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Compare And Contrast The French Revolution And The American Revolutions

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Most people learn about the American and French Revolutions, but one thing they do not dive into is the extreme violent difference in the two. Obviously, violence occurs in a war but not only did brutality occur on the battlefields. In the French Revolution internal conflicts caused more trouble within the country. Violence in the cities of France includes beheadings and smaller revolts on a regular basis. Whereas the American Revolution had relatively no internal violence. Although the American and French Revolutions were based on the same principals, the French struggled more with violent social disruptions. The Enlightenment sparked the ideas these revolutions developed from. People such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson participated in the Enlightenment and carried on that type of thinking. They helped to write some of the founding documents of the United States, and therefore had a large impact on the early government. The idea of natural rights, which came from the Enlightenment, became one of the main reasons the people wanted to rebel and fight. Also, the representative government, derived …show more content…

The French could not agree with each other on anything. The way the French classify their people shows another reason why France had more tension (Pinson). France’s documents allocate their citizens into ranks and classes, whereas America does not. This division of classes creates one of the biggest issues that the lower class citizens try to fight because they do not receive much power, if any at all. The slogan of the French Revolution is “life, liberty, and brotherhood”. The class conflict created internal violence which led to people fighting the people they are close to, physically and mentally. Then, people became so confused as to who to trust, they did not trust anyone. This led to the Reign of Terror, which was a time frame when life turned to misery in

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