I thought it instead had reached its peak after Robespierre's fall?It's also not helped by the fact the Terror in itself was ended by Robespierre's fall.
Not to mention declaring war on Austria.Plus, of course, the Republic's dire situation was caused by the revolutionaries seizing power and murdering their king.
What I meant is there's a difference between setting harsh laws that veer toward authoritarianism when there's an actual war going on, with foreign armies bearing down on the capital, when most of your officers have deserted to the enemy, and whole regions are in open revolts, and setting them up when you're entirely at peace time.Both sides in the Spanish Civil War committed atrocities, as did the Nazis between 1939 and 1945, and we don't generally excuse them by saying "Well, they were at war, a bit of mass murder is inevitable."
I don't find the argument that a revolution was inevitable convincing, it's possible that societies would just change gradually without even having the idea of a revolution being feasible or desirable.Technological and economic change increased the potency of the centralized state, which ushered in modernity and the possibility of an all-encompassing ideological regime backed by juggernaut state machinery.
The French Revolution is a template in that it was the first time a nation realized and embraced those statist developments. It was ground zero, and all similar attempts in the future directly drew their language and their behavior from that revolution. I think Marx hits that well in his “18 Brumaire of Louis Napoleon”:
“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language. Thus Luther put on the mask of the Apostle Paul, the Revolution of 1789-1814 draped itself alternately in the guise of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and the Revolution of 1848 knew nothing better to do than to parody, now 1789, now the revolutionary tradition of 1793-95. In like manner, the beginner who has learned a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he assimilates the spirit of the new language and expresses himself freely in it only when he moves in it without recalling the old and when he forgets his native tongue.”
With that being said, I think that explosion and force that the French Revolution produced was going to happen somewhere as changes in technology and social relations drove traditional societies towards breaking point. If France in 1789 is somehow tamed by the liberal nobles, then that outbreak is going to happen down the road somewhere else. And the totalitarian movements of the future will draw their language and their costumes and their dramas from that revolution.
It was the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, tho. Not exactly peacetime there.1936 Spain was at peace time.
On the one hand, the most radical French revolutionaries were the most forward thinking in hindsight, and a lot of what they fought for continued to be rallying cries over the long decades of the 19th century.Those situations are not equivalent with XXth century totalitarian countries.
At the end of the day, in the 500 days of the "Terror", 17k people were executed after their trials. It's a lot of people yes, but given the size of the population and the exceptional circumstances, it's not as insane as it could be, especially with a civil war going on.
Trying not to do what-aboutism, but the Terreur also voted free education and freed the slaves. The legal Assembly was still functioning during that time, and a key goal was avoiding the rise of a new Caesar that would bring down all the new liberties acquired by the people.
Could it have been done better? Well of course.
Is the Terreur a period of bloodthirsty monsters intent on sating their thirst on top of a pile of corpse to satisfy personal ambitions? Was Robespierre an insane and out of control tyrant? Absolutely not
Source: there was an issue of "L'Histoire" on that very topic a couple months back
How would the amount of deaths caused by the Terror compare to the ones caused by the French monarchy in centuries prior? By the French Monarchy I mean the state senencing and executing people, not war-related deaths otherwise we broaden the scope.What I meant is there's a difference between setting harsh laws that veer toward authoritarianism when there's an actual war going on, with foreign armies bearing down on the capital, when most of your officers have deserted to the enemy, and whole regions are in open revolts, and setting them up when you're entirely at peace time.
1933 Germany was at peace time, 1936 Spain was at peace time. The shift toward authoritarianism in those two contexts is not the same as a shift when there's a war on.
Otherwise, it's equating any country on a war footing with authoritarian states, including the UK during the Blitz, France during WWI...
Those situations are not equivalent with XXth century totalitarian countries.
At the end of the day, in the 500 days of the "Terror", 17k people were executed after their trials. It's a lot of people yes, but given the size of the population and the exceptional circumstances, it's not as insane as it could be, especially with a civil war going on.
Trying not to do what-aboutism, but the Terreur also voted free education and freed the slaves. The legal Assembly was still functioning during that time, and a key goal was avoiding the rise of a new Caesar that would bring down all the new liberties acquired by the people.
Could it have been done better? Well of course.
