Compare and Contrast American and French Post-Revolutionary Governments

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Compare and Contrast American and French Post-Revolutionary Governments Inspired by the Enlightenment ideas of the 17th century concerning the nature of man, France and the British colonies of North America both strove to achieve a democratic form of government by carrying out revolutions. They took up arms against the established system in hopes of creating this new style of administration that the previous century had championed. Both North America and France were ruled by absolute monarchies at the time, and the concepts of natural equality, self-government by the people, and inalienable rights that the philosophes of the Enlightenment had proposed were extremely appealing to the harshly taxed lower class. But only one country, however, was able to successfully complete its revolution and implement their sought after democratic rule. The North American colonies were able to achieve their goal of forming a democracy while the French were not due to the differences in their pre-revolutionary political systems and the nature of the respective revolutions themselves. These factors also affected the formation of their subsequent forms of dissimilar governments. Many ideas came out of the Enlightenment that had to do with the nature of man, but there were three in particular that this essay will point out. One of these ideas professed that all men are born with certain God-given, unalienable rights. Under this no monarch, king or other form of government had the right to infringe on these rights and harm peoples’ liberties and freedoms. Another notion concerned the equality of all before the law and in government. It is important to note, however, that during this time period “all” simply referred to white males. The lower class of France found these two ideas especially enchanting, since they were unequal in both politics and society. The colonies, however, found

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