I think I'll start by saying there really wasn't a French Revolution, but several, often simultaneous revolutions and we need to separate them.
The problem for me is I grew up in a tradition that very heavily romanticized the French Revolution, but as usual the worst aspects of it - Robespierre, Danton, etc. The real Revolution, the one that would have a lasting impact on how Europeans lived, was indeed the Declaration on the Rights of Man. Yes, the Americans had said it first in their Declaration of Independence but theirs was a faraway country with little impact on Europe then and wasn't expected - even by some Americans - to last very long. It was seen as an interesting experiment, but not a model for governance. When a European nation however issued similar statements, declaring that humans had inherant rights and that states should be modeled around their citizenry (and not the other way around) - this was a philosophical earthquake for Europe and led to the huge groundswell of support the French armies received from civilians all over the Continent throughout the wars until 1815, and also ignited the revolutions of the 19th century in Europe. This document simply said that the way things have been organized for centuries is not a natural order, nor is it pre-ordained, and worse yet it is unjust. From a beggar-monk on the street corner such words have been bellowing for centuries and could be brushed aside as the mad ravings of a lunatic, but from an assembly representing a nation, one of Europe's foremost nations at that - the impact of these words could not be denied.
I've mentioned in other threads how the Russians in 1945 and beyond forced many Polish and Hungarian towns to remove or destroy old monuments to Napoleon. It became official policy that Napoleon was a Hitler, a mad conquerer and bloodthirsty tyrant. And to a certain extent he was these things - he unleashed terrible destruction in the Peninsular war (see Goya's Los Fusilamientos del 3 de Mayo) and in Russia during the 1812 invasion, and even in Eastern Europe his imperial bent began to sow discontent to the extent that Napoleon had to station extra troops there in the latter stages of the wars to keep the civilian populations submissive. But Napoleon's victories and conquests also brought hope to conquered peoples because it was the first ray of light, the first tangible possibility for change that these dispirited peoples saw. The old empires were vulnerable, they could be defeated. This is the lesson Napoleon taught the downtrodden peoples of Europe, even if he himself eventually came to be seen as just as bad as the emperors he replaced.
You can see how this set the stage for the 19th century's revolutions and upheavals. And that's where I become a bit wary about the romanticized version of the French Revolution. A Hungarian professor of mine once said that she viewed the French Revolution as a disaster for Eastern Europe; it romanticized the concepts of revolution and created a very exaggerated and unrealistic vision of what a revolution could achieve. Because of this, many of Eastern Europe's peoples spent the 19th century in revolutionary ferment, with extremely bloody results. And even if we are to forget the price in blood paid for these constant insurrections - and nationalists often would rather we did forget that part - we also paid through our common social and economic development. The oppressors retaliated by destroying our academic institutions, slaughtering our middle classes or driving them abroad to exile and emigration, stripping our few industrial or commercial regions bare, and carting off the remaining wealth of our former states. A cycle of violence developed in Eastern Europe that fed on this romanticization of the French Revolution that did little but push already rock-bottom living standards even lower and pushing national cultural awareness to the most base levels, which created wonderful conditions for the extremist ideologies of the 20th century. So today we have nations brimming with wonderful romantic sculptures, monuments and paintings of the desperate and repeated uprisings of the 19th century, with ceremonies in every town and village about this or that massacre or battle, but in the end only a few are willing to ask if it really achieved anything, if it was worth it at all.
So there you have it, two competing historical strands streaming out of the events of the French Revolution, one proclaiming universal human rights and the other so willing to sacrifice them in the name of higher ideals. There are others as well, but for the thread's question I think these two are the most pertinent. Most of Continental Europe had to struggle with these two contradictory sibling legacies, which is why I find the Anglo-American reactions to be the most interesting. They also found great inspiration and horror in these events but were able to psychologically distance themselves from them in a way that most Europeans could not. Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution or Jefferson's repeated defence of the French revolutionaries make for interesting reading indeed. I suppose if I have to reach a conclusion, I could only observe that over the short term the latter aspect of the Revolution - the glorified violence - seems to have been the pre-eminent influence in Europe and the West, but finally with the 1948 charter on Human Rights - and for us Eastern Europeans, the equally critical Helsinki Accords of 1975 - it seems that for the long term the philosophical revolution born of that critical document issued by the French National Assembly in August 1789 will win out.
BTW, I completely agree that the French and American Revolutions - both philosophical and material - are very intertwined, perhaps moreso than either party would like to admit nowadays. It is indeed a one-could-not-have-happened-without-the-other situation, and the combination did have a significant impact on Europe - witness the Polish Consititution of 3. May, 1791; a near verbatim copy of the American Constitution but drawn in arrangement and organization from the French model. That this document died under Russian soldiers' boots is not important; echoes of the American and French revolutions had penetrated and permeated Europe's eastern-most boundaries.
