This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the French Revolution article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject History, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the subject of History on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.HistoryWikipedia:WikiProject HistoryTemplate:WikiProject Historyhistory articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject European history, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the history of Europe on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.European historyWikipedia:WikiProject European historyTemplate:WikiProject European historyEuropean history articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject France, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of France on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.FranceWikipedia:WikiProject FranceTemplate:WikiProject FranceFrance articles
This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history articles
This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-class status:
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of politics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PoliticsWikipedia:WikiProject PoliticsTemplate:WikiProject Politicspolitics articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Conservatism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of conservatism on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ConservatismWikipedia:WikiProject ConservatismTemplate:WikiProject ConservatismConservatism articles
French Revolution was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Latest comment: 6 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.
Impact: North America
The French Revolution had profound effects on the people of San Domingo, modern-day Haiti. The French Revolution served as a guideline and proof a revolution could take place to rework social balance, as well as a massive inspiration to the revolutionaries on the island. White slave owners in San Domingo were terrified of the idea of a slave revolt. This led to a splitting of the island into Patriots and Loyalists. Ultimately tensions would boil to the point of an outright rebellion which would prove effective as the world's only successful slave revolt.
[1]JohnOverton1 (talk) 05:20, 23 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 days ago6 comments3 people in discussion
I've found the diffs from @Goszei to @Aemilius Adolphin interesting. In particulare the phrase The Assembly largely represented the bourgeoisie, who hoped to usher in a property-owning democracy. is very interesting. It is a shame that the body doesn't develop this adequatelly, since this have been such a major topic over the centuries. From the requirement to get into the National Assembly, to the actual repartitions of professions on it, to how the property penalties contributed to the end of Robespierre etc
I don't have the time to do the work right now on the body, but I'll open this discussion just in case I will be able to later, or someone else watching the page might want to chip in. Cinemaandpolitics (talk) 14:30, 8 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
Some may argue that the specific phrasing of a "bourgeois revolution" is a Marxist one since he made it famous, but I don't think that stating the revolution was the point in France where the middle classes (the bourgeoisie) gained supremacy over the nobility and ended feudalism is at all historically controversial. Alexis de Tocqueville and others argued for the same view in The Old Regime and the Revolution. The historiography section of this article is rather muddled and missing these major viewpoints, and could use improvement before we add it to the lead. — Goszei (talk) 17:24, 8 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
Yes, needs development in body first and then adding to lead. Sadly I can't help directly since I still have to find the time to edit the Saint-Just page...
The issue is that all the recent scholarship I have read tends to undermine the received idea that there was a unified middle class and shows that the term "bourgeoisie" is misleading. From memory, the research shows that most members of the third estate were lawyers, journalist and state bureaucrats. Only about 6% were merchants or businessmen. I can chase up the sources again. As for "who hoped to usher in a property-owning democracy" I think this is the sort of simple explanation we need to avoid. Too often, we are tempted to simplify history into an easy to digest story and introduce phrases which mean nothing. What is a property-owning democracy and who exactly used that phrase at the time? Very few of the third estate wanted a "democracy" as we envisage it: where all adult males and females have the right to stand for and vote for an assembly with full leglative power. From what I have read it seems that when the old regime collapsed they found that power was suddenly thrust into their hands and they didn't know exactly what they wanted and what they should do with it. And the rest is history. I would also suggest that we don't need much more detail in this article because it is already too long. Detail is for the sub articles. But by all means we should play around with the wording and come up with something which is concise and accurate without spinning simple narratives which aren't supported by the bulk of modern scholarship. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 22:14, 8 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
By the way, I think Goszei is doing a good job in improving the leads of several articles. Sometimes I push back on particular things,sometimes other editors push back more, but generally I think Goszei is good at stimulating other editors into retinking long-established leads. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 22:21, 8 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
I agree that bourgeoisie is an umbrella term that can be avoided, something like your description of the composition of the national assembly can find a spot on the lead. Same goes for the goals, "property-owning democracy" is probably misleading in two ways, but it can be expanded to something that makes more sense and is able to describe what where the new economy right pushed for at that time. Cinemaandpolitics (talk) 19:54, 9 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
level-3 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
Not done: this is not the right page to request additional user rights. You may reopen this request with the specific changes to be made and someone may add them for you, or if you have an account, you can wait until you are autoconfirmed and edit the page yourself. Jamedeus (talk) 19:39, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
