The Most Justified of All: Dutch, American, French, or Belgian Revolution?

The Most Justified of All?

  • Dutch Revolution

    Votes: 59 39.1%
  • American Revolution

    Votes: 16 10.6%
  • French Revolution

    Votes: 67 44.4%
  • Belgian Revolution

    Votes: 9 6.0%

  • Total voters
    151
I voted for the dutch revolution... completely unbiased (parents are dutch). but seriously, having an overlord of a different faith, beating down on you for your religion (i know not the only factor in the revolution), would be akin these days to having say the chinese ruling america, im sure that would piss the yanks in this forum off (i know crude comparision but just popped to mind first).
 
Dutch Revolution, they were being mistreated by a foreign power in a way that the Americans and Belgians weren't followed very closely by the French who being mistreated by a useless government.
 
The French Revolution, then the Dutch, then American, then Belgian.
Hell, even one of the so-called "Intolerable Acts" was the Quebec Act, which guaranteed more equality and freedom for the French and Catholic Quebeckers.
It was protested against because it gave Quebec literally everything past the 1763 Proclamation. Basically the colonists were told they couldn't go past there and all of a sudden Quebec gets it. WTF indeed.
 

scholar

Banned
Not a lot of them were exceptionally justified. The Belgians wanted independence from the Netherlands for a number of reasons, but mostly religion, pro-french/anti-dutch feeling, and lack of employment. The Dutch thought the wars waged by Spain were unprofitable, religion again, and the noblemen didn't like losing their power to their monarch. The American revolution was not so much taxes, but bad feeling spurred by the quartering of troops and massive propaganda campaigns brought on by such events as the Boston massacre. No Taxation without representation was just a marvelous propaganda piece. That said the revolution may have been avoidable with the olive branch.

The French revolution was brought on by the blunderings of Louis XVI. He did his best to reduce French spending but when things were bad for the state and it seemed like the french treasury would be suffering for years he made an appeal to the nobles, the nobles were horrified to find out just how much in debt France was and a massive rift opened between the monarch and his supporters. As the mini ice age drove much of their crop lands to famine, Louis XVI wanted to appeal to the French Public to adopt the potatoe as much of Europe had done to ease starvation and hunger, they refused and as many starved they blamed Louis and the government for it. Louis XVI tried to tax the public to help with debt, but the french nobles refused to pay for it, religion protected the priests, and that only left the middle and lower classes, who hated it tremendously. When this wasn't adequately working Louis XVI formed a parliament of sorts trying to find a way to get to a solution this way, only it failed tremendously. The Estates General was discriminatory in a number of ways and as famine spread throughout France and little progress was being done the revolution erupted. The French revolution was born out of people refusing to eat the potato and a monarch flopping helplessly as he tried desperately to protect his nation and his people.

None of them were justified. I suppose if I had to pick one I would go with the American revolution just because I'm American and patriotism makes me do so. The French revolution should not even be touched, I think a bunch of nobles wanting to protect their rights as the elite controllers of the Netherlands as more justified than that mess.
 
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MAlexMatt

Banned
And here I thought this was a left-wing forum.

All of those revolutions were justified. Oppressive government is the enemy of a free people no matter where and when it manifests, and such a free people have the right and duty to overthrow it.
 
And here I thought this was a left-wing forum.

All of those revolutions were justified. Oppressive government is the enemy of a free people no matter where and when it manifests, and such a free people have the right and duty to overthrow it.
agreed. If an autocrat (like Louis XVI or Nicholas II) refuses to accept the people's perrogative to govern themselves, that autocrat deserves whatever misfortune befalls them. Religious oppression is never justified. Belgium is the only one I have problems about, but that's because of Leo and his little adventure in africa more than anything else.
 

scholar

Banned
agreed. If an autocrat (like Louis XVI or Nicholas II) refuses to accept the people's perrogative to govern themselves, that autocrat deserves whatever misfortune befalls them. Religious oppression is never justified. Belgium is the only one I have problems about, but that's because of Leo and his little adventure in africa more than anything else.
You mean when Louis XVI encouraged a crop that would safe tens of thousands from starvation, gave them limited democratic freedoms where there were none, and tried desperately to protect his nation he deserved to get his head chopped off and be replaced by a far worse regime in the Reign of Terror?
 
You mean when Louis XVI encouraged a crop that would safe tens of thousands from starvation, gave them limited democratic freedoms where there were none, and tried desperately to protect his nation he deserved to get his head chopped off and be replaced by a far worse regime in the Reign of Terror?
There. It's the people's right to rule themselves. Nonviolent means would have gotten them nowhere, so therefore violence was needed. That what replaced it was worse is immaterial. Anyway, in the long run living conditions improved, and despite the restored Bourbon and everyone else's attempts to stop it, the democracy genie was out of the bottle and the Ancien Regime autocracies' days were numbered, so it was really worth it.

