Was the French revolution a Bourgeoisie revolution?
Was the French revolution a Bourgeoisie revolution?
This essay will consider both Marxist and revisionist viewpoints on whether the French revolution was a Bourgeois one. In order to do this I will look at both perspectives separately.
Marxism is a clear-cut view of the French revolution. It gives a central role to the Bourgeoisie for being the main inspirators for its cause. This is due to the fact that it was widely believed to be them who stood to gain the most. Lefebvre was the main and most revered of all Marxist historians. His belief is that the year 1789 was the one in which the Bourgeoisie took power. They had been waiting for centuries in order to do this, according to Lefebvre, and when they had finally reached sufficient numbers and wealth they took the initiative. They owed most of their success to a shift of what was considered important in society. In medieval society, the landed Aristocracy had dominated. They owed much of their success and wealth to the land. This is not the case in the eighteenth century when the impetus changed and economic power, personal abilities and confidence became more desirable than land.1Although the Bourgeoisie was growing in vast numbers, the Nobility had one thing over on them, Social Status.
This leads on to the main crux of the Marxist argument, that there was a class struggle between the Nobles and the Bourgeois. The Nobility were being left far behind and the Bourgeois were steaming ahead, getting wealthier and more powerful by the day. The Bourgeois were growing richer through Commerce and Industry. Ships left for the Levant, Africa, and the Caribbean in droves. Coal and Iron production was going full steam ahead, along with cloth-making and Western ports such as Nantes and Bordeaux bustled with trade from overseas, which had increased fourfold since the death of Louis XIV.2 Whilst the Nobility clung to the Ancien R(gieme which provided them with tax exemptions and privileges. All was to change however, when the king wanted to make radical reforms. In an effort to stop the king from pushing through the reforms, which would threaten their rights and dues, the Aristocracy used their political muscle through the Parlements and demanded that they should convene via an Estates-General. This is where they went drastically wrong, because it gave the Bourgeoisie just the chance they needed to seize power for themselves.
The Bourgeoisie rebelled when, under the terms of the 1614 Estates-General it said that they would have to sit separately. By doing as it dictated, it meant that the First and Second estates would outnumber and outvote the third Estate every time. The Revolution of the Bourgeoisie had begun, and would last until the creation of the National assembly.
Marxists have interpreted the four revolutions, to show the development of the Bourgeois. The first is the Aristocratic Revolt (The uprising of the Parlements) in this Revolt the Nobles were temporarily supported by the Bourgeois. This soon changed ...
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The Bourgeoisie rebelled when, under the terms of the 1614 Estates-General it said that they would have to sit separately. By doing as it dictated, it meant that the First and Second estates would outnumber and outvote the third Estate every time. The Revolution of the Bourgeoisie had begun, and would last until the creation of the National assembly.
Marxists have interpreted the four revolutions, to show the development of the Bourgeois. The first is the Aristocratic Revolt (The uprising of the Parlements) in this Revolt the Nobles were temporarily supported by the Bourgeois. This soon changed however, in the Bourgeoisie Revolt (Estates-General) when the Bourgeoisie were against the Nobles. The Population of Paris Revolt was important to the Bourgeois because if it weren't for the mobs support, the King would have managed to crush the fledging National Assembly. The last revolt, The Peasant Revolution, was also important because, it flushed away the remnants of feudal Society. This occurred during the great fear.3 Lefebvre believes that without the help of the peasants, small employers and general mob, the Revolution would not have been conceivable.4
He also believed that the Bourgeoisie would not of obtained their success through the revolutions of 1789 without the need for Violence. Other Marxist historians agree that the revolutions were both inevitable and desirable. Feudal Society was overtaken by pressure from the Third Estate.
In Comparison to Marxism, Revisionism is not as straightforward and clear-cut. Although Revisionists agree that the Bourgeoisie was the fundamental cause of the Revolution, what they disagree with is the Marxists description of the Bourgeois. Marxists portray them as enlightened, who wanted civil equality, a rule where all men obeyed the same laws, paid the same taxes and most importantly who wanted to destroy the privileges of nobility and the Clergy. The Revisionists take a different view of the Bourgeoisie. George V Taylor in particular states that they were not the unified, self-confident Capitalist Class that the Marxists say they were. They were in fact so diverse that it is very difficult to identify similarities of occupation, wealth and Cultural background. The conception, therefore, that the Bourgeoisie are an indivisible unity is increasingly untenable. Taylor goes on to say that those Bourgeois who were not capitalists were largely uninterested in Politics before and during the revolution. They only got involved if they needed to protect their own commercial interests and privileges. The reality is, that the percentage of Bourgeoisie in the Estates-General who was involved in Commerce and Industry was only 13%, whilst the rest were minor government office holders and lawyers of some sort.5 This certainly does not tally with the Marxists view that a Revolutionary Bourgeoisie overthrew an outdated feudal system.
