Talk:French Revolution

Long-term impact

Hello all

I have summarised some excessive detail in this section. I have cut information already in this article (for example most of the information on the impact of the Revolution on the Church) or the article Influence of the French Revolution. I have removed unsourced content. As most of the content was about the short-term impact of the Revolution on other countries, I have changed the heading to Impact. I think there is a good argument for removing most of the remaining detail and retaining just a few general observations made by historians. One concern is that there is no way of separating the impact of the revolution of 1789-99 from the long-term impact of the Napoleonic era (which was arguably greater). As it is, the section is an invitation for people to write potted histories of every country in the world since 1789.

Happy to discuss. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 12:08, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

One of the long term impacts is that Liberté, égalité, fraternité has the origin in the French Revolution. I suggest that this should be linked here. Zukunft (talk) 09:50, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

OK, you're welcome to to link it. WP:BB —GoldRingChip 12:29, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 11 March 2024

There are multiple cases in the article where the revolutionary political figure Antoine Barnave's name is mispelled as "Bernave" and action should be taken to rectify these mistakes. By using the text-search tool and entering in "Bernave" you will find these 2 errors. Sarffgadau (talk) 19:49, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

 Done Jamedeus (talk) 19:56, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 April 2024

Impact: North America The French Revolution had profound effects on the people of San Domingo, modern-day Haiti. The French Revolution served as a guideline and proof a revolution could take place to rework social balance, as well as a massive inspiration to the revolutionaries on the island. White slave owners in San Domingo were terrified of the idea of a slave revolt. This led to a splitting of the island into Patriots and Loyalists. Ultimately tensions would boil to the point of an outright rebellion which would prove effective as the world's only successful slave revolt. JohnOverton1 (talk) 05:20, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

This is discussed at length in the section on Slavery and the Colonies. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 05:48, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

References

Semi-protected edit request on 8 May 2024

can i edit 24.194.201.151 (talk) 18:25, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

 Not done: this is not the right page to request additional user rights. You may reopen this request with the specific changes to be made and someone may add them for you, or if you have an account, you can wait until you are autoconfirmed and edit the page yourself. Jamedeus (talk) 19:39, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 June 2024

Fix typo. Change the heading "Crisis of theAncien Régime" to "Crisis of the Ancien Régime". 109.255.93.165 (talk) 20:18, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

 Not done: There is no such typo. The wikitext is "Crisis of the ''Ancien Régime''". Is there a problem with your browser? Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 20:47, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

This seems to be a markup problem in some browsers that's being resolved at source. See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Section_headings_with_links. Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 07:37, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 7 October 2024

Change “Over 72,00 slaves were still in revolt, mostly in the north.” to “Over 72,000 slaves were still in revolt, mostly in the north.”

There is a missing “0” in the section, specifically in citation 196, under “Slavery and the colonies”. 170.244.198.174 (talk) 14:51, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

 Done PianoDan (talk) 16:43, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

national assembly representance and goals

I've found the diffs from @Goszei to @Aemilius Adolphin interesting. In particulare the phrase The Assembly largely represented the bourgeoisie, who hoped to usher in a property-owning democracy. is very interesting. It is a shame that the body doesn't develop this adequatelly, since this have been such a major topic over the centuries. From the requirement to get into the National Assembly, to the actual repartitions of professions on it, to how the property penalties contributed to the end of Robespierre etc

I don't have the time to do the work right now on the body, but I'll open this discussion just in case I will be able to later, or someone else watching the page might want to chip in. Cinemaandpolitics (talk) 14:30, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Some may argue that the specific phrasing of a "bourgeois revolution" is a Marxist one since he made it famous, but I don't think that stating the revolution was the point in France where the middle classes (the bourgeoisie) gained supremacy over the nobility and ended feudalism is at all historically controversial. Alexis de Tocqueville and others argued for the same view in The Old Regime and the Revolution. The historiography section of this article is rather muddled and missing these major viewpoints, and could use improvement before we add it to the lead. — Goszei (talk) 17:24, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, needs development in body first and then adding to lead. Sadly I can't help directly since I still have to find the time to edit the Saint-Just page...

Different views are not an issue, the lead is quite short they can all find their spot eventually. Cinemaandpolitics (talk) 21:42, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

The issue is that all the recent scholarship I have read tends to undermine the received idea that there was a unified middle class and shows that the term "bourgeoisie" is misleading. From memory, the research shows that most members of the third estate were lawyers, journalist and state bureaucrats. Only about 6% were merchants or businessmen. I can chase up the sources again. As for "who hoped to usher in a property-owning democracy" I think this is the sort of simple explanation we need to avoid. Too often, we are tempted to simplify history into an easy to digest story and introduce phrases which mean nothing. What is a property-owning democracy and who exactly used that phrase at the time? Very few of the third estate wanted a "democracy" as we envisage it: where all adult males and females have the right to stand for and vote for an assembly with full leglative power. From what I have read it seems that when the old regime collapsed they found that power was suddenly thrust into their hands and they didn't know exactly what they wanted and what they should do with it. And the rest is history. I would also suggest that we don't need much more detail in this article because it is already too long. Detail is for the sub articles. But by all means we should play around with the wording and come up with something which is concise and accurate without spinning simple narratives which aren't supported by the bulk of modern scholarship. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 22:14, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

By the way, I think Goszei is doing a good job in improving the leads of several articles. Sometimes I push back on particular things,sometimes other editors push back more, but generally I think Goszei is good at stimulating other editors into retinking long-established leads. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 22:21, 8 November 2024 (UTC)