Edit: Limited is actually very generous towards Louis. Any decision made by the Third Estate (95% of the population) would be vetoed by the First and Second (5%). By those standards the Soviet Union had limited democratic freedoms. So did Imperial Japan. And Nazi Germany. And Maoist China. Nobody is calling Francisco Franco a democratic reformer, are they?
 

scholar

Banned
There. It's the people's right to rule themselves. Nonviolent means would have gotten them nowhere, so therefore violence was needed. That what replaced it was worse is immaterial. Anyway, in the long run living conditions improved, and despite the restored Bourbon and everyone else's attempts to stop it, the democracy genie was out of the bottle and the Ancien Regime autocracies' days were numbered, so it was really worth it.

Edit: Limited is actually very generous towards Louis. Any decision made by the Third Estate (95% of the population) would be vetoed by the First and Second (5%). By those standards the Soviet Union had limited democratic freedoms. So did Imperial Japan. And Nazi Germany. And Maoist China. Nobody is calling Francisco Franco a democratic reformer, are they?
The idea behind it was giving the lower class an equal say to the nobility and the clergy, the two factions that would have otherwise dominated the country.

Its unknown if it wouldn't have, they only stuck with it for a couple of years. By that standard even the most democratic governments in the world would be overthrown every few decades. Patience is a virtue and haste most undoubtedly made waste of both France and Europe. Great Britain didn't become democratic overnight, no nation in the world did. France under Louis took a step out of absolutism and towards a more moderate society and he got killed because of it. A revolution may have been justified regardless, but if Louis didn't try to work with the nobility and his people he may have been able to keep hold of his country.
 
The 1st and 2nd estates did dominate the country. They had veto power over anything the 3rd estate did. What Louis did was step away from absolutism and towards a return to feudalism. Neither give the people their right to govern.
 

scholar

Banned
The 1st and 2nd estates did dominate the country. They had veto power over anything the 3rd estate did. What Louis did was step away from absolutism and towards a return to feudalism. Neither give the people their right to govern.
The third estate also had veto power, which is something they never had before. The House of Lords had veto power too if I recall correctly as did the Senate, which was previously appointed without any democratic process.
 

iddt3

Donor
The American colonists had a system far freer and more liberal than that of their cousins in Britain. Plus they had to pay less taxes, and not contribute to the wars of the time (aside from raising their own militias when directly threatened). They even benefited from trade from all around the Empire (a state of commerce which they tried to maintain even after the ARW, rightly denied by a bitter Britain on grounds of things not working like that in real life).

The taxes were really only disliked because the elite of the American colonies were merchants and traders. People who were invested in smugglers and held an interest in keeping taxes down. The British couldn't even get the colonists to pay the taxes properly, and the coast made smuggling a nightmare - which negated many of the tariffs in the first place. Tea was really the only effective thing they could get the colonists to pay for (and they needed the money to help alleviate the debt racked up during the French and Indian War), but the colonists didn't like that anyway.

Hell, even one of the so-called "Intolerable Acts" was the Quebec Act, which guaranteed more equality and freedom for the French and Catholic Quebeckers.

On these grounds (and many more unmentioned ones), I think that the American Revolution was one of the least justified revolutions.
Ok, I would definitely rate the French and Dutch revolutions above the American in terms of justification, but your distorting the issues at hand. The colonial leadership wasn't bent on revolution till after the Olive Branch Petition had been rejected. In addition, after the American revolution, taxes were exponentially higher then they had been before. The issue wasn't that Americans didn't want to pay, it's that they wanted a say in the process. Moreover, the issue with the Quebec act wasn't the equality and freedom for Catholics (though there was some anger over that) it was giving the Northwest territory to Quebec.
 
And here I thought this was a left-wing forum.

All of those revolutions were justified. Oppressive government is the enemy of a free people no matter where and when it manifests, and such a free people have the right and duty to overthrow it.

Indeed. Just because the Americans had it better than their fellow British subjects on the home islands doesn't change the fact they were ruled unjustly. If the British at the time had risen up against their government due to a lack of democracy and arbitrary rule, that would have been justified too.
 
I say the least justified is the belgian because it was a little bit of a tax difference and a language reform. it would be like the illegal aliens here in the US reforming the US, and changing the language to Spanish.

The most justified is the French due to poverty. American for me is sort of justified, though I don't agree with some of the means done. Dutch, to be honest, I don't know much about to even judge it based on rationality
 
I still don't understand why people believe America revolted because of taxes. It had nothing to do with that. It was the fact that we were taxed without representation. We would have gladly paid the taxes if they consulted us first instead of just going ahead and not even talking to us about it.
 

