What is your interpretation/ thesis of the origins of the French Revolution?
You may endorse one of the views you have read for class or may wish to compose an original thesis. In either case, it should be concise.
A. de Tocqueville: The administrative centralization of the Old Regime failed to grant greater political participation to the middle classes and writers, who created alternative centers of authority which detested inequality and envisioned alternative political organizations.
D. Mornet: The ideas of the Enlightenment spread to literate elites in the city and across the countryside who fought for greater liberty and equality since the Old Regime did not provide them with opportunities for finding employment and social mobility.
A. Soboul: The rising middle class (bourgeoisie) revolted against the Old Regime because it desired greater economic liberty and legal equality to replace feudalism with capitalism by winning the sans-culottes to its side, since both social classes lacked legal privileges.
R. Chartier: The desacralization of the monarchy constituted a cultural origin to the French Revolution since French subjects no longer treated the king with the respect due to a monarch possessing the divine right to rule, which made it possible to oppose the absolute monarchy culminating in Louis XVI's execution.
