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I know of the French revolution but I've never studied it so my knowledge of it is quite superficial. I wonder though, how influential really was C.F. Volney in bringing about the French revolution?
quote: Constantin Francois Chasseboeuf Volney (1757-1820) French Philosopher and Historian Thanks in large part to a single book, Constantin Francois Chasseboeuf Volney had an immense influence on contemporary perceptions of the French Revolution. In Les Ruins, ou meditations sur les revolutions des empires, (The Ruins, A Mediation on the Revolutions of Empires) (1791), Volney advocates that the people unite in order to cast off the remnants of a once mighty, but now fractured and decayed civilization, in order to establish a new worldwide order of reason and equality. Volney’s ideas diffused rapidly; as early as 1792 Joseph Johnson published an anonymous translation in England, and, Thomas Jefferson translated the first twenty chapters for an American edition. In both nations the book was highly influential; new editions and translations were published throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries (Rigby, 24-5).
Volney honed his acumen for observing politics and agitation with works treating affairs outside of France. He published his early studies in Voyage en Syrie et en Egypte (1787) and Considerations sure la guerre actuelle des Turcs (1788). However, at home in France, Volney placed himself at the center of the Revolution by serving as a member of the Estates General and Constituent Assembly at the height of the revolution (1789-92). The Ruins represents the philosophical opinions and ideals of an individual riding the turmoil of the Revolution.
Volney’s apocalyptic vision of overthrowing the decaying, tyrannical monarchies of the State and Religion in order to found a new order based on the reason and equality appealed chiefly to an audience of young radicals who were "actually or potentially atheistic" (Rigby, 25). All felt Volney’s influence, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Thomas Paine, and Joseph Priestly. In fact, fearing that Volney’s atheism would have a wide influence, Priestly wrote a series of passionate letters attacking Volney’s work (Rigby, 27). Volney’s conviction that "man can control his own destiny" by coming to understand himself and his environment posed a formidable threat not only to established governments, but to established religion as well (Rigby, 30).
The following excerpts from The Ruins demonstrate how threatening Volney’s ideas could be to peace dependent upon submissive masses. In the final chapter a legislator of a newly created nation urges the people to free themselves from tyranny and to unite in fraternity:
People! said [the legislator], remember what you have just heard; they are two indelible truths. Yes, you are yourselves the authors of the evils you lament; it is you that encourage tyrants by base adulation of their power, by improvident admiration of their false beneficence, by servility in obedience, by licentiousness in liberty, and by a credulous reception of every imposition; on whom shall you wreak vengeance for the faults committed by your own ignorance and cupidity? (175)
"Now, as each of you, on comparing himself to every other, finds himself his equal and his fellow, he resists by a feeling of the same right. And your disputes, your combats, your intolerances, are the effect of this right which you deny each other, and of the intimate conviction of your equality.
"Now, the only means of establishing harmony is to return to nature, and take for a guide and regulator the order of things which she has founded; and then your accord will prove this other truth:
;"That real beings have in themselves an identical, constant and uniform mode of existence; and that there is in your organs a like mode of being affected by them." (179)
In 1792 Volney purchased land in Corsica and established an agrarian community based on his ideals. However, the community came to an end when he was arrested during the 1793 Reign of Terror. Surviving his imprisonment Volney traveled to the United States where he lived until 1798. He returned to France after being accused of spying for the French Government.
Back in France Volney resumed his interest in politics and intellectual matters, but never with the same revolutionary vigor or controversial spirit. Perhaps owing to Volney’s liberal stance and his appeal to the people, Napolean’s requested Volney to serve in the Senate and enobled him as a Count.
Works Cited
Rigby, Brian. "Volney’s Rationalist Apocalypse: ‘Les Ruins ou Meditations sur les Revolutions des Empires.’" 1789: Reading Writing Revolution, Proceedings of the Essex Conference on the Sociology of Literature, July 1981. Ed. Francis Barker. Essex: U of Essex P, 1982. 22 - 39.
Volney, Constantin Francois Chasseboeuf. The Ruins, A Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires. Trans. ?. New York: Dixon and Sickles, 1828.
Additional Bibliography
Nablow, Ralph A. "Shelley, ‘Ozymandias,’ and Volney’s Les Ruins." Notes and Queries. 36 (234): 1 (1989) 172-3.
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Causes of the French Revolution [according to Wikipedia]:
quote: Historians disagree about the political and socioeconomic nature of the Revolution. Traditional Marxist interpretations, such as that presented by Georges Lefebvre,[1] described the revolution as the result of the clash between a feudalistic noble class and the capitalist bourgeois class. Some historians argue that the old aristocratic order of the Ancien Régime succumbed to an alliance of the rising bourgeoisie, aggrieved peasants, and urban wage-earners.
Yet another interpretation asserts that the revolution resulted when various aristocratic and bourgeois reform movements spun out of control. According to this model, these movements coincided with popular movements of the new wage-earning classes and the provincial peasantry, but any alliance between classes was contingent and incidental.
However, adherents of most historical models identify many of the same features of the Ancien Régime as being among the causes of the Revolution. Among the economic factors were:
* Louis XV fought numerous wars bringing France upon the verge of bankruptcy, while the support provided by Louis XVI to the colonists during the American Revolution further exacerbated the precarious financial condition of the government. The national debt amounted to almost 2 billion livres. The social burdens caused by war included the huge war debt, made worse by the monarchy's military failures and ineptitude, and the lack of social services for war veterans.
* An inefficient and antiquated financial system unable to manage the national debt, both caused and exacerbated by the burden of a grossly inequitable system of taxation.
* The Roman Catholic Church, the largest landowner in the country, which levied a tax on crops known as the dîme. While the dîme lessened the severity of the monarchy's tax increases, it nonetheless served to worsen the plight of the poorest who faced a daily struggle with malnutrition.
* The continued conspicuous consumption of the noble class, especially the court of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette at Versailles, despite the financial burden on the populace.
* High unemployment and high bread prices, causing more money to be spent on food and less in other areas of the economy.
* Widespread famine and malnutrition, which increased the likelihood of disease and death, and intentional starvation in the most destitute segments of the population during the months immediately before the Revolution. The famine extended even to other parts of Europe, and was not helped by a poor transportation infrastructure for bulk foods. (Some researchers have also attributed the widespread famine to an El Nińo effect [2], or colder climate of the little ice age combined with France's failure to adopt the potato as a staple crop[3]) The Ideals: Declaration of Human Rights. The Ideals: Declaration of Human Rights.
* No internal trade and too many customs barriers[citation needed] In addition to economic factors, there were social and political factors, many of them involving resentments and aspirations given focus by the rise of Enlightenment ideals:
* Resentment of royal absolutism.
* Resentment by the ambitious professional and mercantile classes towards noble privileges and dominance in public life, many of whom were familiar with the lives of their peers in commercial cities in The Netherlands and Great Britain.
* Resentment by peasants, wage-earners, and the bourgeoisie toward the traditional seigneurial privileges possessed by nobles.
* Resentment of clerical privilege (anti-clericalism) and aspirations for freedom of religion, and resentment of aristocratic bishops by the poorer rural clergy.
* Continued hatred for Catholic control and influence on institutions of all kinds, by the large Protestant minorities.
* Aspirations for liberty and (especially as the Revolution progressed) republicanism.
* Anger toward the King for firing Jacques Necker and A.R.J. Turgot (among other financial advisors), who each possessed a popular image as representatives of the people.[4]
Finally, perhaps above all, was the almost total failure of Louis XVI and his advisors to deal effectively with any of these problems.
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