MAlexMatt

Banned
I still don't understand why people believe America revolted because of taxes. It had nothing to do with that. It was the fact that we were taxed without representation. We would have gladly paid the taxes if they consulted us first instead of just going ahead and not even talking to us about it.

It wasn't even just about there being no consultation: They just outright bypasses our existing representative institutions in a blatant power grab. Parliament was essentially claiming ultimate jurisdiction over the whole empire. Regardless of the history there, Americans didn't want to be ruled by London fiat. If wanting to be ruled by a government that isn't a few months away by ship is unjustified, then NO rebellion is justified.
 
And here I thought this was a left-wing forum.

All of those revolutions were justified. Oppressive government is the enemy of a free people no matter where and when it manifests, and such a free people have the right and duty to overthrow it.

And defining "a government doing something we dislike" as oppressive is the enemy of law, peace, and justice and all the other benefits of stability.

There has to be a better reason for revolution than the people being ornery and independent-minded (which played a significant role in the American Revolution). I'm not saying such qualities are bad - just not sufficient to justify revolution.

It wasn't even just about there being no consultation: They just outright bypasses our existing representative institutions in a blatant power grab. Parliament was essentially claiming ultimate jurisdiction over the whole empire. Regardless of the history there, Americans didn't want to be ruled by London fiat. If wanting to be ruled by a government that isn't a few months away by ship is unjustified, then NO rebellion is justified.
That (the distance argument) is the most damning anti-revolutionary statement I've seen in any discussion on the subject, because Parliament wasn't doing anything where being months away by ship had anything to do with any laws it was passing(1).

If the colonists could keep up with the latest fashions and the latest ideas across months of ocean, and decide actual representation is overrated in discussion amongst themselves, the idea that Parliament exercising its authority to expect the colonists to pay taxes as opposed to get a free lunch off the British Empire(3) was an act of tyranny comparable to any of the others is stretching the term past all meaning.

1: Britain wasn't ruling on day to day policy, or policy based on reactions to something happening that needed an immediate response, so being "distant" isn't nearly the kind of issue it would be if it would be in those circumstances. If the colonists can keep up with discoveries and fashions across months of ocean, Parliament can keep up with anything important happening in regards to the policies it was covering with tightening up old laws and a handful of new ones just as efficiently. The colonists wanting increased autonomy may or may not be a legitimate issue, seven weeks sailing between Boston and London (as opposed to how far from Boston to Philadelphia by horseback?) isn't.

2: "They were ready enough to claim representation as a right but the fact was that they did not really want it in the flesh. The Stamp Act Congress agreed to declare it 'impractical'." - Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly. (Which, I should note, lists British policy here as a perfect example of folly, which I agree to - I'm defending it as lawful and morally acceptable, not wise and certainly handled in such a way as to make the problem worse, not better to make the situation worse - and people like me into reluctant rebels.)

3: All the protection of Empire and none of the burdens of supporting it. As for mercantilism, "'Not a hobnail or a horseshoe', (Pitt) once declared, should the colonies be allowed to manufacture." (Tuchman again) Yet, we don't see that in practice, do we? How much are the colonies actually depending on importing? There were colonial craftsman and artisans of all sorts after all. It would be pretty hard for them to do their job if importing every manufactured item. And for some professions, hard to exist.

It ought to be noted here that the friends of America - even those who weren't just picking the opposite side of the crown (look at the Wilkes Case - by the way, I'd say that was if not tyranny in the full certainly contrary to the spirit of Parliamentary privilege), and most were - were still supporters of Parliamentary authority. Pitt put it best: "Pitt went on to announce that the Stamp Act must be repealed 'absolutely, totally, immediately', and at the same time accompanied by a statement of 'sovereign authority over the colonies ....in a strong terms as can be devised and be made to extend to every point of legislation whatsoever - that we may bind their trade, confine their manufactures, and exercise every power whatsoever except that of taking their money out of their pockets without their consent.'"

And King George III's followers are the ones advocating tyranny? :eek: That's more tyrannical - not to mention splitting hairs so fine they could cut steel - than anything up to and including the Port Bill.

Related to note #2:

I've a question. In the context of British use of representation at the time, where "virtual representation" has the whole body politic represented by every member (as opposed to members elected from let's say London representing London and only London), what's the difference between how the Americans are represented and how Britons are? And how will adding American-resident representatives make any difference?

Yes, Pitt condemned this (and I mostly agree - I think the idea of "each representative represents the whole body politic" might not be the worst of all methods in a redesigned or newly designed democracy) but it was the system which adding American representatives wouldn't in itself eliminate, and the idea that the Americans are getting gyped of their "rights as Englishmen" needs to consider what "the rights of Englishmen" were rather than say that because 18th century Britain wasn't ruled by fully democratic principles it was tyrannizing the Americans.
 
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