Is the Terreur a period of bloodthirsty monsters intent on sating their thirst on top of a pile of corpse to satisfy personal ambitions? Was Robespierre an insane and out of control tyrant? Absolutely not
Source: there was an issue of "L'Histoire" on that very topic a couple months back
The monarchy was certainly not spotless, see how the Huguenots were treated.How would the amount of deaths caused by the Terror compare to the ones caused by the French monarchy in centuries prior? By the French Monarchy I mean the state senencing and executing people, not war-related deaths otherwise we broaden the scope.
Just use fractional units. No one is stopping you from measuring something in ⅓ miles etc.Or modern needs, when you want to divide by three.
Not really.I thought it instead had reached its peak after Robespierre's fall?
Centralisation is still a core part of the French ideology today. I see your point, but I don't think it's valid to create a line from the Revolution and French centripetal tendencies to totalitarianism. Japan, Siam, became totalitarian but I don't think they were that exposed to the French Revolution. States prior to the Revolution tried to be very centralised as well (China for example)On the other, the centralizing and absolutist tendency of the Parisian government carried over from the ancien regime to the various revolutionary governments up to and including the regime of Napoleon, and that tend....
I mean, if the thesis is that the Revolution paved the way for totalitarianism and fascism, then 36 is a bad example. The fascism didn't arise from war, it arose from peacetime. Spain was not at war when the Nationalists revolted against a democratically elected government.It was the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, tho. Not exactly peacetime there
I think the reasoning would be, most earlier attempts of centralization were still very much a "government centralization" only. For example, governmental documents written in pre-revolutionary Brittany needed to be written in French. But despite the centralization agenda, the king's government didn't really care what the average person wrote/spoke, unless some specific issue arose.Centralisation is still a core part of the French ideology today. I see your point, but I don't think it's valid to create a line from the Revolution and French centripetal tendencies to totalitarianism. Japan, Siam, became totalitarian but I don't think they were that exposed to the French Revolution. States prior to the Revolution tried to be very centralised as well (China for example)
The real centralisation of languages and customs came during the 3rd Republic, a century later. The Revolution and particularly the Terreur isn't particularly known for thisdespite the centralization agenda, the king's government didn't really care what the average person wrote/spoke, unless some specific issue arose.
It wasn't until the French Revolution that the governments cared that the common man was not following the centralization policies
It really seems that serious linguistic repression did not intensify until the 19th particularly later 19th centuriesThe real centralisation of languages and customs came during the 3rd Republic, a century later. The Revolution and particularly the Terreur isn't particularly known for this
There was some during the revolution, not sure if it was during the Terror or not. For example, forcing quatre-vignt . Was it standard before then, yes, universal, no.The real centralisation of languages and customs came during the 3rd Republic, a century later. The Revolution and particularly the Terreur isn't particularly known for this
It's fair to say that centralization alone doesn't make a society totalitarian.Centralisation is still a core part of the French ideology today. I see your point, but I don't think it's valid to create a line from the Revolution and French centripetal tendencies to totalitarianism. Japan, Siam, became totalitarian but I don't think they were that exposed to the French Revolution. States prior to the Revolution tried to be very centralised as well (China for example)
Agreed. I'd go further and say Napoleon III pushed the concept a bit further.Thinking about it again, it's less the Terror that was a pattern for totalitarian ideology, and more Napoleon and his third way between republicanism and the ancien regime.
Popular republicanisms, yes. Totalitarianisms, kind of, and at a distant remove.To what extent did the actions, ideas and political tools employed during the French Revolution provide a template for other future popular republicanisms and totalitarianisms further on in history?
This is a part of the common tendency to put all of the revolutionaries in one basket, ignoring the fact that many of them weren't even interested in regicide until 1793, and that the emergency measures weren't put into place until after the outbreak of the Federalist revolts, which occurred well after the revolutionaries seized power. The emergency measures were put into place by the Montagnards in response to a situation that had been caused by the Girondists, making your latter point moot.Plus, of course, the Republic's dire situation was caused by the revolutionaries seizing power and murdering their king. I don't think you get to use the emergency measures defence when you're largely responsible for causing the emergency in the first place.
Again, the War against Austria was declared by the Girondists, not the Montagnards. The emergency measures were put into place to combat the disastrous results of a war declared by a different faction.Not to mention declaring war on Austria.
