Similarities Between French Revolution And American Revolution

The French and American revolutions were similar in multiple ways. Both revolutions started with independence in mind that the monarchical government wasn’t giving them, both were socially unstable to basically anyone who wasn’t wealthy, but the French revolution seemed to have more going on economically with food problems. The two revolutions were close to identical, apart from a couple of key differences. The pair took place in the second half of the eighteenth century, aiming to fix their society’s problems.

The governmental problems that caused the American Revolution started with the Seven Years’ War from 1756-1763. North American colonist were upset with British imperial rule, and the government was still facing financial difficulties from the war. The French revolution began quite

similarly. Fiscal problems caused half of France’s revenue to go to war debts, and another quarter to go to French armed forces. The French peoples also wanted independence. However, unlike the American Revolution they wanted to completely renovate the political, social, and cultural stance of France. Both populations of these revolutions even physically attacked government officials and militia to further prove how serious they were.
The social outcomes for these revolutions were, in a way, better. Colonist, nobles, aristocrats, and peasants were, at the least, on the same side. This caused the class system to fail for this period of time. The only people who were siding with the government were the wealthy, because they could afford it, and possibly even profit from it. However, that didn’t matter much, as the revolutionist probably had the person’s head on a stick by the end of the day. The American revolt even made an impact to not pay under the tea act by dumping a cargo of tea into Boston harbor. The French made a similar statement by attacking the Bastille in search of weapons and mounted the head of the garrison commander on a pike and walked around the streets of Paris with it. The French people really liked to sever heads.
One difference the revolutions had was the outcome economically.

With this revolt already in progress, in 1788 a hail storm destroyed most of the crops for the French. On top of that the winter was severe too, which caused the worst harvest in decades. This made things even worse with money. Because there were less crops, the price obviously went up, way up. Of course the rich didn’t mind because they could pay the cost. However, the peasants were sent through a rough time with nothing to eat. The American Revolution didn’t quite experience anything like this, so the worst they were doing economically was the taxes to colonist, whereas the French had this added to the problems they already had.

To conclude, the revolutions were very much similar in many ways, but they also had their differences. In the end, the American revolution was successful and ended with the creation of the Constitution. The French, however, weren’t as lucky. The revolution led to the leadership of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799, which wasn’t a bad thing at first. However, his Russian campaign caused a coalition of many armies to take France and convert it back to it’s original monarchy. What a waste of

time.