I'm writing a paper on the French Revolution right now and I still don't quite get why historians consider it so significant. Sure, there was upheaval and violence, but what exactly makes it a turning point in European history?
The crux of it is that the French Revolution didn't just change France, but the whole idea of how society should actually function - that was completely new. Before that, it was clear-cut: the king rules, the nobility has privileges, the church has power, end of story. The Revolution, on the other hand, introduced concepts like human rights, equality before the law, and popular sovereignty into the world, which then had ripple effects everywhere across Europe and later worldwide. Without this break with the absolutist order, there probably wouldn't have been modern democracies or all the constitutions we know today - that's why historians regard it as a turning point.
Have you ever thought about what would've happened if the French Revolution never occurred? The thing is, it didn't just turn France upside down, it reshuffled the whole of European thought - it took the idea of human rights and equality out of philosophers' heads and made it concrete, put it in the streets. Before that it was more theoretical, but after it suddenly became real and visible to everyone 🤷♀️ Even though things got brutal, it laid the foundation for modern democracies and constitutions - without those we'd be going about politics totally differently today.
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