problems of economic turbulence affecting their wages and the bourgeoisie were dependent on the economic climate and the ability to trade their outputs with foreign nations. This meant that there were a wealth of motives and the ‘Revolution’ took hold in such a variety of different ways that there are many different perspectives from which one can assess whether the economy, or another factor, was the principle cause of the Revolution.

The opinion of many historians, such as the renowned French economist and historian Florin Aftalion, is that the financial crisis, and consequently, the economic crash, that occurred during the 1780s, are crucial to explaining why there was a Revolution in 1789. However, the decline of financial stability in France had begun far earlier than this, suggesting that in fact the economy was even more deeply responsible for the Revolution. Indeed, the origins can be traced all the way back to the reign of Louis XIV. Louis had spent most of the crown’s wealth on fighting near-constant wars in the Netherlands and Low Countries, culminating in the War of Spanish Succession. This conflict, lasting until 1714, combined with Louis’ high spending on the Palace of Versailles, led to a legacy upon his death in 1715 of high debt and low production. High military outgoings, coupled with a great famine in 1709-10, left France, as Fénelon remarked, as ‘just one great desolate hospital lacking provisions’. Though France had become a major world power during the reign of Louis XIV, it was now engaged in a heavy competition to beat off rivalry from the growing influences of Russia, Prussia, and Great Britain. The naval rivalry with Great Britain in particular led to a financially draining arms race, as France sought to protect its overseas territories and trade routes. In the period 1750-1789, France fought another two major wars, the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) and played a major role in the American War of Independence. Aside from the ideas of liberty and democracy that this brought into France, fighting such a war so far away from home cost France 1066 million livres, and though Britain were defeated, their military force and empire lived on. In reality, France had gained little in a conflict that had crippled the crown’s treasury.

In order to cope with the mounting Crown debt (the interest alone had reached 318 million livres in 1788), Louis XVI needed to drastically cut government spending and reform the tax structure. However, a representative body was needed in order to do this, but the Assembly of Notables in 1787, then the Estates-General in 1789, both blocked the reforms of Louis’ finance ministers Fleury and Calonne. This both increased opposition to the Crown and its ‘unpopular’ reforms and forced Louis to declare the suspension of all payments from the Royal Treasury, effectively declaring the Crown bankrupt. This severely weakened the Crown’s political standing, increased opposition and cast doubt upon Louis’ suitability as a Head of State and Government.

Unfortunately for Louis, this financial crisis led to a huge economic collapse in France. Confidence in the treasury was severely undermined, lending ground to a halt and as a result, many businesses and industries had to make huge cuts or cease operation. The agricultural sector, which had grown steadily since 1730, underwent a series of terrible harvests in 1778-79, 1781-82 and 1785-7. This was followed by a major famine in 1788, which caused a monumental increase in grain prices. By the end of 1788, the average peasant was spending 88% of his wages on bread. These occurences led to a decrease of 50% in industrial production, mass unemployment and widespread food shortages. These soon turned violent, contributing both to the politicalisation of the Third Estate and the growing displays of discontent, culminating with the Storming of the Bastille on 14th July 1789. As well as this violence being a catalyst of the Revolution in itself, the financial troubles of the 1780s negatively impacted the monarchy because it exposed the weaknesses of the Crown’s position, undermining the autocracy. Louis was incapable of controlling the Crown treasury and French economy, and was unable to get any of his financial reforms past opposition in the nobility and Third Estate. This showed a growing willingness of French politicians to stand against the King, and an increased success for those who did, essentially tying the King’s hands, and in the short term contributing very significantly to the spread and success of the Revolution.

