The French Revolution: An Atlantic Perspective

ENDNOTES

Atlantic Revolutions and the origins of nationalism in colonial Atlantic societies came about in part because of the imperial crises created by overextended European empires. Nations emerged from the ashes of revolution as a “product of tensions wrought by efforts to recast the institutional framework of imperial sovereignty.”1 The French Revolution in particular was set in motion by the structural deficiencies in controlling the empire’s finances. Global and commercial warfare, growing economic inequality, and new Enlightenment ideas became the foundations upon which the National Assembly would construct their new model for France.

Along with other European monarchies, France was actively seeking out wealth and status in the Atlantic world. The state had invested heavily into carving out significant portions of territories in Africa, the Caribbean, and northern America, some for settlement and some for trade. However, the eighteenth century saw France enter into a series of wars with Britain, its closest competitor in Europe. Since the Seven Years War, the prevailing idea among French leaders was that the independence of British colonies in North America would be bad for Britain and therefore good for France.2 As the British colonies in America began their fight against the imperial authorities, there was an opportunity for France to enter into an alliance with the American Revolutionaries in order to weaken Britain’s imperial position.

The French ambassador in London wrote:

If the resistance of the Americans is successful, this will reduce England to a point where she can no longer cause disquietude, and the influence of France on the continent will increase in proportion to the enfeeblement of the British empire.3

The treaties signed between Foreign Minister Comte De Vergennes and Benjamin Franklin formally tied French and American commercial and political interests together.

Triumphal Arch decorated with flag of France, Pexels.

As the American Revolutionary War progressed, France continued to supply the Patriots with financial donations, naval support, and military equipment. Many Frenchmen, inspired by the fight against British tyranny,

even sailed across the Atlantic in order to support the Patriot cause.4 However, even as the Revolutionary War ended and Britain recognised the United States of America as an independent republic, the war between France and Britain continued. Not satisfied with the meagre territories they had captured from the British, such as the island of Tobago, France, with their Spanish allies, continued to target other British holdings in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean, and Mediterranean. By 1779, Britain had gained more French territories than it had lost. By 1783, France had only managed to regain the original territories of Dominica, St. Vincent, and Grenada, and had captured a miniscule amount of land along the Senegal River. Their losses far outweighed their gains. The French navy had lost over twenty ships, and in order to resupply the arsenal, finance minister Jean-François Joly De Fleury imposed another income tax on French citizens.5 The cost of the war had done irreparable damage to the French economy, while the British ended up with good trade connections with their former colonists.6 The scope of the war debts accrued by the French monarchy had detrimental effects on the middle and lower classes of France. France’s expenditure on funding the war was heavily dependent on systems of public credit, and after the war it recurrently defaulted on this debt.7 To farmers and merchants alike, the aristocracy had focused far too long on imperial expansion at the expense of a suffering domestic population.8 Though the population in France had increased exponentially in the last hundred years, many of the rural and urban poor lacked the resources necessary to migrate to overseas colonies, where they may have had more opportunities for employment.9 Additionally, while agricultural methods in France were inefficient and unyielding, plantations in the Caribbean thrived.10 To the plantation owners, merchants, and traders, enslaved African labour was still the preferred means of servitude, as it was far cheaper than relying on indentured French peasantry.11

The French Revolution can therefore be seen as a movement against the wealth and political power of a closed group of aristocratic men. The root of the problem was that the taxation used to pay for imperialism was not applied or collected equally.12 The nobility and clergy, who accounted for under five percent of the French population, had long been exempt from the various forms of taxation imposed by the ancien regime. Additionally, even when the Estates General convened to regain control of the state’s finances, the First and Second Estates could outvote the Third. Ninety-five percent of the French population was being forced to pay taxes in order to fund the French regime’s grandiose ideas of imperialism, without even seeing any benefit from the foreign investments. To the middle-class merchants and businessmen who had accrued small fortunes through investment in the Atlantic world, the problem was social as well as economic. Their social standings were still limited to the unrepresented Third Estate. These merchants posed a challenge to the traditional social hierarchy at Versailles. Emboldened by the success of the American Revolution, and increasingly frustrated with the mismanagement and financial oppression of the aristocracy, their grievances proliferated into popular discontent.13 Informed by their transatlantic connections and with the support of the urban and rural poor, the middle class developed a particularly Enlightened idea in which French society would operate as “a society of function in which individuals will be classed by their usefulness to the nation.”14 The military expenses associated with imperial ambition and the overreach of the ensuing taxation exposed the French empire not to moderate reform or modest resistance, but to a complete overhaul of government and ideology which would have lasting effects beyond the European continent.

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