Debating the Revolution

British Literature in the 1790s

 Plan for today’s lecture
• 1) General information about the course
- Structure
- Expectations
- Purpose

• 2) Overview of the outbreak of the French

Revolution
- Background: The Old Regime
- Ideological factors
- Material factors
 1) General information
• Structure:
- Lectures and seminars
• Lectures:
- Plan for today’s lecture
- Chronological, genre, thematic
[COURSE PLAN]
- Pamphlets, newspapers, philosophical
treatise, poetry, novels
Different genres cover different issues (newspapers/slave
trade, novels/women’s rights), BUT! Doesn’t have to be
structured in this way.
• Seminars

Weeks 35, 36, 38, 45 in rooms

D14: Friday, 11.15-12.00

D13: Friday, 14.15-15.00

OBS! Seminar in week 35 special, see message

on It’s Learning.
 Obligatory assignment
• Need to pass in order to take final exam
• Announced on It’s Learning Monday 14
September
• Deadline: Monday 12 October
• Two parts:
1) Short text (500 words)
2) Essay (1000-1500 words)
• More info in seminar week 38
 BA thesis
• Who? Students entering BA programme in
autumn 2014 or later (Teacher Training students:
autumn 2013 or later)
• Replaces OA and exam
• OA deadline = proposal (500-600 words)
• Exam (7 December) = deadline for BA thesis
• 3200 words (7-8 pages)
• Topic: OA, or choose your own (needs to be
approved)
• Questions? Studieveiledning-isl@hf.ntnu.no
• Expectations

What can YOU expect?

- Quality assurance system
- Reference groups (3 meetings, short
report)

What can I expect?

- Preparation, participation
• Purpose (‘læringsmål’)

…to be able to analyze a selection of political

texts, and to place them in their historical
context. To be able to discuss how the texts are
shaped by contemporary issues, but also how
they in fact contribute to contemporary debates,
and thus to the formation of new political
ideas…
• Relationship LITERATURE and HISTORY

• Primarily focus on literature, but historical

context is crucial
• Details less important, but some knowledge
necessary
• For this reason: Overview of French
Revolution
 Today’s pensum text
• Focused on historical context in ENGLAND, not
France
• Relevant for all the other lectures
• If needed: Chapter on the French Revolution,
from R.R. Palmer, Joel Colton and Lloyd
Kramer, A History of the Modern World (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 2007).

Note: NOT pensum!

 Overview: The French Revolution

Question: How much do you already know?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzCEdSKMk
dU

What caused this?

 Background: The Old Regime
• INEQUALITY and OPPRESSION

• Feudalism

Local manors managed by feudal lords 

Modern centralized state

Aristocratic privilege: monopoly and collecting

fees
 Background: The Old Regime

• Three ESTATES
- 1st Estate: Clergy
- 2nd Estate: Nobility
- 3rd Estate: Everyone else

• Legal rights and personal prestige

 French population figures
• Total: 24 million people

- 1st Estate: 100 000

- 2nd Estate: 400 000
- 3rd Estate: 23,5 million
 2nd Estate: The Aristocracy
• Particularly powerful:

- Filled most public offices (controlling policies)

- Repeatedly avoided taxes
- TAILLE exempt on principle
• No doubt of injustice, but:

Was the Revolution a result of

1) Ideological factors?
2) Material factors?
 1) Ideological factors
• The Age of Enlightenment

• Main traits:
- Scientific discoveries
- Search for and dissemination of knowledge
- Optimistic belief in PROGRESS and
IMPROVEMENT of society
- Belief in REASON over TRADITION
• Important Enlightenment work:
The Encyclopédie (1751-1772)
 Lexicon of scientific and historical
knowledge
 Aimed for progress, criticized existing
institutions and customs
 Many famous contributors, known as the
French ‘philosophes’
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
 The Social Contract (1762)
• Builds on Thomas Hobbes’ and John Locke’s
Social Contract Theory
• ‘State of nature’
• From agreement ruler vs. people, to agreement
among people
• From individual wills to a sovereign General Will
• Government secondary: elected delegates
representing the sovereign people
= DEMOCRACY
 Questioning the influence of
ideological factors

• Philosophes read mostly by upper stratum

• Encyclopédie: Especially upper crust of 3rd
Estate, but in fact also 1st and 2nd Estate
• Must look for other reasons for why ‘common
people’ joined the revolution
 2) Material factors
• Immediate cause of Revolution:

Agricultural and financial crises

• Failing harvests = people starving

• War costs and debt after American War of
Independence
• French finances vs. English and Dutch
• Crucial: inadequate tax collection

• 1st and 2nd estates didn’t pay the TAILLE

(Exempt on principle, Church gave gift instead)

In fact: bourgeoisie evaded tax as well

= responsibility left to the commoners

• Long history of attempts to change tax system
• Aristocracy and clergy too strong
• Demanded ESTATES GENERAL

 Flawed system: one vote to each Estate

= 3rd Estate always outnumbered

• King hesitant, but was forced to call in the
Estates General in Versailles in May 1789
• 3rd Estate provoked: they were the people
and should be sovereign (Rousseau)
 suggestion: representatives from each
Estate vote as individuals (as many
representatives as the two other combined)
= 6 week deadlock.
 Dramatic turn: June 1789
• 13 June: A few priests left chamber of 1st Estate,
joined 3rd Estate. Met with jubilation.
• 17 June: The 3rd Estate declared itself the ‘National
Assembly’, signalling that they were the majority, the
people = sovereignty
• 20 June: After the King had closed their hall, they met
in an indoor tennis court and signed the Oath of the
Tennis Court
 Would not disband until new Constitution had been
drafted
 Revolutionary step: claiming power for a body with
no legal authority = coup d’état
 Study questions
• What were the main reasons for the outbreak
of the French Revolution?
• Discuss: which of these do you consider to be
most significant, and why?