HIST 112 Chapter 18 Lecture_The West on the Verge of a New World Order

"IN PARIS ON THE MORNING of July 14, 1789, a mob of eight thousand men and women in search of weapons streamed toward the Bastille (bass-STEEL), a royal armory filled with arms and ammunition. The Bastille was also a state prison, and although it held only seven prisoners at the time, in the eyes of these angry Parisians, it was a glaring symbol of the government’s despotic policies. It was defended by the marquis de Launay (mar-KEE duh loh-NAY) and a small garrison of 114 men. The attack on the Bastille began in earnest in the early afternoon, and after three hours of fighting, de Launay and the garrison surrendered. Angered by the loss of ninety-eight protesters, the victors beat de Launay to death, cut off his head, and carried it aloft in triumph through the streets of Paris. When King Louis XVI was told the news of the fall of the Bastille by the duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt (dook duh lah-USH-foo-koh-lee-ahn-KOOR), he exclaimed, ‘‘Why, this is a revolt.’’ ‘‘No, Sire,’’ replied the duc. ‘‘It is a revolution.’’ The French Revolution was a key factor in the emergence of a new world order. Historians have often portrayed the eighteenth century as the final phase of an old Europe that would be forever changed by the violent upheaval and reordering of society associated with the French Revolution. Before the Revolution, the old order—still largely agrarian, dominated by kings and landed aristocrats, and grounded in privileges for nobles, clergy, towns, and provinces—seemed to continue a basic pattern that had prevailed in Europe since medieval times. As the century drew to a close, however, a new intellectual order based on rationalism and secularism emerged, and demographic, economic, social, and political patterns were beginning to change in ways that proclaimed the arrival of a new and more modern order. The French Revolution demolished the institutions of the old regime and established a new order based on individual rights, representative institutions, and a concept of loyalty to the nation rather than to the monarch. The revolutionary upheavals of the era, especially in France, created new liberal and national political ideals, summarized in the French revolutionary slogan, ‘‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,’’ that transformed France and then spread to other European countries and the rest of the world. "

The Essential World History

Author: William J Duiker; Jackson J Spielvogel

Publisher: Boston, MA : Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, [2013] ©2014

Edition/Format: Print book : English : Seventh editionView all editions and formats