The Marxists also stereotyped the Nobility. They are far from being the feudal, outdated, impoverished and debt laden they have been shown to be by the Marxists. They are in fact astute, meticulous managers of their estates and also adhered to the Bourgeois believed virtues of thrift, discipline and strict management to family fortune. A Revisionist historian Robert Foster discovered this crack in the traditional view of the Nobility when he studied the Nobility in Toulouse. Far from enjoying the fiscal privileges many Marxist have liked to claim, the Nobility were in fact highly taxed - it was the Commercial Bourgeois who really benefited from the important tax exemptions, so Revisionist Betty Behrens believes.
Another interesting fact about the Nobility was that they too, were involved in Commerce and Industry. Nogaret found that more and more Nobles were investing in Industry and that they behaved more like the Bourgeoisie. In fact there appears to be no clear contrast between the Nobility and the Bourgeoisie. Not many can deny that the Bourgeoisie holds the main bulk of the wealth in Commerce and Industry, yet so have the nobles invested and gained a large profit from this trade as-well. There also seems no sign that the Bourgeoisie has outreached the Nobles in wealth. Be this in the Countryside, towns or Industrial centres. The only area where the Bourgeois fortunes may have equalled or surpassed that of the local Nobility would be the prosperous seaports like Bordeaux. Between 1726 and 1791, 90% of the farmers-General of Taxes often considered the supreme example of Bourgeois men of wealth were noble.6
Revisionists believe that the Bourgeoisie aimed to enter into the nobility. A lot of evidence can support this theory. The wealthier the Bourgeoisie, the more they wanted to abandon their capitalist roots and secure social prestige. It is estimated that 2,477 Bourgeoisie joined the Nobles between 1774-89. Many were Merchants, Financiers and manufacturers.7 A recent estimate indicates that at least a quarter of all noble families in 1789 had been ennobled since 17008 - So in light of this the Nobility cannot have been the closed class that the Marxists believe. It must have been an open (lite not a hereditary class apart. John McManners, a Revisionist, believes that it wasn't privilege that was the key to pre-Revolutionary society, it was money. Money bound wealthy Nobles and Bourgeois to create an upper class, which was dictated to in terms of money not position in society.
Instead of looking at what divided Nobles from Bourgeois, more onuses should have been placed on what had separated Noble from Noble. We have already seen the divisions within the Bourgeois and why they weren't as cohesive as the Marxists had thought. Analysis on the cahiers de cachet completed in 1789 reveal that the Aristocracy differed ideologically. Large numbers had been won over to political liberalism - which had been previously attributed to the Bourgeoisie, whereas large numbers haven't. Another study done on a branch of nobility, show that there was a deep antagonism between poor nobles and gilded absentees of Versailles.
Cobban suggests that the 43% of Bourgeois deputies in the estates-General who were venal office holders were resentful and frustrated. This is because they were being prevented from realising their social ambitions by richer merchant newcomers and they were doing all the work and not receiving any of the credit. They were also watching the decline of the venal offices in value in which they had spent so much of their time and money. This situation is strikingly parallel to the petty Nobility- who were equally prevented by poverty from aspiring to their rightful share of public office and privileges, despite having such similar interests, the two groups did not combine forces. Cobban believes this is down to the fact that the rules of the Estates-General in 1614 dictated that the two classes had to sit separately. Both Lefebvre and Cobban agree that it was this action which was the crucial turning point for the Bourgeoisie. They saw their interests were at odds with the Nobility and this realisation set the trigger, which detonated the Bourgeois, aim to control the Estates. Where Lefebvre and Cobban disagree, is that Cobban believes that the revolution was not the work of a rising class of Bourgeoisie, but of a declining one. They were not hostile to feudalism - which incidentally the peasants destroyed not them, and they were not the bearers of capitalism. He goes on to say that it was the peasants who opposed the system and overthrew it, although this was achieved through the Bourgeoisie having a revolt themselves. His theme is that the revolutionary Bourgeois was mainly a declining class of Lawyers, Professional men, and Officers, not the businessmen of Commerce and Industry.
In Conclusion to this essay, the question, "Was the French revolution a Bourgeoisie revolution" has been fully explored. It has been established that many Marxist viewpoints did not tally with the actual evidence later presented by the Revisionists. The Marxists straightforward, simple analysis of the Bourgeois role in the French Revolution was not correct. Cobban believes that the term "Bourgeoisie" is ambiguous. The Bourgeois theory is that they are a class of capitalists, yet those of the Revolution were Landowners, Rentiers, and Officials. Lefebvre said that the Revolution marked the end of the struggle of the Aristocracy against the Monarchy and the rise of the Bourgeoisie to triumph over both. It is true that the abolition of privilege and noble status meant the destruction of the last holy relics of a vanquished social order, yet Lefebvre was wrong when he said Feudalism was replaced by Capitalism. Instead, France was to be ruled by men of property, not men of birth. Notables rather than Nobles.
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Doyle, W Origins of the French Revolution (Historical Association London 1980) P7-8
2 Murphy, D Europe 1760-1871 (HarperCollinspublisher 2000) p74
3 Murphy, D Europe 1760-1871 p75
4 Cobban, A Historians and the Cause of the French revolution (Oxford university press 1946) p37
5 Doyle, W Origins of the French Revolution p12
6 Doyle, W Origins of the French Revolution p21
7 Murphy, D Europe 1760-1871 p76
8 Doyle, W Origins of the French Revolution p21
