CONCLUSION

The state of the Old Regime and its legacy

On the night between 4 and 5 August 1789, the members of the assembly at Versailles, having recently declared themselves to be the Constitutional Assembly of France, met to discuss demands from the peasants for the abolition of the ‘feudal dues’, i.e.

The event seems almost like a miracle and was often regarded as such at the time. Two factors make it less miraculous. First, a major peasant revolt had broken out in the summer of 1789, instigated partly by a series of bad harvests and partly by the meeting in Versailles. To use military power against the peasants meant that the army might next be used against the assembly itself; consequently, the peasants had to be pacified. Second, the minutes from the meeting, issued on 11 August, contained the provision that compensation should be paid to those who had renounced their privileges, which, however, proved impossible to enforce. Nevertheless, the element of idealism should not be underestimated, nor the sym­bolic importance of the act: it was the beginning of a new society of freedom and equality — the latter not in the sense it is often used today of equal conditions, but in the sense of equal opportunities, no formal rules or institutions preventing individual choice.

1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be founded only on the common good.

2. The goal of any political association is the conservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, safety and resistance against oppression.

The following articles deal with popular sovereignty, liberty to do anything that does not harm others, the foundation of law in the popular will, safety against unjust accusation and the rule of law, freedom of thought and expression, consent to taxation and the right to private property. Later declarations of human rights, from 1948 onwards, represent further developments of the ones from the eight­eenth century.

More than 200 years later, we recognize the declarations as containing the fun­damental ideas on which our own democracy is built, but also know that their proclamation in 1789 did not lead to a smooth transition to a new society. The French Revolution introduced a period of terror, violence and war, a civil war in France as well as a general European war that lasted almost continuously from 1792 until 1815. A number of constitutions, modelled on the American and French ones, came into being during this period but most of them were abolished by its end. In the long run, however, the ideas of 1789 have won, not only in Europe but also in other parts of the world, to the extent that Francis Fukuyama in a short period of extreme optimism in 1992, just after the fall of Communism, could publish a book entitled The End of History and the Last Man.

The ideas of the American and French Revolutions were new and radical and were deliberately aimed at replacing the old structures and ideas, the ones we have dealt with on the previous pages.

A more fundamental question is the relationship between the society we have considered during most of the previous pages and the one developing after the French Revolution. Is there continuity, despite the dramatic rejection during the Revolution? The key to this continuity is the concept of rights. When Margaret Thatcher, on the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution in 1789 claimed that England had done the same as France long before, pointing to the Magna Carta, she was clearly wrong. The Magna Carta is a list of established or allegedly estab­lished rights for specific people, not of rights common to all men.

Nevertheless, such rights formed an important part of medieval political thought, notably after the reception of Aristotle’s political ideas in the thirteenth century, although they were not expressed in any political proclamation. Their practical con­sequences were therefore limited and, as we have seen, inequality and hierarchy were fundamental elements of European society from the Middle Ages until the French Revolution. Thus, it is not difficult to recognize the targets of the criticism during the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. The society of the Old Regime was often oppressive, unjust and inefficient but it was not arbitrary. The rights of property and inheritance were respected; there was a kind of rule of law, although the laws might be harsh and there was no equality before the law; the privileged had better rights than ordinary people. Rulers might be more or less bound by formal rules but, in contrast to the great eastern empires, they depended on support from a larger society, normally the elites. They had no slave soldiers or bureaucracies independent of the local popu­lation; they had to base their government on cooperation with local elites, particularly the nobility, eventually also the bourgeoisie and, to some extent, even the peasants. The concept of rights was thus an important fact during the Old Regime.

The division into smaller kingdoms and the competition between them increased the king’s dependence on his subjects. This division was established already around 1200. It would seem that the initial weakness of the state after the fall of the Roman Empire was an important factor in this, combined with the lack of invasions, which in turn was partly the result of the poverty of Europe at the time and partly of its distance from the main areas of nomads. The development of dynasties in the following period made the division permanent, although reducing it somewhat through unions caused by dynastic marriages. A gradual development of political institutions then took place during the following centuries. In this way, the state eliminated competition within its borders, while increasing it across them. From the sixteenth century, it also largely managed to subdue its external compe­titors, the city and the Church — the latter mainly in Protestant countries but also, to some extent, in Catholic ones. However, this was achieved by integrating the competitors rather than suppressing them. The nobles became part of national elites, surrounding the rulers in places like the Palace of Versailles or Westminster Hall. The ecclesiastical bureaucracy increasingly served the state, particularly in Protestant but also in Catholic countries. The independent cities largely dis­appeared but their merchants formed an essential element in the most successful states, England/Britain and the Dutch Republic. There was a considerable element of violence and suppression in European state building, but this is not the whole explanation. The state had to appeal to the population, admittedly mostly its leading members, and it had to make itself useful by conflict solution and pro­tecting trade and communication within the country.

Not only the division itself but also the competition between the states was an important factor in their further development.

In contrast to the claims by Tilly and some other scholars, it seems unlikely that a great European empire was a realistic option at any time before Napoleon. Charles V’s limited success against one of his European competitors, France, as well as his problems in getting any real control of the petty principalities in Germany, enable us to dismiss this idea in his case. Concerning Louis XIV, there is no evi­dence that he had any plans in this direction and even if he had, it is difficult to see that he would have been able to establish effective control of the whole of Europe, considering the limited control he had of his own country. Moreover, both rulers were hampered by legal and ideological factors. The dynastic state, ruled by a hereditary king, had internal as well as external legitimacy. Open disregard for this principle might endanger one’s own position, externally and possibly even intern­ally. No doubt, both Napoleon and Hitler — both of whom could afford to dis­regard this and other principles — came closer to this aim. Both, however, were stopped by forces outside the European Continent; Britain and Russia, in the case of the former, Britain, Russia and the USA, in the case of the latter. Regarding both, it may, in addition, be pointed out that their ‘empires’ took the form of the old state system — in Napoleon’s case, including substantial changes in Germany and Italy — with puppet or dependent rulers. Concerning the most recent, volun­tary attempt at a European union, whatever one’s view of its success, it must be admitted that we are still far from the United States of Europe. Thus, despite the many and great changes that have taken place between the late eighteenth century and the present, Europeans still live in a world that to a considerable extent was shaped before that date.

For a period of more than a thousand years after the fall of the Roman Empire, East Asia was probably the most advanced part of the world, with a larger popu­lation, more intensive agriculture, larger and better organized cities and stronger states and empires. This changed at some stage in the early modern period, and during the last 200 years, Europe and the USA have dominated the world in a way that has never occurred before. The reasons for this have been much discussed, but there are at least indications that the story told in the previous pages is of some relevance to this answer. The organization and technological innovations in the military field were clearly results of the competition between the European states. The great scientific discoveries from the sixteenth century onwards have been explained in different ways but at least from the time when they had practical applications, the importance of the state must have been great. This includes both active support, as in England/Britain from the late seventeenth century onwards, and the competition between states, which made it possible to escape persecution by moving across the border and find a more stimulating environment. Such environments were to some extent to be found at the medieval universities, in the Italian cities during the Renaissance, and later notably in the Dutch Republic and England. Whether actively or passively, the European state thus played a part in the scientific revolution.

Thus, despite the many deficiencies of the European state of the Old Regime, it seems to have been based more on support from at least a portion of its subjects than most kingdoms and empires in other parts of the world, which in turn forms part of the explanation for later Western dominance.

Notes

1 Doyle, The French Revolution, pp. 112—18.

2 Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 327—31.