French Revolution

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at the French Revolution from various angles in an attempt to define it as a class revolution of not. The writer holds that, while the revolution might be described in terms of class because the royalty were overthrown by everyone else, hostility to royalty is a rather incomplete defense for calling this event any kind of class struggle, except for the obvious reason that the royals did not want to give up their power.

From the Paper:

"In fact the non-royal classes of France had an organizational tradition in the Bourgeois Militia (Luckett, 1997). Established well during the Wars of Religion (Luckett, 1997), this militia was to be made up of one man from each household. This it crossed all classes and brought disparate groups together in a common cause. Similar to the "Minute Men" of the early United States (Luckett, 1997), it was sometimes as large as 50,000 men. The existence of the militia gave legitimacy to various classes working together to oppose a common enemy that might not have otherwise been present."

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