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Delaney Caballero

Mr. Smith

AP Euro History

12 January 2011

Human Rights in France during the French Revolution

In 1789 a revolution began in France that would change the world forever. In the years prior to

the revolution, Frenchmen had debated the goal of progress as a part of the Age of Enlightenment. The

revolution was seen as an experiment linked to the goals of the philosophes. Prior to the Revolution, the

debate about human rights was contrasted by the goals of the Enlightenment thinkers and the reality of

Old Regime absolutism, but as the Revolution began, the initial debate about the rights of the estates

evolved into a debate about religion, gender and race, and human rights.

France prior to 1789 remained locked in the Old Regime with royal authority far greater than

Enlightenment rhetoric. Issues related to human rights date back as far as the mid-16th century and the

French Religious Wars royal settlement, known as the Edict of Nantes, in 1589. By 1685, Louis XIV had

revoked that great compromise. Even two years before the revolution (Doc. 2), the king remained the

sole arbiter of human rights as Louis XVI grudgingly granted partial rights to the Calvinist minority.

However, the 18th century saw French philosophes challenge this royal right with the concept of natural

rights for all citizens. Influenced by the rhetoric and action of the English and American Revolutions,

Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau all called for political and social change. One important agent of

change, Diderot (Doc. 1) called for the recognition of all inalienable rights of all human beings to be

recognized and accepted. As 1789 approached, a revolutionary clash between royal authority and citizen

rights seemed inevitable.

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As the Revolution began, the various estates debated the role of social class in the new French

government. In the past, social class had been the most important thing to the upper two estates. At

the top of the pyramid in the Third Estate were the bourgeoisie. They wanted to be given their share of

political and social power. Abbé Siéyès described how strong the Third Estate was and that the French

nation would be better off without the privileged classes (Doc. 3). When the bourgeoisie left the Estates

General, they formed the National Assembly. With the National Assembly’s Declaration of the Rights of

Man and Citizen, men were told what their natural rights are (Doc. 4). After making men free and equal

and giving them their rights, the National Assembly set certain standards describing who could and

could not vote (Doc. 5). Once everything was settled with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and

Citizen, the new government in France was a constitutional monarchy.

As the Revolution progressed, the application of citizenship and therefore human rights

expanded to include the old debate over the rights of religious minorities. Throughout history, the topic

of rights for religious minorities has always been a predominant subject. During the Revolution, Jews

were given rights, but some people felt they should not have. The Bishop of Nancy believed that they

should only be given the most basic of rights nothing more (Doc. 6). Others, such as Adrien Jean

Françoise Duport, argued that Jews should be granted full citizenship rights (Doc. 7). In Enlightenment

times, Voltaire had argued that religious toleration was necessary because it is a natural right and should

not be imposed on by the government.

New debates emerged concerning the rights of women and racial minorities. For many

centuries, racial minorities were heavily oppressed. Although a controversial move, the French abolished

slavery in 1794 and gave black men all of the rights written in the Constitution (Doc. 8). Women’s rights

on the other hand, was a much harder to reach goal. Previously, women had never tried very hard to

assert their position in society. Women were meant to stay home and care for the family, and they

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were content with that. With the beginning of the Revolution, something new and unheard of began.

Women began to speak out for themselves and their rights. With the Declaration of the Rights of

Woman, Olympe De Gouges showed that women should have the same equal rights as men. She goes as

far to say that women should pay taxes and take part in similar painful forced labor services that men

participate in (Doc. 9). Unfortunately for the issue of women’s rights, not all people shared those

feelings. Jean Baptiste Amar spoke strongly against women’s rights. He argued that women should not

be given the right to hold public office because then they would be abandoning their families (Doc. 10).

Even with all of the people fighting for women’s rights, women in France were not given the right to

vote until 1944.

The French Revolution was a period in history where everything previously known was

reexamined and changed. Throughout the Revolution, human rights were debated. Before the

Revolution, Enlightenment ideas and Old Regime absolutism contrasted the idea of human rights, but

over time religion, gender and race, and human rights replaced the debate about the rights of the

estates.