The French Revolution

[dedanna1029]

Boss, regarding this comment, I thought it best to start a new thread before we went too far OTT.

I think the French Revolution was more dynamic than the American one for several reasons. It's interesting the differences.

The French Revolution was started by poor people, who were mad at nobility, not necessarily the king himself, by the general populace, the masses. The revolution was unstructured, they were out for more than one goal (in a way I kind of equate it with the Occupy movement of today, on a larger scale). In the latter part of the revolution, the Reign of Terror was brought on, where the revolutionary government was doing worse to people, IMO, than what they were trying to revolt against.

The American one was structured, started by a group of very wealthy men who were mad at the king, and was successful. Not much more to say on that one, except I think we would've been better off in the long run staying under British rule. With nothing more to say on it, it seems very boring to me.

There are more differences, but I don't have the documentation handy right now. Our textbook in World History is Jackson J. Spielvogel's "A Brief History of Western Civilization, Vol. II, Seventh Edition".

[viking60]

Well the thoughts from the French revolution have been vital to your and our constitution. So the ideology that came out of it is what our constitutions are based on.
Now the Brits and The Norwegians have cheated a little bit and reduced the power of the government by putting more power in the hands of the parliament (Parliamentarism). In Norway it was a way of reducing the Kings power and quite revolutionary in its day.
No government can survive without the confidence of the parliament. That is different in the US.

[dedanna1029]

Yes. We've been reading quite a bit on that, too, about the revolutionary (at the time) ideals of parliament.