Despite their undoubted inportance, pre-revolutionary factors such as social discontent, economic hardship and political crises - even in combination - are not enough to make a revolution. What is further required , in order to give these general dissatisfactions some clear revolutionary direction, is something to give cohesion to the often widely varyin frustations and aspirations of different social groups.
One key additional factor which needs to be present in ideology: a set of related and coherent ideas and principles about what is wrong with the present situation and about how the world could and should be in the future. Ideologies are thus normally the product of intellectuals, and perhaps the clearest example of an ideology produced by an intellectual is that of communism, as developed by Karl Marx.
Some Marxist historians tend to stress social and economic developements as being more crucial, as these allow the emergence of corresponding ideas. However, rhe connection between ideologies and revolutions is not always a clear one. In particular, sets of ideas do not often haver their greatest effect at the time of their formulation - they frequently only become widely accepted at a very much later date. Furthemore, ideologies developed in one country often find it easy to cross borders - especially at extrordinary times - and can thus have a wider regional and even global impact.
If social - economic and political crises persist for any length of time, many people begin to re-examine traditional ways of thinking. Increasingly, as a deepening revolutionary situation develops, people begin to discuss new or different sets of ideas as possible solutions. At such times, almost everyone becomes a sort of intellectual - even those who would normally hardly ever think about economics or politics. It is precisely in such situations that an ideology can provide a common language of protest and un unifying body of ideas. Indeed, an ideology can be compared to a piston which gives force and direction to the otherwise ineffective "steam" of general discontents. The historian George Rudé called this a "common revolutionary psychology".
It is this potential power of ideas and ideologies which has led most regimes to resort to censorship in one form or another, especially since the revolutions of the eigthteen and nineteen centuries. One result has been that would-be revolutionaries have increasingly attempted to spread their ideologies through revolutionary parties.
The French Revolution, 1789
Although there was no clear and unified ideology in France before 1789, by 1794 the French Revolution had brought to the foreforont most of the ideologies and concepts which still influence political thought today. The list includes: self-determination, nationalism, democracy, the sovereignty of the people, equality and even aspects of socialism.
Although it offered no coherent programme of political change, it is generally accepted that the French Revolution was both directly and indirectly influenced by an intellectual ferment which had been affecting almost the whole of Europe since the late seventeenth century. This ideological backgorund to 1789 is known as the Enlightenment.
1740-70
While most of the main texts of the Enlightenment had been published by 1750, it is possible to argue that, at the least, the criticisms and attacks by such Enlightenment writers (or philosophes as they were generally known) as Montesquieu and Voltaire on the superstitions and abuses of the ancien régime did much to weaken its traditional supports. However, it is important to stress that most of the main figures of the Enlightenment were only concerned to challenge and reform accepted traditions, values and institutions, not to overthrow them. For instance, Montesquieu's L'Esprit des lois (1748), which argued that monarchical despotism was prevented by the privileges of other groups who shared political power, could be used in defence of the nobility, as well as making a case for the Third Estate.
In fact, the Enlightenment in France was more radical and influential tha in any other country. From the 1740's, when it began to be more significant, it was an intellectual movement which stressed the need for rational and critical thought to be applied to all aspects of life. Of particular significance were the writings of Jean- Jacques Rousseau, especially his Contrat Social (1762), with its references to direct democracy and the "general will" of the people.
However, historians dispute the extent to which these writings were known outside the circle of intellectuals in the salons of Paris. In the 1790s, writers such as Edmund Burke blamed the revolution on the subversive writings and plots of the philosophes. Although Alexis de Tocqueville rejected this conspiracy theory, he nonetheless claimed that these writings of the Enlightenment had helped undermine the ancien régime by exposing and ridiculing its weknesses. Yet it is difficult to be clear on the extent of the Enlightenment`s spread in France before 1789. For instance, Arthur Young the relative absence of newspapers, and the fact that political reading was not as widespread as he had imagined it would be.
Nevertheless, from the 1750s, the parlaments began to justify their opposition to royal ministers such as Maupeou, and what they called "ministerial despotism", by reference to the works of Montesquieu, Rosesseau and other philsophes. This deliberate attempt to mould public opinion in order to gain support for the parlaments´ struggles against the Crown had the effect of spreding key Enlighenment ideas to the ranks of the urban poor, if not to the peasants. These tracts and remonstrances of the parlaments thus helped prepare the ground for more radical ideas in the 1780s.
Also very important in spreading the ideas of the Enlightenment was the production of the Encyclopédie by the philosophers Diderot and d´Alembert, in 1751-72. The intention was to summarise the whole of human knowledge but, at the same time, its 28 volumes helped popularise radical Enlightenment ideas - Diderot, d´Alembert and Helvétius often wrote in glowing terms in their contributions of the virtues of republicanism. Though the Encyclopédie was very costly to buy, by 1789, some 25,000 sets had been sold across Europe. In 1779-80, a cheaper edition was so popular that over a hundread printing presses were needed to meet demand. By then, there was beginning to emerge a clear consensus of general principles amongst a reasonably coherent social group, and this later allowed effective revolutionary unity in the 1780s and 1790s. In particular, it made possible a rapid transition from a collapsing ancien régime to a new revoltionary one.
1770-95
This slow spread of Enlightenment ideas was accelerated by the political and economic crises of the 1770s and 1780s. One signficant influence which gave impetus and currency to such ideas was the American War of Independence and the establishment of the new republic. Soldiers returning to Europe, and especially to France, brought with them the new ideals of republicanism, democracy, and the rights of man. As the crises developed in France before 1789, a host of writers and pamphleteers, such as Jacques Pierre Brissot de Warville (usually referred to as Brissot), produced a flood of tracts and journals critical of the authorities - their slogans were increasingly popularised by street-corner oratos who thus introduced them to the urban poor. These appeals to the opinion of a public usually excluded from politics also led to the formation of political clubs.
Louis XVI´s decision to call a meeting of the Estates-General, against this background of ideological debate and ferment, finally gave an opportunity for the rights of the Third Estate to be formulated. This was done by people such as Abbé Sieyès and the Comite de Mirabeau: during 1788 and 1789, political terms such as citizen, social contract, the nation, liberty, fraternity, and the rights of man, filtered down, below the "literacy line", to the lower social groups in Paris, and formed the background to the abolition of feudalism and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
However, the influence of the philosophes of the Enlightenment did stop in 1789. After the declaration of the republic in 1792, new ideologies and programmes for action began to emerge, such as Jacobinism and Hébertism. Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine deSaint-Just, in particular, were much influenced by the writings of Rousseau; and though the Jacobins in the period 1793-94 in many ways departed from the idea of a strong legislative, a weak executive, and a separation af powers, this can be explained as distortions resulting from the extreme dangers of war civil war after 1792. Also, it has been said that Robespierre and the Jacobins merely accentuated some of the more authoritarian aspects in the writings of Rousseau, for example, the idea of the "virtuos few" legislating in the interests of the "general will".
Though only about 50,000 of France´s population of 26 millions in 1789 could be said to be strongly "enlightened" - the extent of royalist and counter- revolutionary sentiment after 1789 suggests that the spread of radical Enlightenment ideas was certainly not universal - it would be fair to say that the philosophes of the Enlightenment undoubtedly contributed to the spirit of revolt that began to affect all of Europe, and especially France, in the period 1770-90. Moreover, as we shall see, a significan legacy of the French Revolution of 1789 was to be a set of ideas that were to re-appear in all subsequent revolutions up to the Russian Revolution of 1917, and even beyond, to the Chinese students in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Cambridge - Perspectives in history
Revolutions 1789 - 1917
Allan Todd
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