How did the american revolution influence the french revolution? upsc?
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The American Revolution principally introduced new political possibilities—driven by the Enlightenment idea of republicanism, resurgent from Roman times—to those living in France. Specifically, the French, followed by a number of colonies throughout the world, came to terms with the reality that it was now possible for a weak polity (such as a colony) to overcome a strong one (such as an empire). This was a brand new geopolitical development.
French soldiers and sailors who came to the aid of American patriots in fighting their common enemy, the British, returned to France with some new concepts to work out, most notably “republicanism.” It was our Declaration of Independence that most famously articulated the matter of civic consent. “Governments … deriv[e] their just powers from the consent of the governed….”
However, whereas the American Revolution was merely political not social, and whereas it talked the talk but didn't walk the walk (it did not fully implement the new republicanism ideas of Paine, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, etc.) … French Revolutionaries actually tried to work them out in practice. They introduced constitutional measures very early in the F.R., pressed for a reformed monarchy, and passed The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, and initially emancipated the slaves in their colonies (a short-lived measure).
(The revolutionaries in Saint–Domingue did even better, by securing permanent legal freedom for all slaves in that colony.)
Unfortunately for democracy, all this progress unraveled when the Jacobins seized power and began exterminating their enemies in a 3-year-long period of anarchy that culminated in the “Reign of Terror.” The politically-weak Directory government that followed created ripe conditions for a takeover, when, in 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte marched his army into the city and became dictator. Before all of this, before the radical Jacobins, the earliest French Revolutionaries had promoted a nobler vision. At least, by modern values.
Thus, the American Revolution was the first colonial revolution of the so-called “modern era.” It paved the way for the French Revolution, followed swiftly by the Haitian Revolution, the Latin American wars for independence, roughly concurring with Greece’s struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire, and so on.
Early American elites provided the ideological seeds for “liberty” and “self-rule,” which other colonies heard about, adapted to their own needs and context, experimentally planted within their own socio-political soils, and watered . . . producing a diverse harvest of newly decolonized countries today.
French soldiers and sailors who came to the aid of American patriots in fighting their common enemy, the British, returned to France with some new concepts to work out, most notably “republicanism.” It was our Declaration of Independence that most famously articulated the matter of civic consent. “Governments … deriv[e] their just powers from the consent of the governed….”
However, whereas the American Revolution was merely political not social, and whereas it talked the talk but didn't walk the walk (it did not fully implement the new republicanism ideas of Paine, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, etc.) … French Revolutionaries actually tried to work them out in practice. They introduced constitutional measures very early in the F.R., pressed for a reformed monarchy, and passed The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, and initially emancipated the slaves in their colonies (a short-lived measure).
(The revolutionaries in Saint–Domingue did even better, by securing permanent legal freedom for all slaves in that colony.)
Unfortunately for democracy, all this progress unraveled when the Jacobins seized power and began exterminating their enemies in a 3-year-long period of anarchy that culminated in the “Reign of Terror.” The politically-weak Directory government that followed created ripe conditions for a takeover, when, in 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte marched his army into the city and became dictator. Before all of this, before the radical Jacobins, the earliest French Revolutionaries had promoted a nobler vision. At least, by modern values.
Thus, the American Revolution was the first colonial revolution of the so-called “modern era.” It paved the way for the French Revolution, followed swiftly by the Haitian Revolution, the Latin American wars for independence, roughly concurring with Greece’s struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire, and so on.
Early American elites provided the ideological seeds for “liberty” and “self-rule,” which other colonies heard about, adapted to their own needs and context, experimentally planted within their own socio-political soils, and watered . . . producing a diverse harvest of newly decolonized countries today.
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The American revolution happened to form a first hand to France. The economic struggles that was being experienced by the two countries in their respective governments steered for revolution by them. Another factor is the royal absolutism by French and America. This is such that french was aiming for reform of the ruling of Louis XVI which was so absolute. This is while the other colonists were revolting against the monarchy of the British.
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