Veeky Forums WHAT THE FUCK

Veeky Forums WHAT THE FUCK

Did we all fall for French Revolution meme? Holy shit it was utterly awful. I'm reading Leftism Revisited and K-L is talking about all the horrors of the French Revolution and is citing the fuck outta that shit. Is this what was done for democracy?
I watched a video really saying that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were actually pretty good royalty and Louis XVI was a good king.

So what are good books that discuss why the French Revolution was unwarranted?

book about the evils of the revolution?

book about Louis XVI as a king prior to the revolution?

t. American

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Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoirs_Illustrating_the_History_of_Jacobinism
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kościuszko_Uprising#Uprising
alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/harvest-failures/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

Reflections on the Revolution in France

The French Revolution was an unending string of atrocities and anybody who argues otherwise is not worth listening to.

However, reactionaries who praise the ancien regime are being dumbasses. The situation for the commoners in France had been extremely fucked up for a long time, there are various perspectives on this and what the causes were, but it's a fact that France had especially archaic social constitution combined with extremely radical intellectual movements, so something was going to give.

Citizens by Schama or Carlyle's history, and maybe the black jacobins.

This is dry unreadable shit written before the terror, mainly complaining correctly about ideology run amok without deference for stability, and also certain gentlemans clubs who were supporting the tennis court oath. Just read a good biography on burke.

Anyways

>Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were good royalty
Good monarchs dont have total collapses of credit, or spend their time in the tower fixing fucking clocks, or flee the country or have foreign troops do battle with their own citizens. Louis was intransigent early and thought he could role the revolution, but he was legit autistic and it flopped. Antoinette was a roasty par excellance. Not to mention that the leftism that Burke hates is essentially classical liberalism, or pre-reagan american conservatism, since it happened before the ascension of the Jacobin club.
Reminder that it wasnt just ideology. You had to pay a tax on every single fucking commodity, and there were customs checkpoints in every neighborhood in paris. The state was squeezing and people reacted, and there were some bad fuckin harvests too
>Democracy
This was not what they were seeking, they wanted a constitution and better financial management and respect for the french legislature on the english model
>Horrors of the revolution
pretty tame compared to 20th century utopian terror

nah dude, kings are gay

It was the greatest movement in human liberty but at the cost of many lives. Too bad such a monumental period is tainted with such atrocities.

Burke's prose is great. The book's not even particularly long.

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I studied it in school, and read it independently. Its dry as fuck (random page included), and since user seems to be a fairly stupid 17 year old kekistani i doubt he will be reading in depth and looking for parallels with communism like a good modern center-right type. Im not criticizing his genius, or his thought process, but as far as reflections goes, its not accessible (i think his work on the sublime is far more palatable desu)

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meant for

>Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were actually pretty good royalty
Stopped reading

>You had to pay a tax on every single fucking commodity, and there were customs checkpoints in every neighborhood in paris. The state was squeezing and people reacted
Didn't Louis XVI raise taxes on the nobility to ease up on the peasantry, but the nobility didn't want to do that? I've also read that Louis XVI was planning to allow local parliaments to be established.
It fr seemed like a revolution speared headed by a small minority of aristocrats and the commoners suffered the death toll.

>pretty tame compared to 20th century utopian terror
For 18th century, it seems the French did as much evil as they could, given the lack of technology and nonsystematic approach; granted famine is not technologically advanced when killing, but collectivization is clearly systematic, in regards to the 20th century. I do not think it's fair nor tasteful to not bat an eye at an evil event just because there was different one that takes the cake for evil.
Besides, the most atrocious century of death, the 20th, spanning ~70 years does not mean that the atrocities in the French Revolution, spanning 10 years, were not atrocious.

I think he's referring to their intentions; I mean, one example is Marie Antoinette donating sums of her money to the poor and begging Louis XVI to do the same.

Read Les Mis if you want the most autistically unbiased description of the two sides.

not super versed on the subject, but i remember reading that the aristocracy was pretty corrupt and abusive.
so even if the king and queen were decent, it was more the aristocracy as a whole that was being overthrown, not just the king.

Satanic conspiracy. See The History of Jacobinism by Barruel:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoirs_Illustrating_the_History_of_Jacobinism

Free English editions on Google Books.

Absolutely disgusting reading about the "Infernal Columns". Or any other part of the revolution really. The driving force was money, the burghers wanted to dominate society and look, they got their way. We are leaving in their hellhole today, global capitalism. Full Kali Yuga mode engaged, speeding towards the abyss.

That's kind of like Bill Gates making billions on monopolizing personal computing and then donating a couple mill to computers for schools in Africa though.

Even a casual perusal of the wikipedia pages on Saint-Just and Robespierre should tell you the FR was not a good idea.

Read Carlyle.

Horrible comparison

The Nobility agreed to taxation in 1790. Everyone forgets that there were two revolutions and a conservative reaction.

1789-90: Bankruptcy, burgher liberals make a stand and demand representation, Tennis Court Oath
1792: Second revolution, state of virtue, terror, reign of Robespierre. Effective mob rule
1794: Thermidorian Reaction: Conservative republicans run the state until Napoleon usurps control.

As far as doing everything they could, conservatives did just as well in somewhat more normal situations:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kościuszko_Uprising#Uprising

And the vendee, removed from the confines of ideology, was a peasant uprising that was crushed.

Rising of 1832 had 0 (zero) to do with 1790 or 1792.

All the pussies ITT not in love with blood and chaos..shaking my damned head family.

alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/harvest-failures/

Good intentions dont feed the masses

There is literally nothing wrong with guillotining the nobility.

this

Atheism never killed any-

Killing people is ba-

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>I can only handle events where I can neatly allocate every actor into two boxes labelled 'good' and 'bad'
>t. American

This is why your country is crumbling

Historiography on the French Revolution is extremely contentious and politically compromised, there is no easy path except reading multiple perspectives and making up your own mind on it. The revisionist historians have just as much axes to grind as the traditional class-based view.
Perhaps you should start with Peter McPhee's recent books on the topic, he gives you a taste of the multiple interpretations and good recommendations for further reading.

Whatever happen to their new atheist calendar?

Could anyone recc some reading on civil disobedience? Is it ever just to break the law in favour of morality?

Read yourself "A Tale of Two Cities". I admit that a serious history is better for aquiring real knowledge. But if you only want the revolution and a novel- the Dickens will do.

Marie Antoinette did nothing wrong

t. Oscar

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Thanks my guy; that is probably the best way to approach the French Revolution.

for dry unreadable shit it was pretty popular among, well, everyone in Britain. It was popular enough that it went through 11 editions in a year.

>Monarch runs massive plunder economy
>Bankrupt because they cease to plunder effectively
>New Monarch takes reigns and fails to plunder
>Revolution overthrows Monarchy
>Reign of Terror ensues
>Emperor installed
>Revitalizes plunder economy
>Eventually fails to plunder enough
>Plunder economy can no longer be sustained
>Emperor finally permanently exiled

I take it as more a lesson in economics than in philosophy. At some point someone should have invested in reforming their old model instead of trying to revitalize it.

Mods are cancer

It's fucking ridiculous

The separation between Veeky Forums and Veeky Forums is barely coherent really. I mean wasn't this supposed to be a philosophy board, but all philosophy discussion still happens on Veeky Forums.

Every time I tried to post about philosophy on Veeky Forums it gets deleted. Then when I try to post about it on Veeky Forums they tell me to come here.