74 Khan Academy Lecture: French Revolution, Pts 1-4
74 Khan Academy Lecture: French Revolution, Pts 1-4
Video Transcript
In this video we’re going to talk about the French Revolution. And what makes this especially significant is that not only is this independence from a monarchy-controlled empire, like in the American independence, this is an actual overthrowing of a monarchy. A monarchy that controls a major world power. Depending on how you view it, the American Revolution came first and kind of put out the principles of self-governance and why do we need kings and all of that. But the French Revolution was the first time that those type of principles really took foot in Europe and really overthrew a monarchy. So just to understand kind of the environment in which this began, let’s talk about what France was like in 1789. Which most people kind of view as the beginning of the Revolution. One, France was poor. Now, you wouldn’t think that France was poor, if you looked at Louis XVI, who was king of France. If you looked at Louis XVI, and the clothes he wore. If you looked at Marie-Antoinette, his wife, they don’t look poor. They lived in the palace of Versailles, which is ginormous. It’s this massive palace, it would compare to the greatest palaces in the world. They were living a lavish lifestyle. Just in case you want to know where this is, this is what’s now almost a suburb of Paris. But at the time it was a village 20 or 30 kilometers away from Paris. So they don’t seem to be poor. But the the actual government of France is poor. And when I say poor, they’re in debt. They’ve just had two major military adventures. One was the American Revolution. They played a major part in supporting the revolutionaries. Because they wanted to stick it to their enemy, Great Britain. They wanted their empire to shrink a little bit. So France sent significant military help and resources. And you could imagine, that’s not a cheap thing when you’re doing it across the Atlantic Ocean. And even before the American Revolution, the Seven Years’ War that ended in 1763, this really drained the amount of wealth that the French government had. And for those of you who are more American history focused, the Seven Years’ War is really the same thing as the French and Indian War. The French and Indian War was the North American theater of the Seven Years’ War. But the Seven Years’ War is the more general term. Because there was also a conflict going on in Europe simultaneously. The French and Indian War and it was just part of that conflict. And the Seven Years’ actually engulfed most of the powers of Europe at the time. So France had participated in this, ended in 1763, you had the American Revolution. Both of these really just drained the amount of funds that the government itself had. At the same time, the French people were starving. There was a generalized famine at the time. They weren’t producing enough grain, people couldn’t get their bread to eat. So you can imagine, when people are starving they’re not happy. An