HIST 1003 Chapter 17: Chapter 17 Highlights
Document Summary
Origins of the revolution: since the event itself, historians have speculated about the origins of the french revolution and found them in both long- and short-term processes. Ironically, one of the most powerful forms of opposition came from within the tiny second estate: over the course of the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the nobility had grown increasingly disconnected with absolutist attempts at centralization. The nobles resented the king"s attempts to build a bureaucracy staffed with talented, but perhaps non-noble men of his own choosing. The catholic clergy, too, thought the monarchy was taking away too much of its taxing power and failing to curb the spread of dangerous enlightened ideas. Especially after the monarchy displayed its vulnerabilities by losing so much colonial territory in the seven years" war and by expending so much cash and blood to help the colonists in the. American revolution, the upper estates became vocal in their opposition to french absolutism.
