Enlightenment 3

1. Two major ideas that fueled the revolutionary period in both American and Europe were liberty and equality. The desire for liberty was a desire for individual human rights that even the most enlightened monarchs sometimes did not follow. Revolutionary liberals demanded freedom to worship, an end to censorship, and freedom from arbitrary laws and from ignorant judges. The Declaration of the Rights of Man stated that a citizen’s rights had no limits except those which assure to the other member of society the same rights. The liberals believed that people were sovereign and that the people should choose the representative for government. Liberals in the 1700s believed that all citizens should have identical rights and civil liberties and have no special privileges based on birth. Most liberals at the time were men, and they believed that equality between men and women was not practical or desirable. Liberals never believed in economic equality but they did believe everyone should have an equal chance in trying to get that. Thomas Jefferson’s early draft of the Declaration of Independence had “the pursuit of property” rather than “happiness.” However, in Europe, equality of opportunity was nonexistent, as society was still legally divided into groups with special privileges.

2. Liberalism was defined in America as the demand for the traditional rights of English men and women, which in turn were liberal rights that had very strong democratic and popular overtones. In Europe, liberalism meant personal freedom and legal equality in the form of liberal self-government. The ideas of liberty and equality were found in Western history with the classical Greeks and the Judeo-Christian traditions and their views on the sanctity and value of the individual human. John Locke believed that English politics were based on the rights of Englishmen and the representative government of Parliament. He said that if government overstepped its proper function of protecting the natural rights of life, liberty, and private property then it becomes a tyranny. Baron de Montesquieu believed that po-werful intermediary groups offered the best defense of liberty against despotism. The idea that representative institutions could defend their liberty and interests appealed to the bourgeoisie and the hereditary nobility.

3. The American Revolution initially started as an issue over increased taxes following Britain’s interaction in the Seven Years’ War. Britain maintained a large army in North America after the end of the war. It tried to strictly control the new lands and tax the colonies directly, such as by the 1765 Stamp Act. The colonists protested the act vigorously and violent, and the act was repealed. People began to wonder how much the home government could as-sert its power over its colonies while limiting the authority of colonial legislatures and their elected representatives. People believed in no “taxation without representative,” while the British government replied that Americans were represented indirectly in Parliament. Im-perial reorganizing and parliamentary supremacy were considered grave threats. In British North America, there was no powerful established church, colonial assemblies made the important laws, and suffrage was much wider. There was no hereditary nobility or serfdom, though there were slaves. Americans began to view themselves different from Britons. In 1773, the British government allowed the East India Company exclusive rights to shipping tea from China to the colonies. Colonial merchants were excluded and the prices rose. The Boston Tea Party caused the Coercive Acts, which closed Boston’s port, stopped local elec-tions and town meetings, and expanded the royal governor’s power. Country conventions in Massachusetts protested greatly, and in September 1774, the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia where radical members argued against concessions in the Crown. When these were rejected, fighting began in April 1775.

4. The French became involved in the war to seek revenge for defeats in the Seven Years’ War. They supplied a high percentage of the guns and gunpowder used by the American revolutionaries. French volunteers were arriving in Virginia by 1777, and a nobleman, the marquis de Lafayette, became a trusted general. The French government entered into a formal government with America in 1778. American negotiators in Paris were afraid that France wanted a treaty that would give British holdings west of the Allegheny Mountains to Spain, and thus the American negotiators deserted their French allies.

5. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights defined and embraced “classical liberalism” by saying that liberty meant individual freedoms, political safeguards, and a representative government. Equality meant equality before the law. Classical liberalism includes the importance of human rationality, individual property rights, natural rights, the protection of civil liberties, constitutional limitation of government, free markets, and individual freedom from restraint. Modern liberalism supports heavier regulation of the economy and more state enterprises. John Locke and his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises of Government spoke for natural rights and a social contract; Adam Smith and his The Wealth of Nations called for free markets; Voltaire believed in the defense of civil liberties; Montesquieu and his The Spirit of Laws believe in separation of powers; Rousseau and his Origins of the Inequality Among Men and The Social Contract argue for a civil society based on the social contract and abandoning their natural rights; and Thomas Hobbes and his Leviathan formulated the idea of a social contract.

1. Hundreds of French officers served in America and were inspired by the experience. The marquis de Lafayette returned home with a love of liberty and firm republican convictions. French intellectuals and publicists analyzed the Constitution as well as the state’s constitu-tions. The French Revolution was more radical, complex, influential, controversial, loved, and hated than the American Revolution. When Louis XV’s ministers tried to raise taxes, they were denied by the high courts. Since tax reform did not come, the government was forced to finance its interaction in the American Revolution with borrowed money, causing national debt and the annual budget deficit to rise greatly. By the 1780s, 50% of France’s annual budget went to interest payments, with 25% on the military, 6% by Versailles, and 20% for state functions. France could not declare partial bankruptcy because the debt was held by an army of aristocratic and bourgeois creditors. Since France had no central bank, paper currency, or means of creating credit, it could not create inflation.

2. France’s 25 million people were divided into the clergy, the nobility, and everyone else. The clergy numbered 100,000 and had important privileges such as owning 10% of the land and paying a voluntary gift rather than regular taxes. The church levied a 10% tax on landown-ers. The nobility numbered 400,000, controlled 25% of the land, and were taxed lightly. Nobles could tax the peasantry for their own profit. Everyone else was part of the third es-tate. Some were educated, others were urban artisans and unskilled day laborers, and the vast majority was peasants and farmers. The third estate had many different social groups united by their shared legal status. As the bourgeoisie tripled in the 1700s to 2.3 million people, they became angry with old feudal laws that restrained the economy and the pre-tensions of a reactionary nobility. The bourgeoisie became the leaders of the third estate and pushed for the end to feudal privileges and a capitalist order.

3. Revisionism is the advocacy of a revision of some accepted theory, doctrine, or a view of historical events. Instead of being against each other, revisionists believe that the nobility and bourgeoisie formed two parallel social ladders that were increasingly linked together by wealth, marriage, and Enlightenment culture. The nobility was an open order were the wealthiest members of the middle class come become part of the nobility of the robe. The nobility and the bourgeoisie were connected by Enlightenment ideas. They were both in the same economic positions. The revisionists do not belief that the bourgeoisie and the nobility were locked in a growing conflict before the Revolution.


1. Rousseau criticized the treatment of children and how they did not get adequate education. Rousseau proposed to educate his pupil by showing him why something is useful rather than by telling him that it is useful. Rousseau calls for pragmatic thinking that will actually matter. I think Rousseau’s plan appealed to peasants and urban workers in the 1700s by showing them how they could become smart if they were only shown the usefulness of something rather than simply being told.

2. Rousseau’s philosophy of practical education still continues. However, Rousseau’s belief that history is unimportant does not continue to this day. The Enlightenment stated that nothing should be believed and that everything should be tried out. It also stated that progress was possible and that the people’s lives could get better.