These economic factors were later developed by some historians to fit the Marxist theory. Marxist historians have stressed the importance of the economy as a major factor in the outbreak of the French Revolution but look beyond merely economic factors, into the wider social background of eighteenth-century France. These historians see the revolution as part of the ongoing class struggle in French society and the eventual triumph of the working classes over the autocratic ruler; the dominant position amongst historians during the twentieth century. Georges Lefebvre most clearly expressed this view in his work ‘Les Paysans du Nord pendant la Révolution française’ (‘The Peasants of the North During the French Revolution’), where he described the Revolution as a ‘bourgeois revolution’. His argument was that, during the eighteenth century, whilst the aristocracy and absolutism was going through steady decline, the industrial classes of the French bourgeoisie were growing in number and the peasants in strength. However, the aristocracy’s determination to keep the lower classes out of the privileged positions created a class struggle, with the bourgeoisie fighting for the equal rights that the enlightenment theorists had set out several decades before. This interpretation concurs with the evidence that the aristocracy and even the monarchy was often suppressive, sometimes tyrannical, towards the lower classes. The King and his government were unpopular with the people for a number of reasons. Firstly, Louis’ XVI’s wife, Marie Antoinette, was resented by a large proportion of the French population for her Austrian heritage, extravagent behaviour, and unsympathetic attitude to the plight of the lower classes, indicated by such actions as the ‘March of the Women on Versailles’ demonstrating the mob’s hatred of her. The King chose to implement his authority over the country through his 36 intendents. Many of them were highly unpopular for their authoritarian natures and the unfairness of the system which they operated, taxing the Third Estate heavily and reaping all the profits. The King had an important opportunity to redeem his government’s falling reputation in 1789, when he made the decision to call the Estates-General to attempt to reform the finance system. Much of the Third Estate saw this as a positive move, with a powerful body in which they enjoyed double-representation having the opportunity to give them a voice and lessen their burden. Many others saw it as an opportunity to gain political power for themselves. However, it soon became clear that the clergy and nobility were still not interested in ceding any of their own influence, and all voting was organised such that each Estate had one vote. Thus, the numerical advantage the King had seemingly given the Third Estate did not exist in practice. Very quickly, the Estates-General lost the support of the Third Estate, and with it went any last hope, Marxists argue, of a peaceful end to Louis’ troubles. In addition, the system of government was woefully organised: some provinces were vast, others small, some parlements presided over large areas, and some held power in just one small province. There was also no national co-operative of the ruling bodies of the provinces. Good evidence to argue the impact of this can be found in France under Napoleon, who made it one of his very first priorities to completey overhaul the administration system in France, as he saw how it had hindered the ancien régime. The Napoleonic system of administration still exists in France today, showing just how much of an advantage a successful system of government could have been to Louis XVI.

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However, not all historians would agree with this view. Revisionists began altering the interpretations of Lefebvre in the 1960s, disagreeing with Lefebvre’s vision of a ‘social revolution’. Alfred Cobban was one of the first people to disagree with the widely accepted Marxist view, arguing that, actually, the revolution was not instigated or led by the ‘proletariat’ at all. There is fair evidence to back up this theory. Revisionists argue that the universally-regarded ‘leaders’ of the Revolution, Hébert and Robespierre particularly, were themselves above the lower classes and merely used the sans-culottes as a convenient base of support, rather than the ‘triumph of the proletariat’ originating from within its numbers. Displays of public anger by the lower classes en masse can be seen to be intermittent, spontaneous and disorganised, as whilst the Storming of the Bastille was the spark for the Revolution, it was not typical of events that had occurred in the buildup to it. Traditional Marxists would argue that these events demonstrated the working classes growing in strength and potency. Colin Jones also argues that, under the reign of Louis XV, ‘the intendancy system was streamlined, and intendants now launched a wide range of social and economic improvements’. There is clear discrepancy in views about the strength and popularity of French government in the eighteenth century.

Some historians, like François Furet, went still further. In his works and those of contemporary historians, it was widely believed that the French Revolution could be almost directly derived from the Enlightenment movement of the mid-1700s. Philosophers such as Voltaire argued for freedom of speech, religion, and to ‘crush the infamy’ of the ancien regime and its absolute monarchy. This ‘infamy’ was summed up by Jean-Jacques Rousseau: ‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains’. Montesquieu, in his ‘L’Espirit des Lois’, argued that ‘the people, in whom the supreme power resides, ought to have the management of everything within their reach’, and it is easy to draw parallels between the ideas of the Enlightenment and the freedoms that the leaders of the Revolution sought to give themselves by toppling the ancien régime. Indeed, since the 1750s, the parlements had justified their opposition to ministers, and to Louis XV’s royal authority, by citing the works of Montesquieu and Rousseau. There has long been debate, however, about how much the work of Enlightenment philosophers contributed to the mindset of the Revolutionaries. One contemporary school of thought, led by Edmund Burke, established a close connection between philosophy and the Revolution. Later generations of theorists, though in conflict with Burke about the effectiveness of the Enlightenment, agreed that it was a crucial factor in bringing about the Revolution. Alexis de Tocqueville’s ‘Old Regime and the Revolution’ states that the Revolution’s main aim was to create an equality-based social and political order, thus the Enlightenment was the main motive behind the Revolution.

This would appear to concur with Robespierre’s speech to the National Convention in 1794, where he argued that the new French Republic should be a place ‘where the citizen is subject to the magistrate, the magistrate to the people, and the people to justice’. This clearly shows an influence of Enlightenment theory on Robespierre.

The French role in the American War of Independence caused an influx of new ideas into French society. From the soldiers returning to France to the ideas of Benjamin Franklin, the United States’ first ambassador to France, the victory of the Americans, with the help of the French, was both a new look at Enlightenment ideology, as well as a proof that it could work.