The problem for me is I grew up in a tradition that very heavily romanticized the French Revolution, but as usual the worst aspects of it - Robespierre, Danton, etc. The real Revolution, the one that would have a lasting impact on how Europeans lived, was indeed the Declaration on the Rights of Man. Yes, the Americans had said it first in their Declaration of Independence but theirs was a faraway country with little impact on Europe then and wasn't expected - even by some Americans - to last very long. It was seen as an interesting experiment, but not a model for governance. When a European nation however issued similar statements, declaring that humans had inherant rights and that states should be modeled around their citizenry (and not the other way around) - this was a philosophical earthquake for Europe and led to the huge groundswell of support the French armies received from civilians all over the Continent throughout the wars until 1815, and also ignited the revolutions of the 19th century in Europe. This document simply said that the way things have been organized for centuries is not a natural order, nor is it pre-ordained, and worse yet it is unjust. From a beggar-monk on the street corner such words have been bellowing for centuries and could be brushed aside as the mad ravings of a lunatic, but from an assembly representing a nation, one of Europe's foremost nations at that - the impact of these words could not be denied.
I've mentioned in other threads how the Russians in 1945 and beyond forced many Polish and Hungarian towns to remove or destroy old monuments to Napoleon. It became official policy that Napoleon was a Hitler, a mad conquerer and bloodthirsty tyrant. And to a certain extent he was these things - he unleashed terrible destruction in the Peninsular war (see Goya's Los Fusilamientos del 3 de Mayo) and in Russia during the 1812 invasion, and even in Eastern Europe his imperial bent began to sow discontent to the extent that Napoleon had to station extra troops there in the latter stages of the wars to keep the civilian populations submissive. But Napoleon's victories and conquests also brought hope to conquered peoples because it was the first ray of light, the first tangible possibility for change that these dispirited peoples saw. The old empires were vulnerable, they could be defeated. This is the lesson Napoleon taught the downtrodden peoples of Europe, even if he himself eventually came to be seen as just as bad as the emperors he replaced.
You can see how this set the stage for the 19th century's revolutions and upheavals. And that's where I become a bit wary about the romanticized version of the French Revolution. A Hungarian professor of mine once said that she viewed the French Revolution as a disaster for Eastern Europe; it romanticized the concepts of revolution and created a very exaggerated and unrealistic vision of what a revolution could achieve. Because of this, many of Eastern Europe's peoples spent the 19th century in revolutionary ferment, with extremely bloody results. And even if we are to forget the price in blood paid for these constant insurrections - and nationalists often would rather we did forget that part - we also paid through our common social and economic development. The oppressors retaliated by destroying our academic institutions, slaughtering our middle classes or driving them abroad to exile and emigration, stripping our few industrial or commercial regions bare, and carting off the remaining wealth of our former states. A cycle of violence developed in Eastern Europe that fed on this romanticization of the French Revolution that did little but push already rock-bottom living standards even lower and pushing national cultural awareness to the most base levels, which created wonderful conditions for the extremist ideologies of the 20th century. So today we have nations brimming with wonderful romantic sculptures, monuments and paintings of the desperate and repeated uprisings of the 19th century, with ceremonies in every town and village about this or that massacre or battle, but in the end only a few are willing to ask if it really achieved anything, if it was worth it at all.
So there you have it, two competing historical strands streaming out of the events of the French Revolution, one proclaiming universal human rights and the other so willing to sacrifice them in the name of higher ideals. There are others as well, but for the thread's question I think these two are the most pertinent. Most of Continental Europe had to struggle with these two contradictory sibling legacies, which is why I find the Anglo-American reactions to be the most interesting. They also found great inspiration and horror in these events but were able to psychologically distance themselves from them in a way that most Europeans could not. Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution or Jefferson's repeated defence of the French revolutionaries make for interesting reading indeed. I suppose if I have to reach a conclusion, I could only observe that over the short term the latter aspect of the Revolution - the glorified violence - seems to have been the pre-eminent influence in Europe and the West, but finally with the 1948 charter on Human Rights - and for us Eastern Europeans, the equally critical Helsinki Accords of 1975 - it seems that for the long term the philosophical revolution born of that critical document issued by the French National Assembly in August 1789 will win out.
BTW, I completely agree that the French and American Revolutions - both philosophical and material - are very intertwined, perhaps moreso than either party would like to admit nowadays. It is indeed a one-could-not-have-happened-without-the-other situation, and the combination did have a significant impact on Europe - witness the Polish Consititution of 3. May, 1791; a near verbatim copy of the American Constitution but drawn in arrangement and organization from the French model. That this document died under Russian soldiers' boots is not important; echoes of the American and French revolutions had penetrated and permeated Europe's eastern-most boundaries.
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