The American and French Revolutions

The first principle

A government is legitimate only when it rests on the consent of the governed and protects the natural rights of its citizens. Enlightenment thinkers argued this in books, and between 1776 and 1799 the American and French Revolutions turned it into constitutions, elections and wars. Almost every modern state, including India, still claims its authority on this principle, which is why these two revolutions are called the foundation of the modern political world.

The core

The ideas behind both revolutions

• John Locke argued that people form governments to protect life, liberty and property, and that they may resist a ruler who violates these rights. Montesquieu, in The Spirit of the Laws (1748), held that liberty survives only when legislative, executive and judicial power are kept separate, and Rousseau, in The Social Contract (1762), placed sovereignty in the "general will" of the people rather than in a king.

The American Revolution (1765 to 1783)

• After the Seven Years War (1756 to 1763), Britain taxed its thirteen colonies to pay its debts through the Stamp Act (1765) and later the tea duties. The colonists had no members in the British Parliament, so they replied with the slogan "no taxation without representation", which turned a quarrel over money into a quarrel over the source of authority.
• The Declaration of Independence (4 July 1776), drafted by Thomas Jefferson, stated that all men are created equal with unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. With French help the colonists won, and Britain recognised independence by the Treaty of Paris (1783).
• The Constitution of the United States (1787) created a federal republic with a written constitution, separation of powers with checks and balances, and an elected President. The Bill of Rights (1791), the first ten amendments, guaranteed freedom of speech, religion and the press and the right to a fair trial.

The French Revolution (1789 to 1799)

• French society was divided into three estates: the clergy and the nobility were privileged and largely untaxed, while the Third Estate of peasants, artisans and the middle class (bourgeoisie) paid taxes such as the taille and the tithe. Royal debt, swollen further by aid to the American colonists, and dearer bread for a growing population brought the monarchy to bankruptcy.
• When Louis XVI summoned the Estates General in May 1789, the Third Estate declared itself the National Assembly, and the crowd stormed the Bastille on 14 July. On 4 August the Assembly abolished feudal privileges, and on 26 August it adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which declared that men are born free and equal in rights and that sovereignty resides in the nation.
• France became a republic in 1792, the King was executed in 1793, and the Jacobins under Robespierre ran the Reign of Terror (1793 to 1794). Instability ended in Napoleon Bonaparte's seizure of power in 1799.

Dimensions

• Political. Both revolutions replaced divine right with popular sovereignty and made the written constitution the source of legitimate power. The American one showed that a large republic could work through federalism, and the French one introduced the idea of the citizen with equal rights in place of the subject.
• Social. France abolished feudal dues, noble privilege and the tithe, opened careers to talent and introduced civil marriage. The Napoleonic Code (1804) fixed equality before law, secure private property and a secular civil law, although it kept women subordinate to husbands.
• Ideological. The motto "liberty, equality, fraternity" gave the world a vocabulary of rights. Seating in the Assembly, where radicals sat on the left and conservatives on the right, gave us the left and right spectrum of politics.
• National. The Revolution defined the nation as a community of equal citizens rather than subjects of a dynasty. Its citizen armies, raised by mass conscription from 1793, spread this nationalism across Europe.
• International. The revolutions inspired the enslaved people of Saint Domingue under Toussaint Louverture and the creole leaders of Latin America such as Simón Bolívar.

In practice

How the two revolutions laid the foundations of the modern world

• Popular sovereignty and republicanism. Power came to rest on the people rather than on birth, and the republic became a model that most states now follow.
• Written constitutions and rights. The American Constitution with its Bill of Rights and the French Declaration became templates for later constitutions, including the Fundamental Rights in India's Constitution.
• Limited government. Separation of powers, federalism and judicial checks became standard tools to prevent tyranny.
• Secularism and equality before law. The French state took control of Church property and made citizenship independent of religion, while the Napoleonic Code spread uniform civil law across Europe.
• Nationalism and anti colonialism. Ideas of self government travelled to Latin America, where most of the continent was free by 1830, and later to the anti colonial movements of Asia and Africa.

Napoleon and the spread of ideas

Napoleon was a dictator, yet his conquests carried the Code and the abolition of feudalism into the Netherlands, Italy and the German states, while resistance to French rule awakened the nationalism that later unified Italy and Germany.

Case: Haiti. The enslaved people of Saint Domingue rose in 1791, France abolished slavery in 1794, and when Napoleon tried to restore it the former slaves defeated his army and made Haiti the first black republic in 1804, proving that the language of rights would be claimed by those it first excluded.

Issues and way forward

The enduring relevance of the French Revolution

• Rights language. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) opens with words that echo 1789, that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. India's Preamble promises liberty, equality and fraternity, a phrase B R Ambedkar described as a union of three that cannot be separated.
• The secular state and citizenship. France's principle of laïcité, settled in the law of 1905, descends from the Revolution, and the idea of equal citizenship regardless of birth underlies debates on citizenship laws everywhere.
• Power from the people. From the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe to the Arab Spring of 2011, movements have claimed legitimacy in the name of the people, as the Third Estate did.
• Warnings. The Terror shows how a revolution in the name of virtue can turn on its own citizens, and Napoleon shows how chaos invites a strongman. These lessons explain why stable democracies value institutions, due process and peaceful transfers of power.

Limits and debates

• Both revolutions excluded many. The American Constitution protected slavery until the Civil War, and French women such as Olympe de Gouges, who wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Woman (1791), were denied citizenship; she was guillotined in 1793.
• Historians differ on 1789: the Marxist view of Georges Lefebvre saw a bourgeois revolution against feudalism, while François Furet stressed political ideas and the drift to Terror.

Common confusions

• Treaty of Paris 1783 and Treaty of Versailles 1919. The first ended the American War of Independence; the second ended the First World War.
• Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The 1776 Declaration announced separation and stated principles; the 1787 Constitution created the actual federal government.
• Estates General and National Assembly. The Estates General was the old body of three estates voting by order; the National Assembly was formed by the Third Estate in June 1789 claiming to represent the whole nation.
• American and French aims. The Americans sought independence and limited government; the French sought to transform society itself, which is why the French Revolution was more radical and more violent.

For the exam

• Keyword bank: social contract, general will, separation of powers, no taxation without representation, popular sovereignty, Bill of Rights, Rights of Man, abolition of feudalism, Reign of Terror, Napoleonic Code, citizen army, nationalism, Haitian Revolution, laïcité.
• Previous year questions: Practise the previous year questions on this topic →
• Use in an answer:
  • Introduction (data): On the eve of 1789 peasants were about nine tenths of France's people, yet nobles, the Church and rich commoners held about three fifths of its land, and that imbalance is where the modern idea of equal citizenship began.
  • Introduction (quote): The Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789) proclaimed that men are born and remain free and equal in rights, a sentence echoed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.
  • Conclusion: Between them, the American and French Revolutions gave the modern world its grammar of politics: constitutions, rights, republics and nations.
  • Conclusion: The French Revolution remains relevant both as a promise of liberty, equality and fraternity and as a warning that revolutions without institutions slide into terror or dictatorship.