What caused the French Revolution?
TASK
Watch the video and summarise the main causes of the French Revolution. Use bullet points and clear specific information.
Watch the video and summarise the main causes of the French Revolution. Use bullet points and clear specific information.
The traditional story of the French Revolution in documentary form.
Remember, this has been created by people who lived hundreds of years after the event who have their own norms and values based upon the society in which they live. This will always influence how they tell the story, what they include as evidence, values that they consider important and want to show, what they leave out of the story and the limitation of the documentary method in terms of time, money and its lack of interaction.
However, we can suggest that it still has value as an accessible summary of the major events and chronology of the period.
Remember, this has been created by people who lived hundreds of years after the event who have their own norms and values based upon the society in which they live. This will always influence how they tell the story, what they include as evidence, values that they consider important and want to show, what they leave out of the story and the limitation of the documentary method in terms of time, money and its lack of interaction.
However, we can suggest that it still has value as an accessible summary of the major events and chronology of the period.
Analysing cartoons
This is not just an historical skill, but a life skill. Watch the video below to understand more of the context around using cartoons in politics, history and across time.
Cartoons of the French Revolution
These may now be thought of as historical cartoons, but at the time they were highly political and "contemporary" (of that time) with the events as they were unfolding. Therefore, we can use the skills of analysing political cartoons with our knowledge of the historical events during the French Revolution to understand their message and meaning.
French Liberty, British Slavery, James Gillray’s 1792 ironic cartoon depicting a starving ‘free’ French revolutionary and a well fed ‘enslaved’ British man.
What is happening?
What people, objects and things are in the cartoon?
What symbols are being used?
What is the tone toward the French Revolution (positive or negative)?
Who is the author (nationality, perspective)?
When was it made (significance within the chronology of events)?
What is the message being sent to the viewer? Is it valid?
What people, objects and things are in the cartoon?
What symbols are being used?
What is the tone toward the French Revolution (positive or negative)?
Who is the author (nationality, perspective)?
When was it made (significance within the chronology of events)?
What is the message being sent to the viewer? Is it valid?
What is happening?
What people, objects and things are in the cartoon?
What symbols are being used?
What is the tone toward the French Revolution (positive or negative)?
Who is the author (nationality, perspective)?
When was it made (significance within the chronology of events)?
What is the message being sent to the viewer? Is it valid?
What people, objects and things are in the cartoon?
What symbols are being used?
What is the tone toward the French Revolution (positive or negative)?
Who is the author (nationality, perspective)?
When was it made (significance within the chronology of events)?
What is the message being sent to the viewer? Is it valid?
A final word on the irony of the guillotine…
Is the connection between the guillotine and ‘terror’ justified? Feudal monarchies were renowned for their use of public torture as method for punishment and repression. In Britain, extended torture was preferred to a quick death for its victims and this was for a very good reason, they wanted to terrorise the population and maintain control. These monarchical rituals of terror, were, unsurprisingly, public spectacles often involving hanging drawing and quartering (that is slow strangulation, followed by castration, disembowelment, beheading and chopping into four pieces). This was a potential punishment in Britain until the law was repealed in 1870! If you thought that being female might save you from such brutality…then think again; the British monarchy preferred burning women alive.
Another aspect of execution was its class hierarchy. In France before the revolution of 1789, only nobles were executed by relatively benign decapitation; lower-class capital criminals were subjected to burning, drowning and maiming. In fact, the revolution itself forced the king to ban the ‘breaking wheel’ (a particularly nasty torture and slow death where the condemned were lashed to a wheel and their limbs were systematically broken with a club or iron cudgel).
So with the advent of revolution, democracy and reason along came Dr Joseph Ignace Guillotin, who endeavoured to commission a device that would deliver a “swift and honourable death to people of all classes”. Guillotin stood before the Constituent National Assembly in October 1789 and proposed the following six articles in favour of the reformation of capital punishment:
Article 1: All offences of the same kind will be punished by the same type of punishment irrespective of the rank or status of the guilty party.
Article 2: Whenever the Law imposes the death penalty, irrespective of the nature of the offence, the punishment shall be the same: decapitation, effected by means of a simple mechanism.
Article 3: The punishment of the guilty party shall not bring discredit upon or discrimination against his family.
Article 4: No one shall reproach a citizen with any punishment imposed on one of his relatives. Such offenders shall be publicly reprimanded by a judge.
Article 5: The condemned person’s property shall not be confiscated.
Article 6: At the request of the family, the corpse of the condemned man shall be returned to them for burial and no reference to the nature of death shall be registered.
And Guillotin just happened to have perfected the ‘simple mechanism’ for humanely killing the condemned. His device and proposals were accepted.
So the fact that the relatively benign guillotine has since become so closely associated with ‘terror’ certainly carries some serious irony in the context of the actuality of feudal terror for which the device was specifically designed to supplant.
Is the connection between the guillotine and ‘terror’ justified? Feudal monarchies were renowned for their use of public torture as method for punishment and repression. In Britain, extended torture was preferred to a quick death for its victims and this was for a very good reason, they wanted to terrorise the population and maintain control. These monarchical rituals of terror, were, unsurprisingly, public spectacles often involving hanging drawing and quartering (that is slow strangulation, followed by castration, disembowelment, beheading and chopping into four pieces). This was a potential punishment in Britain until the law was repealed in 1870! If you thought that being female might save you from such brutality…then think again; the British monarchy preferred burning women alive.
Another aspect of execution was its class hierarchy. In France before the revolution of 1789, only nobles were executed by relatively benign decapitation; lower-class capital criminals were subjected to burning, drowning and maiming. In fact, the revolution itself forced the king to ban the ‘breaking wheel’ (a particularly nasty torture and slow death where the condemned were lashed to a wheel and their limbs were systematically broken with a club or iron cudgel).
So with the advent of revolution, democracy and reason along came Dr Joseph Ignace Guillotin, who endeavoured to commission a device that would deliver a “swift and honourable death to people of all classes”. Guillotin stood before the Constituent National Assembly in October 1789 and proposed the following six articles in favour of the reformation of capital punishment:
Article 1: All offences of the same kind will be punished by the same type of punishment irrespective of the rank or status of the guilty party.
Article 2: Whenever the Law imposes the death penalty, irrespective of the nature of the offence, the punishment shall be the same: decapitation, effected by means of a simple mechanism.
Article 3: The punishment of the guilty party shall not bring discredit upon or discrimination against his family.
Article 4: No one shall reproach a citizen with any punishment imposed on one of his relatives. Such offenders shall be publicly reprimanded by a judge.
Article 5: The condemned person’s property shall not be confiscated.
Article 6: At the request of the family, the corpse of the condemned man shall be returned to them for burial and no reference to the nature of death shall be registered.
And Guillotin just happened to have perfected the ‘simple mechanism’ for humanely killing the condemned. His device and proposals were accepted.
So the fact that the relatively benign guillotine has since become so closely associated with ‘terror’ certainly carries some serious irony in the context of the actuality of feudal terror for which the device was specifically designed to supplant.