The Bastille being nearly empty is a completely meaningless point to make considering that the mob didn't storm it with the intention of freeing any prisoners, but to seize control of the large amounts of gunpowder necessary to protect themselves against the Royalist forces encircling Paris. The significance that the Storming of the Bastille would hold as an event would only come afterwards, but in the moment it was purely motivated by self-preservation.On the other hand, it is kinda telling how the Bastille, symbol of monarchial oppression, was basically empty when the mob raided it.
Some of the biggest differences with the Terror was how eager they were to convict someone of treason & the "witch-hunt" like fervor for accusations that gripped the public.
I think the reasoning would be, most earlier attempts of centralization were still very much a "government centralization" only. For example, governmental documents written in pre-revolutionary Brittany needed to be written in French. But despite the centralization agenda, the king's government didn't really care what the average person wrote/spoke, unless some specific issue arose.
It wasn't until the French Revolution that the governments cared that the common man was not following the centralization policies.
I'm no expert on Asian history, but from what I do know, I believe most early centralization attempts were like the pre-revolution type in Europe. It wasn't until after they experienced some form of Westernization that the second type occurred.
The French Revolution's tendency to purge hereditary aristocrats was not new or unique to the French Revolution. Successful peasant uprisings in European history had always tended to destroy the aristocracy as they started winning. When you are rebelling against control by a dynasty, if you don't kill off the aristocrats as a whole, they will tend to rally outside support against you and come back with an army raised by their cousins and pen-pals from outside the immediate zone held by the rebels. Physically sacking centers of aristocratic power (such as castles), destroying the means by which the aristocrats administered the area to their benefit (such as by destroying tax records), and ensuring that the dynasty being overthrown wouldn't just bounce back and restore the status quo (by killing or driving off all members of the dynasty in a position to inherit) would be goals in any event.The purges probably
Fascism is a great illustration of the difference between a populist government and a democratic government. You can say that your ideas and your Maximum Leader represent "the real YourCountry" without actually listening to what the preponderance of people in YourCountry say. You can derive legitimacy from the idea that "The People are behind you" without, y'know, actually having institutions designed to give The People any real check on your power.I am well aware, but he also wasn't wrong when you read between the lines of what he's getting at. He's not saying that fascism is a representative democratic government in which the majority of citizens get to decide on what legislation the government enacts, but definitely that fascist totalitarianism was pretty much a mass popular government requiring levels of civic involvement much higher than despotisms in Europe that had appeared in the centuries before. It requires an enormous groundswell of popular will to actually exist and achieve its goals, it's a whole people struggling for something. That's why even children in schools were forced to wear political uniforms and put up with blackshirt indoctrination. Gentile is certainly reframing what is and isn't "democratic" to paint a picture he wants, but the phenomenon he's describing actually exists and he's not lying. Having read the Doctrine of Fascism, none of it is a lie - it's a straight up bold-faced admission and post-hoc rationalisation/description of what the fascist movement in Italy has already been doing. Giovanni Gentile even says that before the fascists knew what they were or what they believed in, they knew how to die. Me ne frego. Because fascism is like that - very hard to define (not even modern academics can agree on it), uses vague justifications like "truth" and "nature", kicks your head in when you try to debate with it. Especially Italian fascism.
I also don't think it's fair to call fascism right-wing for this reason, if only because if they were seated in the National Assembly deciding on the fate of the king, I'm certain the fascists would have been seated on the left, probably very far on the left. Attempts to retroactively link fascism to old-style monarchical government, hierarchy and the traditions of the Ancien Regime are usually done using figures like Julius Evola, who were critical of the fascists and were considered to be extreme cranks even in their own time. Furthermore, the fascists in Italy were originally republicans and anticlerical quasi-socialists anyway (this is not me saying that I support fascism btw, simply saying that it is well-connected to all other modern totalitarianisms, and far closer to them in origin than other supposedly "right-wing" ideas).
Well, if you accept the divine right of kings, then of course everything bad that happens to a country after they kill their king is rightful punishment for upsetting the natural order.Plus, of course, the Republic's dire situation was caused by the revolutionaries seizing power and murdering their king. I don't think you get to use the emergency measures defence when you're largely responsible for causing the emergency in the first place.