I sometimes wonder, for no special reason, why the French Revolution is often placed in a sentence before the American Revolution since the American Revolution occurred before the French Revolution in chronological as well as alphabetic order. But, this is merely a curiosity and not a point of any sort. If this word placement oddity in the sentience is, for some strange reason deliberate, I would be interested to know why.
In a way, the three revolutions remind me of dominoes that fell and thus caused the fall of other dominoes. The assignment begins with the French Revolution being mentioned first and I am following suit even though the American Revolution began before the French Revolution. On the other hand, who likes reading material that is utterly predictable? Who doesn't like unanticipated forays into an event that is chronologically ahead of what actually happened first? Upending the predictable can keep people guessing and maybe provide an interesting yet informative response to the questions of the assignment or discussion in question. This, I hope, will not be a lengthy entreaty into each cause, but a fast-food window so to speak, with a brief reason for each cause.
The French Revolution
The causes of the French Revolution enveloped political, social, economic and military factors. Financial factors were also a significant cause and it started with the King and his nobles. Louis XV or Louis the beloved, was King of France from 1715 to 1774. In the last years of his reign, he had been able, with great effort, to cajole and persuade his nobles to pay taxes, which they did until his death. And, the taxes the nobles paid helped in a large way to fund the government of France. When he died in May 1774, his son Louis XVI became King at the young age of 20. His nobles, espying their opportunity approached the impressionable young king and requested that he withdraw the levy of taxes his father had yoked them with, and the new King ascended to their request. This left Louis XVI in a bind since a significant avenue of revenue was now lost to him. The government could not run without taxes. France had lost badly in the seven years war and whether giving into his nobles about not paying taxes was wise, the recourse was to find another source of revenue. When he approached his nobles about the possibility of paying taxes, the idea of calling the estates general was posed, and that led to the French Revolution when the 1st estate (minus the arch-bishops) was invited by the 3rd estate (commoners represented and headed by lawyers and other young professionals) which subsequently became the national assembly and morphed into a group headed by the Jacobites.
The royal and aristocratic politics of France were of the old world, with old world solutions that were like the jarring screech of chalk on a blackboard that were at odds with the vast majority of fresh ideas penned by so many popular enlightenment thinkers. The old and the new world would clash with the old being shattered. As noted in the Age of the Democratic Revolution, "The French Revolution went beyond all others of the period in its scope. It remained primarily political, like other movements of the time, on the supposition that all spheres of life were to be transformed by the reorganization of the state along with the introduction of new laws or abolition of old ones. p.441)"
As far as social factors, the enlightenment ideals also prescribed changes that were a departure of what society had been in the minds of most of its citizens. For example, rather than the classics being the centerpiece of education along with other subjects like Latin, Rousseau encouraged people with the idea that skills in practical education along with hard work and learning trades such as masonry and carpentry would benefit society greatly. Women began to gather in each other's homes to discuss and hear about the latest ideas such as the latest books, philosophy and fashion.
Economics also played a large role in the French Revolution. Many French people often spent half of what they made on bread, so when there were repeated crop failures, food deprivation increased the overall sentiment in France that the government did not care about them. This was evident in several incidents. When the mothers and sisters of Paris were hungry and could not feed their families because there was no bread, they, along with the national guard marched the twelve miles to Versailles where they broke into the royal flour supply. When they went back to Paris, the Royal family went too under duress.
The military also played a role in the French Revolution. After the national assembly was formed, the National Guard was created shortly before the storming of the Bastille, and since anyone could join it without having a title or much in the way of qualifications, it grew quickly and was able to later handily suppress and wipe out the royalist armed forces.
The American Revolution
The causes of the American Revolution were in some ways similar to those of the French Revolution. Oppression is a key word in both Revolutions. The perception of who was the oppressor in each Revolution changed a bit. At the beginning of the American Revolution, the British were the oppressors, and at the end of the war for independence, that had not changed. At the end of the Revolutionary War in France, who the oppressors were had changed.
The Revolution in America had several causes. France has been defeated in the Seven years war which was in a sense, the first world war. And even though Britain had been victorious, they had not emerged unscathed and it was felt in Britain that the colonies should be included in the effort to recoup the losses Britain had sustained in its war with France. And the colonies while not objecting so much to this idea, objected to being taxed without being represented in Parliament. They wanted a political voice in exchange for being asked to pull their weight.
