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The American Revolution : The Philosophies Of The French Revolution

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The development of the French Revolution was greatly influenced by the philosophies of the French Enlightenment period. Interestingly, disparate to the English and American Revolutions, the French Revolution did not evolve in a linear fashion. Instead, it progressed in a series of conflicting phases, each of which could be considered almost as a revolution in itself. Political theorists – such as Montesquieu, Rousseau and Voltaire – were sources of inspiration for key revolutionaries throughout the Revolution’s three major phases. As the revolutionists occupying the leading roles changed, the principles of the Revolution’s former phase were abandoned in favour of another policy, essentially antithetical to the previous one. Ultimately, in shifting between various Enlightenment philosophers, France was able to subject its government to massive structural change - from being an absolute monarchy (prior to the Revolution), to a constitutional monarchy (1791-1792), then a republic (1792-1804), and finally a dictatorship (under Napoleon Bonaparte).
Montesquieu’s theories, propounded in his 1753 treatise De l’esprit des loix (The Spirit of Laws), dominated the initial phase of the Revolution. Specifically, he praised the benefits of a liberal constitutional monarchy, for a nation who valued freedom, that would divide sovereignty “between several centres of power”, and so provide a “permanent check on any one of them becoming despotic”. As an aristocrat himself, Montesquieu

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