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What Is The Difference Between American Revolution And French Declaration Of Natural Rights

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As the Age of Enlightenment ended, the fruits of its teachings began to spread across the globe. Beginning with the American Revolution and followed shortly after by the French Revolution, both peoples implemented ideas from the Enlightenment into their respective declarations, the American Declaration of Independence (1776) and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789). Although these documents were written with different purposes, they both share the core principles of natural rights, popular sovereignty, and limited involvement of government while also laying foundational groundwork for democratic development around the world. The Declaration of Independence was written to justify the American colonists’ separation from …show more content…

The Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen were both composed based on the core principle that all humans have certain rights, that should not be imposed upon or hindered by any governing body. These natural rights in the American Declaration are “that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” while the French Declaration identifies these natural rights as “liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression”. While these rights are similar in that they are not to be altered by the government, the French view on natural rights places greater emphasis on security and policy while the American view prioritizes self-determination, found through life and the personal pursuit of happiness. Another similarity found between the declarations is the promotion of popular sovereignty, the idea that the government should be based on the consent of its people. In the American Declaration of Independence, popular sovereignty is alluded to in the following line, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the …show more content…

Before the publication of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, the monarchy was governed by the unwritten laws and policies known as the Fundamental laws of the Kingdom of France. These rules were often subject to the king, stripping the people of their input. While the American Declaration and the French Declaration both discuss the inability of any governing body to restrict people access to natural rights, the source of these rights in each document is inconsistent. In the American Declaration of Independence, these rights are given to each human from the Creator, God. This highlights that one of the primary reasons for the American Revolution was fear of religious persecution, and for the rights to religious freedom. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen adopts a more secular approach in regard to the source of natural rights, which more accurately reflects the influence of the Enlightenment movement on European society, as the Enlightenment focused heavily on reason rather than

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