Yuratuhl wrote:
The American Revolution was about taxes and representation. The French Revolution happened because of the system of nobility, a huge gap between the talentless yet wealthy nobles and the poor commoners, the impossible-to-cross line separating the rich commoners from the aforementioned talentless nobles even if they were in all other respects identical, the perceived excesses of a not-so-bright king and his tremendously unpopular wife, and food riots. It also happened 13 years later....
I think you just misunderstood me. I didn't mean to imply the
reasons were the same. Clearly the French and Americans revolted for different reasons, and had very different political/economic/social situations. I'm saying that the
idea of revolution, uprising, whatever you want to call it, is contagious.
Americans were like "this shit sucks, let's do something about it" - and they were successful.
This helped inspire people to think in other countries "this shit sucks, let's do something about it. And look, shit sucked for those people, they did something about it...and it worked out for them." (The French Revolution, The Mexican Revolution). The French may have had many different ideas about what the country should be, as you say....but the feeling...the "things should be different...and I bet we could make them different" is a very contagious thing.
As for the whole "13 years later" - revolutions don't usually happen overnight...especially back then when information/ideas took a lot longer to get around. Why all these revolutions are happening so fast now is because of how easy it is to organize, connect, and communicate today. If Facebook existed back then, I bet the French Revolution might have happened much sooner.
Here's the quote from that book I posted again about democracy. It is all about IDEAS and THE POWER OF THE PEOPLE. Different reasons, but I'm talking about the underlying feeling. Any time those in power are overthrown, the basic feeling of the masses is the same "we're unhappy with the way things are...we want our voices heard...we want change":
Quote:
The effects of the American Revolution, as a revolution, were imponderable but very great. It inspired the sense of a new era. It added a new content to the conception of progress. It gave a whole new dimension to ideas of liberty and equality made familiar by the Enlightenment. It got people into the habit of thinking more concretely about political questions, and made them more readily critical of their own governments and society. It dethroned England, and set up America, as a model for those seeking a better world. It brought written constitutions, declarations of rights, and constituent conventions into the realm of the possible. The apparition on the other side of the Atlantic of certain ideas already familiar in Europe made such ideas seem more truly universal, and confirmed the habit of thinking in terms of humanity at large. Whether fantastically idealized or seen in a factual way, whether as mirage or as reality, America made Europe seem unsatisfactory to many people of the middle and lower classes, and to those of the upper classes who wished them well. It made a good many Europeans feel sorry for themselves, and induced a kind of spiritual flight from the Old Regime. (p. 282)
), the other countries have influenced revolution.
