Une idée monstrueuse: Bicameralism in the Early French Revolution

1969 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Marrs
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
Political Group ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Assembly Floor ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Work Done ◽  
Constitutional Issue ◽  
The Revolution

In the spring of 1789, the members of the newly formed National Assembly tasked itself with the creation of France’s first Constitution. The Assembly set out to reform their country by incorporating enlightenment ideas and newfound liberties. Creating the constitution was not an easy process and the Assembly floor was home to many fierce debates, divides, and distrust amongst the Three Orders: the Clergy, the Nobility, and the Commons.  One Constitutional issue was deciding what form the legislature would take. Mounier, Lally-Tollendal, and Clermont-Tonnerre, members of the Committee of the Constitution, who formed a political group known as the ‘Monarchiens,’ proposed a bicameral system that mirrored the two legislative houses of England. Their political opponents fought instead for a single chambered system. When the vote came to the house, bicameralism was defeated in a landslide.  My research aims at discovering the motivations of the deputies; Why did they reject Mounier’s bicameralism? Much of the work done on this question so far, particularly that of Keith Michael Baker, argues that the deputies were faced with a choice between radically different conceptions of the purpose of the revolution. However, the work of Timothy Tackett points to the smaller, more contingent issues at play. My work involves the analysis of the assembly debates and the political publications being written by the deputies. Similar to Tackett, I conclude that the deputies were immediately motivated less by grand revolutionary narratives, but instead based their vote on a deep distrust of the aristocracy and political factionalism.  

Economic and Demographic Developments

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Marzagalli
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
The Political ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Trade Growth ◽  
Economic Developments ◽  
Marxist Interpretation ◽  
The Revolution

The reassessment of the driving forces leading to the French Revolution provoked the rejection of the traditional Marxist interpretation according to which the Revolution was led by an emerging capitalistic bourgeoisie strengthened by long-term industrial and trade growth, and the emergence of interpretations based on political and ideological developments. This chapter argues that demography and economy still offer important keys to understand the origins of the Revolution if they are embedded within a broader analysis, taking social, cultural, and political aspects into account. In stressing the escalation of social tensions provoked by an unequal redistribution of resources, analysis of the demographic and economic developments highlight the background against which the convergence of political and short-term subsistence crises pushed rural and urban masses to revolt in 1789. Without their actions, the political revolution led by a majority of the representatives who met at the Estates-General in 1789 would have been repressed.

Marx as the Historical Materialist: Re-reading The Eighteenth Brumaire

2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimiliano Tomba
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
The Political ◽  
Second Empire ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
The Third ◽  
Historical Materialist ◽  
History Of ◽  
Good For ◽  
The Revolution

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to re-read Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire by highlighting the political meaning of a materialist historiography. In the first part, I consider Marx’s historiographical and political intention to represent the history of the aftermath of the revolution of ’48 as a farce in order to liquidate ‘any faith in the superstitious past’. In the second part I analyse the theatrical register chosen by Marx in order to represent the Second Empire as a society without a body, a phantasmagoria in which the Constitution, the National Assembly and law – in short, everything that the middle class had put up as essential principles of modern democracy – disappear. In the third part I argue that Marx does not elaborate a theory of revolution that is good for every occasion. What interests him is a historiography capable of grasping, in the various temporalities of the revolution, the chance for a true liberation.

The French Revolution and the Jews: Assessing the Cultural Impact

AJS Review ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay R. Berkovitz
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Cultural Impact ◽  
Transformative Power ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
Historical View ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The Many ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

For the Jews of France, as for their fellow countrymen, the French Revolution came to constitute the myth of origin, the birthdate of a new existence. On September 27, 1791, two years after the storming of the Bastille and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the French National Assembly voted to admit the Jews of Alsace-Lorraine to citizenship. Subsequent generations would recall this momentous event as a turning point of extraordinary magnitude, and would view themselves as compelling evidence of its transformative power. Their memories tended to be dominated by images of celebration and glory, comparing the Revolution to the Sinaitic revelation and referring to it in messianic-redemptive terms. Not surprisingly, the many setbacks and misfortunes suffered by the generation of 1789 were largely absent from these recollections, while only meager appreciation for the complexities introduced into Jewish cultural life can be detected in the half-century following the Revolution. Even more significant was the ascendant historical view, undoubtedly colored by a pervading sense of optimism among leaders of French Jewry, that credited the Revolution with having put an end to centuries of humiliation, legal discrimination, and exclusion from the mainstream of society.

scholarly journals POLITIK MODERAT: Studi Pemikiran Muhammad Sa’id Ramadhan al-Buthi

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 77
Author(s):  
Muhammad Wahdini
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Advantage ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Field ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Political Experience ◽  
Political Conception ◽  
Women’S Representation ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Revolution

