French Revolution vs. the American Revolution: Which Was More Important?

These two conflicts of principle and practical government are cited as among the most influential revolutions of modern times. However, we Americans often operate under the mistaken assumption that they were in equal in importance. We love our history with its fight for liberty and its noble aims. We are also proud of our international mark for justice, which has been left in the age of the Pax Americana. So, we often assume that just as events in American politics are important to world affairs now, this early American event must have been the most important of its time.

In a sense this is true. Great Britain, the premier imperial power of the age, had lost its American colonies. This change of policy towards British colonies in general, and settler colonies in particular, led to the “second British Empire,” which was far less heavy handed than the first. This accounts for the fact that none of the later British settler colonies rebelled.

So there is a truth to the idea of an influential American Revolution. But in the context of eighteenth and nineteenth-century politics, the American Revolution was dwarfed in importance by the French Revolution, which laid the foundation for radical, secular, and bloody revolutions that would become common in the centuries to follow. It was here that the notions of absolute equality, disrespect for private property, and an elevation of political ends of the “General Will” over individual freedom came to characterize the revolutionary model.

As a result of the French Revolution, large-scale standing armies came to dominate the realm of warfare on the continent of Europe. Also, the first charismatic dictator came to wield global authority, threatening the very existence of weaker nations. It was in the wake of this spirit of rationalism that a civil law code became the norm of legal structures. The entire history of Europe, and the world, was shaped by this seminal event. Its nations were forged in the fires of the French Revolutionary armies and the Napoleonic Regimes that became massive, global powers. Many of the nations they ruled lived under the shadow of the ideologies of the French Revolution.

This is part of the reason why there are enduring differences between the former colonies of the British Empire and of the other European Empires. Ideas have consequences, and the upheavals that rocked France and the world after the French Revolution had profound consequences for the world we live in today. Many evil regimes of our time can trace their ideological roots back to this same event. For this reason, it is worth our time to consider its impact.

I’ll be writing a second article on this next week, so stay tuned!