3 INTERPRETATIONS OF FRENCH REVOLUTION

The three interpretations of the French Revolution: Liberal, Conservative, & Socialist.

The fundamental event of European history in the eighteenth century was the French Revolution. From its outbreak in 1789, the Revolution touched and transformed social values and political systems in France, in Europe, and eventually throughout the world. France's revolutionary regime conquered much of Western Europe with its arms and with its ideology. The three interpretations of the French Revolution were Liberal, Conservative, and Social.
French Revolution’s ideals defined the essential aspirations of modern liberal society, while its bloody conflicts posed the brutal dilemma of means versus ends. The revolutionaries supported individual liberty, rejecting all forms of random constraint: monopolies on commerce, feudal charges laid upon the land and even (in 1794) black slavery overseas. They said that political authority required constitutional government, elections, and legislative supre...