Socially speaking, while Britain and the American colonies were very similar, these respective societies had diverged along different lines and that was only to be expected for the length of time many British people had lived and been born in America. Some examples of this would be how Americans, over time, relied less upon the hierarchical structure and expectations that British people naturally expected. As noted in the age of the Democratic Revolution, "A distinction may be drawn between two kinds of ranks. On the one hand there is (or was) a diffuse kind of rank, or social standing, generally derived by the individual from the family of his birth, built into his childhood, conditioning his attitudes to other persons above him, below him, or his equals; a rank or standing accompanying a person everywhere, showing in his bearing and in his clothing, in the street, or in the drawing room, in public, and in private, among his intimates and in the presence of strangers. p.67)"
While this was true in Britain, it was becoming less true in America, to the extent that it would be a contributing factor in that the Americans felt the British looked down on them, and some of the British felt that the American colonists were of a necessity, inferior in social manners and therefore in many respects, unworthy or unfit to request much less demand representation without taxation.
And of course there were economic factors. One of those being commerce and especially commodities that were being taxed, such as tea. The fact that the British government was taxing tea called into question whether Britain had the right to tax tea coming into the American colonies. And there was a sentiment on the part of many citizens and politicians like Samuel Adams that Britain was being highhanded.
The Haitian Revolution
Like the American and French Revolutions, there were different causes that contributed. Societal problems were a definite contribution. In Saint Dominique there was a strata of three social classes that operated on a rather precipitous understanding of class order. There were the Grand Blancs which were the white plantation owners. The Petit blancs were civil servants or the working class. Naturally they did not mesh well or relate well to those who were Grand Blancs. They did not endear themselves to people of color or make an attempt to appreciate or understand them. The free people of color were very well off and some of them even owned plantations though because of their skin color they did not have as many rights or privileges as the Grand blancs or Petit Blancs. Enslaved people, or 90% of the population worked on plantations and in other varieties of field work. They of course had no rights. No group could be said to have been fond of another group although the people of color and the slaves would eventually work together, but with such precipitous lack of co-lesion, this would eventually contribute to the Haitian Revolution.
What were the financial causes of the Haitian Revolution? It is important to note, according to Avengers of the New World that Santo Domingo, or Saint Dominique as the French later called it was a very lucrative possession. It produced 60% of the worlds coffee and about half of the world's sugar. All of it was grown by slave labor and if the welfare of the slave was ever more valuable that the commodity whether it was coffee or sugar, it would have been the rare exception rather than the rule. France of course profited a lot. According to Avengers of the New World, "three-quarters of sugar and coffee produced in the colonies and sent to France was reexported to other countries in Europe. Because restrictive French trade policies kept the prices planters could demand for their products down, metropolitan merchants in the port towns made extraordinary fortunes from this business. The livelihood of as many as a million of the 25 million inhabitants of France depended directly on the colonial trade." (p. 21)
And of course, the disruption of such financial resources would have political ramifications. The Haitian Revolution began in August 1791 with the ceremony known as Bois Ciaman. It began as a gathering of slaves from various plantations who were led by a man named Boukman Dutty. In brief, the upshot of this meeting was the torching of many plantations in just one week. The intent was to disrupt the slave economy rather than terrorize the plantation owners, and with plantations on fire, the slave economy could not function.
Economics played a role in the Haitian Revolution because without the destruction of plantations, there would have been no reprisals. When the Americans disguised as Indians threw all the tea into the Boston harbor, Britain vowed recompense for the loss of so great a profit and the French were no different in the case of the plantations that were torched. French newspapers of course begin to print what happened, but with some fictitious details such as white masters being killed and slave owners losing their heads. Many planters hurriedly relocated to other places like Jamaica, New Orleans and the United States. The French decided then to send troops to salvage the situation and hopefully to restore the island's ability to continue in its role as a lucrative financial resource. Of course, this ultimately failed.
Perusing the different causes of the French, American and Haitian Revolution is like comparing the personalities of different family members who are very much alike, but are also very different also. The are the same in some ways but often for different reasons. And of course they are often as similar as they are dissimilar. American did not have the financial woes to the extent that France and Haiti did. America and Haiti fought tyranny during and before their respective wars while France itself, in some ways became more tyrannical during the reign of terror.
Sources
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The Age of the Democratic Revolution, R.R. Palmer, A political history of Europe and America, Princeton University Press, Princeton New Jersey, 1959
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A leap in the dark, John Ferling, The struggle to create the American Republic, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK (October 28, 2004)
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Laurent Dubios. 2004. Avengers of the New World : The Story of the Haitian Revolution. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=282428&site=ehost-live.
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Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Haitian Revolution." Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Haitian-Revolutio