One can see that the ideas of liberty and equality were one motive for the Revolution by looking at its results. ‘The Declaration of the Rights of Man’ issued by the National Assembly in 1789 is strong evidence for the importance of Enlightenment theorists to the revolutionaries. It included articles indicating that ‘all the powers emanate entirely from the nation’ and ‘elections will be held for every seat’. This is close to the work of Rousseau and his idea of democracy, as well as the freedom experienced by the newly-formed United States. Furthermore, Furet’s interpretation of the Revolution gives a possible explanation of events in France after the Revolution. He believed that Revolutionary France in the 1790s was trapped between two ideologies, the egalitarian ideas of the 1789 Revolution, and the authoritarian revolution that brought about the Empire of Napoleon in 1799. However, Furet argues that the Napoleonic rule did not destroy totally the egalitarian revolutionary model and so it was able to rise up again, once he had met his military downfall, with subsequent Revolutions in 1830, 1848 and 1871. Furet sees this as evidence that ‘only the victory of the republicans over the monarchists at the beginning of the Third Republic marked the definitive victory of the Revolution’ and so the Revolution, if interpreted this way, was not only Enlightenment-based, but also a constant long-term revolution that brought about several stages of French government, regardless of the economic or political conditions at any one stage. It is interesting to note that Napoleon himself succeeded in stabilising France economically by founding the Bank of France in 1803, greatly simplifying the tax system, completely reforming the administrative system into departments and vastly improving communications. However, this was still not able to prevent him or authoritarianism from succumbing to further Revolutions, which would back up Furet’s view that liberty and equality were key to the original revolution of 1789, as well as the succeeding ones.

However, one way in which it differs, and a plausible argument to limit the importance of the Enlightenment as a catalyst of the Revolution is that the monarchy was not only retained but strongly supported in the Rights of Man. Constitutional Article 3 states that ‘the National Assembly has recognized…that the King’s person is inviolable and sacred’, leaving the monarch as the sole executive power with the governmental system still run in homage to him. It was not until 1793, after Louis’ attempted escape, loss in popularity and execution, that a new document was issued removing the role of the King. Rather, it seemed that most Revolutionaries were content to settle for a constitutional monarchy over a Republic. Only the violent Jacobins taking power eventually led to its abolition.

Though Burke conceded the presence of Enlightenment ideology as a factor in the minds of the revolutionaries, he doubted its importance as the determining factor in the outcome of French Revolution. He accepted that the views of Enlightenment theorists influenced the Revolutionary government but argued that it could not possibly have contributed to its success because people were drawing from their ‘own intellects’ rather than the ‘general bank and capital of nations and of ages’. In other words, Enlightenment theory was too abstract to be a fundamental reason for the revolution, unlike the economy.

However, there have been many historians that have opposed Burke’s theory, attempting to look at Enlightenment from a different perspective. As early as 1791, Thomas Paine defended the Revolution against Burke’s criticism. Burke argued that society’s true stability can only be achieved by the wealthy minority governing the poor majority because of their ‘hereditary wisdom’ and ability to fufil the role. Paine, on the other hand, believed that ‘every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it’, thus the idea of hereditary government by the aristocracy was unfair and wrong. He also said that ‘the individuals, themselves, each, in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government’, and so the Enlightenment theorists’ ideas could work in a real political system. Many historians have since taken either side of this debate. For example, Jules Michelet believed that the Revolution set out to liberate the French, but on the other hand Denis Richet condemns this viewpoint, taking particular issue with de Tocqueville’s work.

Many historians have also argued that the nature of government and society under the ancien régime invited the Revolution. William Doyle believes that French government was so archaic and strained that it simply could not stand up any longer. He argues that ‘every aspect of the ancien régime…had no uniformity’. The problem that the French monarchy faced in 1715 was the succession: Louis XV was first in line to the throne, aged just 5. Thus, a lengthy period of regency was required until Louis was old enough to rule alone. The Parlement of Paris annulled Louis XIV’s will almost immediately after his death and used the minority to claw back many powers from the regency government. As Doyle states, the Parlements created additional conflict because ‘the king could bully them by shows of force, but without the money to buy them out, he could not dispossess them’. Thus, the lack of economic strength can be perceived to have led to much of the autocratic power of the French monarchy being lost, and the absolute power of Louis XIV’s reign would never be wielded by the monarchy again. It did not help that the financial difficulties inherited by Louis XV required a strong, determined, decisive mind to control and reform. Louis possessed none of these qualities and though popular, as an autocratic ruler was rather weak.

