POLB92H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Feudalism, Tennis Court Oath, Maximilien Robespierre
25 Feb 2014
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Document Summary
The french revolution: rapid, fundamental, and often violent transformation of a country"s: Definition of a revolution: class structure, economy, politics, a revolution can be caused by many grievances in the population such as poverty or depression. It can also be caused due to a big disappointment. Revolutions need a leader and an inspiration: karl marx says you need to have a bourgeois revolution (capitalism), before you have a communist revolution. The state is the biggest actor in a revolution (weak or strong). The old french regime: there were three estates. It didn"t matter about the individual, only which group you belonged to. Church was chosen by rome and had larger amounts of land. You usually were not able to get out of these classes: they were an absolute monarchy, which had no formal restrictions on state power, and no real laws. There was a lot of decentralization: venal offices. : sold by the state, impossible to fire office holders.
