Sunday, October 11, 2009

American Rev. vs French Rev.

The American Revolution, and the French revolution both influenced each other in very good ways, but they did have big differences.

As a brief overview, the American Revolution began because Britain was an oppressive nation toward the colonies, which caused major war. The American won so that is why we are independent from Britain. Even though it seems as if all of the revolution was the war between the american colonies and Britain that is not true. Most of the revolution actually happened inside of the colonies. Social life in the colonies was much more open than in Europe, everyone that was free had the same rights. This made everyone in the colonies happy, so there was no tension between people in the colonies. While the colonies were busy being happy, Britain was having trouble with France , so Britain turned toward the colonies to make up for the debt that they were in as a result of dilemmas with France. Britain started to tighten up its control over the colonies, making them pay heavy taxes which resulted in war. As I said earlier, most people would say that the revolution occurred as the American colonies defeated Britain, but it actually occurred before any problems with Britain at all. It occurred when everyone had the ideas that everyone was equal.

The French Revolution occurred as a result of the French coming over to help the Americans at war. When the French came over to the United Stated, they came back to France full with republican enthusiasm. The French wanted everyone to be equal, much like the Americans, so they started to tax the wealthy class of france to let the poor people have something to eat. This angered all of the wealthy people, so the French imposed even more radical laws. This made everyone revolt even more, and this led to the Terror. During the Terror, numerous people were being killed on the guillotine, even really important people such as Robespierre. After the death of Robespierre France got organized and created a solid army. Eventually the idea of all people being equal was really spread throughout France, and people did actually feel equal.

No comments:

Post a Comment