During the first ten years , France first transformed and then dismantled the old regime , the

political
and social system that existed in 1789 and replaced it with a series of different governments , none
of which lasted for more than 4 year. The many initiatives they enacted permanently changed
France’s political system. The initiatives included the drafting of several bills of rights and
constitutions , the establishment of legal equality among all citizens , experiments with
representative democracy , incorporation of church into the state and the reconstruction of state
administration and the law code.

Because of its importance in modern history , historians have grappled with many different aspects
of the Revolution , ranging from its causes , its influence and how its overall significance is to be
measured. While most of the historians do not deny its significance but the adoption of different
historiographical perspectives has had a major impact on how they understand it

A number of Marxist historians have viewed the French revolution in terms of a class conflict , one
between the Bourgeoisie and the aristocracy. Prominent among them were George Lefebvre and
Albert Soboul. They argued that in the old regime , land was the basis of wealth and position in
society. It was the stubbornness to cling on their and obstructing the king from making reforms
wherever necessary. Thus , they viewed the French Revolution as a shift from feudalism to
capitalism , which was brought about by the third estate’s struggle against the landowning nobility

The classic interpretation of the French Revolution given by the Marxist historians sees it as a
bourgeoisie revolution , marked by class conflict. According to Marxist historians , the revolution was
led by an alliance between bourgeoisie elite and popular classes against the landowning nobility. The
French revolution was essentially a class struggle in which the nobility was destroyed. The scholars
who advocated this view include Alphonse Aulard , George Lefebvre , Albert Soboul

Alphonse Aulard’s writings promoted democratic republicanism and had no sympathy for the
monarchy. According to Aulard , the despotic abuses of the Ancien Regime justified the uprising of
1789. He argued that constitution of 1791 was a flawed document that allowed monarchy too much
power. For Aulard , the establishment of a republic under the national convention marked the zenith
of the revolution

George Lefebvre in his book ‘The coming of the French Revolution’ put forward the view that the
French revolution stemmed from the bourgeoisie rise , which eventually led to the overthrow of the
aristocratic ruling class in France. Lefebvre divided the revolution in 4 stages . The revolt of the
Nobles or the aristocratic revolution , the mobilization of the masses or the popular revolution. The
peasant revolution; All the classes united to get rid of the country of absolutism

Soboul maintained that the French Revolution could be understood as a class struggle , in which the
bourgeoisie backed by the masses gained power from aristocracy , overthrew the old order and
restructured the state to fit its own interests. The masses involved themselves in the revolution and
their actions proved to be decisive in taking down the old regime and assuring the victory of the
bourgeoisie

Most scholars accepted the Marxist theory of class conflict. However the argument of the Marxist
school began to be questioned which led to an enormous transformation in the scholarship on the
French revolution

The revisionists challenge the Marxist account on every account , but for the most part revisionists
implicitly accepted the central premise of Marxist argument that is an interpretation of the
revolution that consists of an account of social origins and outcomes
Alfred Cobban insisted that the revolution was not made by the bourgeoisie in the interests of the
capitalist development but rather by venal officeholders and professionals whose fortunes were
declining. In the end their actions benefitted landowners in general. The experience of revolution
actually retarded the development of Capitalism in France. According to Cobban Marxist account was
mistaken both about the origins and the outcomes of the decades of the revolution

Cobban argues that such approach fails to explain the complexities in the context of` ancient regime ,
i.e. 2 estates with all the privilege then also on economic decline and 3rd estate won the rise . The
legal division of French society into 3 medieval estates held no relation to the socioeconomic realities

Other critics like GV Taylor and Sutherland have argued that there was no conscious class conflict
between the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy before the revolution , they shared amany socioecomic
and political interests. It was the liberal autocracy that initiated the revolution against monarchical
despotism

Sutherland points out that the conflict between the elites was sharpened by the intervention of the
local people , the agitation of common people , Sans Culottes and peasants revolution in the
countryside , saved the revolution from aristocratic revolution

Taylor argues that best way to understand French Revolution is to reject its understanding in terms of
a class struggle and to look at it as a pure contest of power

Implicit in the revisionist interpretation is that they are better at explaining what the revolution was
not , rather than what it was.

Post Revisionists emphasized that the French Revolution was the result of political culture

Francois Furet draws upon the 19th Century thinkers like Tocqueville , for Tocqueville revolution
represented the aggrandizement of state power and centralization rather than a victory for
capitalism. In order to increase the state power monarchy destroyed the political rights of nobles and
thereby made social pretensions intolerable to other groups.

Francois Furet returned to political and intellectual theories for the French Revolution. This culture
was initially extremist and non pluralistic , there was no space for honest debate , only by
exterminating the dissent could a natural unanimity be restored. Furet argued that the democratic
ideals of certain enlightened philosophers such as Rousseau became the heart and soul of French
Revolution. Democracy here did not mean governing by consent but the power of a national state to
defeat those who opposed its will. Furet wrote that the revolution embraced a radical ideology of
popular sovereignty so that any abuse of power could be excused as long as it was achieved in the
name of people

Keith Michael argued that the fall of French Revolution into Rousseauian democracy as well as the
terror was not the product of 1792 , when the nation was at war , but was the result of delibrate
decisions made by the National Assembly in the summer of 1789 in a way in which the political
power and violence had been reconceptualised. Baker argued that by accepting Rousseau;s theory of
general will as the basis for rejecting absolute veto in 1789 , the Constituent Assembly was opting for
the terror. Like Furet , Baker placed the terror squarely at the centre of the revolutionary process

Rogen Chatier argues that , to say enlightenment as about ideas that can be designated as modern
and these ideas somehow inspired the revolution as a teleological approach. Chartier contends that
the revolutionaries were searching for retrospective justification and for paternity in philosophy and
they created the modern image of enlightenment to root the revolution’s legitkmacy in a corpus of
texts and founding authors

No concept is more central to the cultural origins of the revolution than of public opinion. Habermas
a German philosopher contributions is considered one of the greatest in understanding of public
spher. He argued that 18th Century saw the rise of a new category of the public sphere that led to the
formation of the modern world of journalism. He says that this was primarily a bourgeoisie public
institution who met in Masonic ledges. Their voices grew more confident in giving their opinions on
the matters of politics and government , wars , or disputes between king and parliaments. Their
voices hardened into a new phenomenon of public opinion.

Lynn Hunt has examined the nature of the French Revolution , through the political analysis. He
argued that in the realm of politics almost changed. Revolution became a tradition and
republicanism an enduring option. After that kings could not rule without assemblies and noble
domination only provoked more revolution. There was not the emergence of a new form of
production , but rather the emergence of a new political culture. The original opening of the new
political culture was created by the breakdown the old regime political culture and the emergence
was revolutionary

Hunt also argued that symbols and language played an important role in inventing and transmitting
the tradition of revolutionary action. The new republican political class forever transformed politics
through their use of symbols

Joan Landes Simon Schama include the group of feminist historians. In an artciel on Marie Antoinette
Hunt highlighted the attitudes about the queen explained how the revolutionary leaders sihed to see
gender roles , the 1793 trial of the Queen as merely one facet of the stormiest phase of sexual
politics in the French Revolution. French revolution marked a backward step for women. The works
of Jean Jacques Rousseau and it was his highly contentious ideas that gave rise to new notions of
female domesticity