What are some the the reasons the American Revolution was successful but the French Revolution was not?
Answers
When you have a Revolution led from the Top-Down as the Americans are, led by rich-property-owning white men you are more or less in Easy Mode. The stuff comes for free…American Revolution was formed in very lucky circumstances, where all the cards fell their way with very little heavy-lifting needing to be done. The rabble are in line because the revolution is a fight for ‘’their’’ representatives who most of them didn’t vote for) against British Representatives in London (who even the elites didn’t vote for, so there was consensus). The wars were of attrition and fought by professionals and generally good for local merchants once the French Kingdom decided to help the Americans for their geopolitical advantage never mind that the Americans were notoriously ungrateful at the Paris Peace Conference where they formed trade agreements withe England in exchange of France. Religion was a non-issue because you have Protestant Dissenters who were okay with governments having no role in religion because they were formed in opposition to the Catholic Church. As for slaves…all you have is some private white guilt by a few and token gestures by one or two others but it never becomes a serious political issue for anyone to deal with.
The French Revolution is Very Hard Mode. IT was from the Ground-Up. The Representatives wanted to get rid of feudalism, and to do that they had to take on the Catholic Church which is a supra-national entity as opposed to America’s handful of independent protestant sects. The Church was france’s biggest landowner a problem Americans didn’t have. So that meant what happened in France was a problem for Europe. They also decided to provide equality for all: So Jews, Protestants, Men of Colour, were all citizens. Now initially they wanted to go the English and American way and give voting rights only to property owning men. But gradually they decided to provide universal male suffrage regardless of distinction of race, religion and sex….Naturally doing this, even when they tried to do it peacefully invited opposition and rather than be crushed and snuffed out, they fought back. They also decided to abolish slavery without compensation for slaveowners so that meant they had enemies among the slaveowning class.
In the end though…the fact is Democracy as we know and live it today, in America today and around the world, resembles the French Revolution more than the American Revolution. These Days, Thomas Jefferson is a frank embarassment and hypocrite whereas Alfred Cobban can say about Maximilien Robespierre: "No one at the time of the Revolution, went as far as Robespierre in stating what were later to be recognized as the essential conditions of the democratic state... Universal franchise, equality of rights regardless of race or religion, pay for public service to enable rich and poor alike to hold office, publicity for legislative debates, a national system of education, the use of taxation to smooth out economic inequalities, recognition of the economic responsibilities of society to the individual...religious liberty, local self-government - such were the some of the principles for which he stood, and which are now taken for granted in democratic societies."
The real comparison is between American Civil War and the French Revolution. The American Civil War was HARD MODE for America, and as the reversal of Reconstruction shows and the rise of right-wing revanchism today in Trump’s rise proves, it’s just as divisive and contentious as the french is.
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