HISTORY 1DD3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Civic Nationalism, Aristocracy, Clericalism
1 Nov 2017
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While the formation of the united states would have tremendous long-term significance, a far more wrenching event at the end of the eighteenth century was the french revolution. From its outbreak in 1789, the revolution touched and transformed social values and political systems in france, in europe, and eventually throughout the world. Europe with its arms and with its ideals, while generating considerable opposition at home and abroad. Even more than the american colonists, the french revolutionaries were profoundly influenced by the enlightenment. Like their american counterparts, the first french revolutionaries advocated individual liberty: indeed, the rejection of all forms of arbitrary constraint on what people might do in their lives. They held that political legitimacy required constitutional government: this meant elections, and legislative supremacy. They demanded civil equality for all: denying the claims of privileged groups, localities, or religions to special treatment and requiring the equality of all citizens before the law.