Another perception of the collapse of the ancien régime was that there was such change in French society during the eighteenth century that government became unsustainable. The régime was founded in very much a feudal, agricultural society, but with the rapid growth of the bourgeoisie in the Third Estate, French society no longer fitted the system by which it was governed. Such changes in society had already affected some countries in Europe, particularly Britain, where the Industrial Revolution and pressure for a voice for the newly-formed middle class brought about great political changes in the form of a decline in autocracy and aristocracy, and a growth in representative democracy. In France, the middle class now existed, but there was no political system to fit it. Colin Jones argues that the bourgeois man was ‘representative of an increasingly consumerist urban lifestyle outside the cities’. Under the ancien régime, the first two Estates (clergy and nobility) were afforded great privileges that frequently disadvantaged the Third Estate. Most of France’s lucrative bishoprics went to sons of the nobles, allowing them to reap large sums in land ownership and tithes from the people, having never worked a day in the Church in their lives. The Archbishop of Strasbourg, for example, earned 40,000 livres per annum just in taxes. The nobility were exempt from tax, labour and conscription, held monopolies on businesses, trades and materials and could impose financial or labour obligations on the peasantry, naturally unpopular with the lower classes. However, with the growth of the bourgeoisie, some historians argue, there began to be a growing voice of discontent; more importantly this discontent came from some of the wealthiest people in France. The calling of the Estates-General provided an opportunity for the bourgeoisie to finally have representation, denied since its previous meeting in 1614, but this turned out to be a great disappointment, with the nobility determined to block all their proposals. The effects of this can be seen with the formation of the National Assembly and the ‘Tennis Court Oath’ of 1789. As Charles Barentin (Louis XVI’s Keeper of the Seals) wrote to him in 1789, the National Assembly displayed ‘contempt for Your Majesty’s wishes’, suggesting ‘they must be maintained’. At least one faction of government, then, had the impression that the Third Estate could be highly dangerous, fuelled by the years of oppression at the hands of the higher society. However, de Tocqueville argued that though the Revolution brought about liberty and democracy, it did not bring about equality. This idea is justified when one considers that the Revolution was declared ‘over’ in 1799 by Napoleon, and his widely popular dicatorship began, suggesting that the Third Estate were less concerned about gaining equality and more about simply removing what they saw as dissatisfactory governments, both of Louis XVI, and later of the National Assembly.

The evidence put forward by historians citing the economy as the main cause of the Revolution clearly shows that the French finances were in such a bad way that the monarchy was ill-equipped to govern France, or to defend itself against the Revolution in 1789. However, I believe that the causes of the Revolution were more than merely economic. I would agree with Marxist historians’ view that not only the economy, but also a change in the demography of France meant that a feudal-based, autocratic society could simply no longer function. Other events post-1789 would support this view: the destruction of Napoleon’s autocracy in 1815, the passing of the Great Reform Act in Britain, the establishment of the United States, and the eventual overthrow of Russian Tsarism are all strong evidence that the Western World had fallen out of favour with autocracy, that the working class did have sufficient strength to effect constitutional change and that the ideals of democracy were what eighteenth-century Europeans really wanted. It is possible that economic strife and famine were what was needed to trigger active Revolution based on much longer-term discontent, but in general terms I believe the foundations of the Revolution were much wider, based in French society’s intrinsic failures and the changing shape of Western society.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

‘Barentin to the King’, no.69 in The French Revolution, John Hardman (Edward Arnold 1981) p.101

Interpreting the French Revolution, Francois Furet (Cambridge University Press 1981)

‘The Declaration of the Rights of Man’, Constitutional Article 3, published in The French Revolution, John Hardman (Edward Arnold 1981) p.116

Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke, taken from

Rights of Man, Thomas Paine, taken from

François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire), in a letter (1762), taken from

The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, taken from

From an extract of L’Espirit des Lois’ Baron de Montesquieu, full document at

Speech to the National Convention, Maximilien Robespierre (1794), taken from

Les paysans du Nord pendant la Revolution Française, Georges Lefebvre (1924)

Old Regime and the Revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville (Harper & Brothers 1856), taken from http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=iAEuAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=alexis+de+tocqueville+old+regime+and+the+revolution&source=bl&ots=pygwccSjzg&sig=FizVk-Y5xwjRBxYKcdFwTsyG2Eg&hl=en&ei=VH3HS4j5J4iM0gTe5_TYDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Secondary Sources

France, Colin Jones (Cambridge University Press 1994)

France in Revolution, Dylan Rees (Hodder Education 2008)

The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction, William Doyle (Oxford University Press 2001)

Revolutions 1789-1917, Allan Todd (Cambridge University Press 1998)

Websites

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=iAEuAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=alexis+de+tocqueville+old+regime+and+the+revolution&source=bl&ots=pygwccSjzg&sig=FizVk-Y5xwjRBxYKcdFwTsyG2Eg&hl=en&ei=VH3HS4j5J4iM0gTe5_TYDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false