French Revolution
...Jonah Haines 1293
Mr. Potts
ìPrivilege not poverty caused the French Revolutionî
To what extent do you agree?
The French Revolution was essentially a class war between the emerging Bourgeoisie
against the Privileged class, this meant they saw the Privileged class as the only hurdle
between themselves and equality within French society. Many of the ideas they pursued
stemmed from the enlightenment and they believed that in order to gain their full
economic, social and political potential and gain equality, the Bourgeoisie had to eradicate
the privileges that were halting their rise in society. To do this they had to seize power for
themselves and gaining power within the government and making badly needed changes,
such as, improving the tax system, creating a fair system of production where profits went
to the producer, improving the whole fiscal system of the government, improving the
geographical divisions of France and the problems they caused, plus many more. The
revolution was a fight for equality and recognition by the Bourgeoisie, it was not a revolt
against poverty, for many of the French people had been living in poverty for centuries and
had learnt to live with it.
France had prospered in the Eighteenth century. France had had no major famines or
plagues, its population had increased, there had been no wars on its soil, industry such as
textiles was doing well and offshore trading had increased enormously. It was the
Bourgeoisie that had enabled this abundance of wealth and they were emerging as the
economic power inside France. But their new found power was being smothered by the
privileged class. The privileged class of nobility and clergy, who owned the bulk of the
land, were using their ancient rights to plunder most of the profits that were made by the
lower classes. This meant that the;...
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