This paper discusses the thoughts of Muhammad Sa'id Ramadhan Al-Buthi in the political field. Al-Buthi is a figure that is considered by some to be controversial because it is close to the Al-Assad regime, which in fact the majority of scholars hate the Al-Assad regime which is considered wrong. This paper is the result of a study of several literary literature relating to Al-Buthi's political conception. In this case Al-Buthi places more emphasis on moderation which leads to the unity of a country. His socio-political experience in the struggle over political issues in Suriah led him to very moderate thinking. His rejection of the revolution and more agree with reform because of the comparative advantage of the two. Al-Buthi emphasizes more on how moderate politics he prioritizes the creation of unity in the state of the nation so that its benefits for citizens are met. In addition to his rejection of extreme ways of politics he also placed women's representation as part of a government

The Debate over Theory Before Malthus and Ricardo

2021 ◽  
pp. 31-66
Author(s):  
Ryan Walter
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
The Political ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter establishes a new context for reading the political economy of Malthus and Ricardo. It is the extended debate over the role of theory and practice in politics and political reform, a contest that Edmund Burke launched by publishing his hostile response to the French Revolution, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). In attempting to defend theory, both Mackintosh and Stewart engaged in sophisticated rhetoric that attempted to portray Burke’s veneration of custom and usage as philosophically naïve at the same time as they insisted on the necessity of theory for a science of politics. It is in these defensive postures that both Mackintosh and Stewart came to articulate the idea of a ‘theorist’ of politics.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Institutions ◽  
Public Instruction ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
The Revolution

The conclusion discusses how re-examining the ‘education question’ in Ancien Régime and Revolutionary France offers new insight to the cultural dynamics at work in the political upheavals of late-eighteenth century France. It argues that recognizing the practical nature of many of the debates over education – even into the radical period of the Revolution – helps us to situate revolutionary politics within its historical moment and to better understand how participatory and representative politics were pursued after 1789. The conclusion situates the pursuit of both public instruction and representative government within the broader legacy of the Revolution, a legacy that has shaped modern political culture in lasting and fundamental ways. It also argues that approaching the political and cultural history of revolutionary France through the interplay of ideas about education and practical efforts to establish new institutions (political and pedagogical alike) suggests new ways to think about the relationship between the Enlightenment and the French Revolution and about the legacy of the Revolution for the theory and practice of democratic politics ever since.

The French Revolution Controversy

2019 ◽  
pp. 95-120
Author(s):  
Susan Marks
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Mary Wollstonecraft ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
The Political ◽  
Thomas Paine ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

The rights of man ‘arrived’ in England, in the sense of beginning to circulate in public discourse and becoming a topic on which people staked out positions, during the final decade of the eighteenth century. The context was debate over the significance of the French Revolution for England (the ‘Revolution controversy’). This chapter initiates discussion of the contested meaning of the rights of man in that debate, examining contributions by Richard Price, Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine. A vision of the rights of man emerges as the rights of the living to control the political community of which those latter are a part.

The Académie and Its Dictionary from the Beginning of the Revolution until the End of the Monarchy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. Fitzsimmons
Keyword(s):  
Educational Reform ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Remarkable Change ◽  
Societal Transformation ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
Reform Agenda ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
Continue Work ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

The French Revolution ushered in a remarkable change in language, with both neologisms and new meanings for existing words. Supporters and critics of the Revolution often utilized a dictionary format for new or existing words to portray it in either a favorable or a pejorative manner. Provisionally funded in 1790, the Académie, rooted in the traditional high French of the court and elite, ignored the linguistic innovations, leading François-Urbain Domergue to attempt to form a body that would codify Revolutionary language, although it never came to fruition. Ultimately, partially because of its closeness with the monarch and in part because of the lateness with which Talleyrand presented a plan on educational reform, the Académie survived the reform agenda of the National Assembly, enabling it to continue work on the fifth edition. However, it disregarded not only linguistic innovations but also the societal transformation brought about by the National Assembly.

The Initial Reception of the French Revolution

2019 ◽  
pp. 3-30
Author(s):  
Jay Bergman
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
The Political ◽  
Revolutionary Movement ◽  
Essential Aspect ◽  
Mikhail Bakunin ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

Practically from its inception, the French Revolution prompted educated Russians, regardless of their politics, to form an opinion of it. As the revolution progressed, instead of changing minds, it froze them, turning assumptions into beliefs and beliefs into dogma. Chapter 1 shows this to be true especially for Russians on opposite ends of the political spectrum. This was not true, however, of liberals such as Pushkin whose politics, by contrast, fluctuated greatly. The chapter concludes with analysis of ‘gentry-revolutionaries’ such as Mikhail Bakunin and Alexander Herzen, who applied to the actors in the French Revolution the same requirement of ‘moral wholeness’ that was an essential aspect of the Russian revolutionary movement as a whole.

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