French Society during the Late Eighteenth Century: A Growing Middle Class Envisages an End to Privileges

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In the past, peasants and workers had participated in revolts against increasing taxes and food scarcity. But they lacked the means and programmes to carry out full-scale measures that would bring about a change in the social and economic order. This was left to those groups within the third estate who had become prosperous and had access to education and new ideas. The eighteenth century witnessed the emergence of social groups, termed the middle class, who earned their wealth through an expanding overseas trade and from the manufacture of goods such as woolen and silk textiles that were either exported or bought by the richer members of society. In addition to merchants and manufacturers, the third estate included professions such as lawyers or administrative officials. All of these were educated and believed that no group in society should be privileged by birth. Rather, a person’s social position must depend on his merit. These ideas envisaging a society based on freedom and equal laws and opportunities for all, were put forward by philosophers such as John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau. 

In his Two Treatises of Government, Locke sought to refute the doctrine of the divine and absolute right. of the monarch. Rousseau carried the idea forward, proposing a form of government based on a social contract between people and their representatives. In The Spirit of the Laws (http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/837), Montesquieu proposed a division of power within the government between the legislative, the executive and the judiciary. This model of government was put into force in the USA, after the thirteen colonies declared their independence from Britain. The American constitution and its guarantee of individual rights was an important example for political thinkers in France.

Accounts of lived experiences in the Old Regime:

1. Georges Danton (Left), who later became active in revolutionary politics, wrote to a friend in 1793, looking back upon the time when he had just completed his studies:

‘I was educated in the residential college of Plessis. There I was in the company of important men… Once my studies ended, I was left with nothing. I started looking for a post. It was impossible to find one at the law courts in Paris. The choice of a career in the army was not open to me as I was not a noble by birth, nor did I have a patron. The church too could not offer me a refuge. I could not buy an office as I did not possess a sou. My old friends turned their backs to me …. the system had provided us with an education without however offering a field where our talents could be utilised..’

2. An Englishman, Arthur Young, travelled through France during the years from 1787 to 1789 and wrote detailed descriptions of his journeys. He often commented on what he saw.

‘He who decides to be served and waited upon by slaves, ill-treated slaves at that, must be fully aware that by doing so he is placing his property and his life in a situation which is very different from that he would be in, had he chosen the services of free and welltreated men. And he who chooses to dine to the accompaniment of his victims. groans, should not complain if during a riot his daughter gets kidnapped or his son.s throat is slit.’

(Young's first visit to France was in 1787. Travelling all over that country around the start of the French Revolution, he described the condition of the people and the conduct of public affairs at that critical juncture. The Travels in France appeared in one large quarto volume in 1792, reprinted in two octavo volumes (Dublin, 1793); enlarged second edition in two quarto volumes (London, 1794). On his return home he was appointed secretary of the Board of Agriculture 1793 just formed under the presidency of Sir John Sinclair. In this capacity he gave most valuable assistance in the collection and preparation of agricultural surveys of the English counties. His sight, however, failed, and in 1811 he had an operation for cataract, which proved unsuccessful.)
TAKEN FROM 
NCERT BOOK ( India and the Contemporary World -II FOR CLASS X )
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/837
Wikipedia

French Society during the Late Eighteenth Century

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In Continuation from last post:

http://www.thoughtcrackers.blogspot.in/2015/09/the-french-revolution-and-idea-of-nation.html

In 1774, Louis XVI (Louis 16^th) (Full name: Louis Auguste de France)of the Bourbon family of kings ascended the throne of France. He was 20 years old and married to the Austrian princess Marie Antoinette. Upon his accession the new king found an empty treasury. Long years of war had drained the financial resources of France. Added to this was the cost of maintaining an extravagant court at the immense palace of Versailles. 

Under Louis 16^th, France helped the thirteen American colonies to gain their independence from the common enemy, Britain. The war added more than a billion livres (Unit of currency in France discontinued in 1794) to a debt that had already risen to more than 2 billion livres. Lenders who gave the state credit, now began to charge 10 %  interest on loans. So the French government was obliged to spend an increasing percentage of its budget on interest payments alone. 

To meet its regular expenses, such as the cost of maintaining an army, the court, running government offices or universities, the state was forced to increase taxes. Yet even this measure would not have sufficed. French society in the eighteenth century was divided into three estates, and only members of the third estate paid taxes (shown by dashed line in figure 1).

The society of estates was part of the feudal system that dated back to the middle ages. The term Old Regime is usually used to describe the society and institutions of France before 1789.

Fig. 1 shows how the system of estates in French society was organised. Peasants made up about 90 per cent of the population. However, only a small number of them owned the land they cultivated. About 60 % of the land was owned by nobles, the Church and other richer members of the third estate. The members of the first two estates, that is, the clergy (Group of persons invested with special functions in the church)and the nobility, enjoyed certain privileges by birth. The most important of these was exemption from paying taxes to the state. The nobles further enjoyed feudal privileges. These included feudal dues, which they extracted from the peasants. Peasants were obliged to render services to the lord . to work in his house and fields . to serve in the army or to participate in building roads.

Figure1: A Society of Estates. Note that within the Third Estate some were rich and others poor.

The Church too extracted its share of taxes called tithes (A tax levied by the church, comprising one-tenth of the agricultural produce)from the peasants, and finally, all members of the third estate had to pay taxes to the state. These included a direct tax, called taille (Tax to be paid directly to the state), and a number of indirect taxes which were levied on articles of everyday consumption like salt or tobacco. The burden of financing activities of the state through taxes was borne by the third estate alone.

A small minority of Protestants living in France, such as the Huguenots, wanted an anti-Catholic regime and revenge against the clergy who discriminated against them. Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire helped fuel this resentment by denigrating the Catholic Church and destabilizing the French monarchy.

The Struggle to Survive:

The population of France rose from about 23 million in 1715 to 28 million in 1789. This led to a rapid increase in the demand for food grains. Production of grains could not keep pace with the demand. So the price of bread which was the staple diet of the majority rose rapidly. Most workers were employed as labourers in workshops whose owner fixed their wages. But wages did not keep pace with the rise in prices. So the gap between the poor and the rich widened. Things became worse whenever drought or hail reduced the harvest. This led to a subsistence crisis (An extreme situation where the basic means of livelihood are endangered), something that occurred frequently in France during the Old Regime.

Jacques Lagniet - The Nobleman is the Spider and the Peasant is the Fly

TAKEN FROM 
NCERT BOOK ( India and the Contemporary World -II FOR CLASS X )

Wikipedia