After the French Revolution, how much did France change -and how much did it stay the same? (Xpost from Asksocialscience)

by ademnus

First asked here and was recommended to ask in this sub.

What were the social and political changes in France as a result of the French Revolution and, also, how much did not happen or change as was perhaps hoped for / expected?

molstern

Oh, man. So much changed.

More schools, more education. The court of appeals, which still exists today, was established. Culturally, the French Revolution is the beginning of the masculine norms we see today being the ideal on a large scale. Previously, the ideal man was a wealthy noble, too fancy to lift a finger and covered in powder and delicate fabrics. After the revolution, the aristocracy was no longer the ideal and the more popular styles became popular. Men stopped wearing wigs and cut their hair short, and started wearing riding boots instead of delicate heels with buckles which had been the height of fashion before.

These new ideals were very political, and the expectation was that men would be political and therefore following political fashions. The same wasn't true of women, and women during the radical phase of the revolution looked more like they did before 1789 than the men did. However, after the end of the Terror the fashions went crazy and looked completely unrecognizable. Compare Marie-Antoinette to Jane Austen.

Maybe the fashions aren't the most important thing, but they meant that France post-revolution looked like a different society entirely.

The Revolution was also the beginning of the ideologies (including the word "ideology") that became prominent during the 19th century, conservatism, liberalism, socialism and communism. These developed as responses to the events of the revolution, and completely changed the political landscape from that of 1789.

Politically, the revolution meant the end of the absolute monarchy. The monarchy did come back, but never as strong as it was, and never for long.

The Revolution abolished feudal property. In 1780 feudal property rights were as real as capitalist property is to a liberal today, and abolishing them took time. It wasn't completed until 1793, and this kind of property never came back, either. It created a free market for the first time, without restrictions based on the privileges of the nobility. There was also a ban on guilds, unions and strikes that survived for a very long time. All this was important/useful for the development of capitalism.

The laws were codified and homogenized, France had a constitution for the first time.

This is just some of it, obviously. I'm trying to think of everything but that's doomed to fail lol

Whether the changes that were hoped for were accomplished depends on who you ask and also what time period you look at. Different groups during the revolution had different goals, and some of what they fought for wasn't accomplished during their lifetimes, but the struggle continued and has been won in the two centuries since then.

Of course a lot stayed the same, too. After the thermidorean reaction (the aftermath of the death of Robespierre) a lot of the gains of the Parisian workers were rolled back. Their access to food was as bad as it had been before, if not worse. The class society remained, only the blood-based aristocracy was replaced by a capital-based aristocracy. The grassroots movements were crushed. In the end, many thought they were worse off than they had been before, the majority of the gains having gone to the new upper class.