ABSTRACT
Although the U.S. Declaration of Independence and subsequent American Revolution took place thirteen years before the French Revolution, the latter was seen at the time as more significant. By 1789 the American nation had barely begun to exist as a political entity, while France was a world power with a long and storied history. A number of the intellectuals who inspired Thomas Jefferson and others to declare independence, largely on the basis of natural rights, were French (such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau). The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen responded not only to the Enlightenment view of natural rights but also to the harsh economic conditions that France suffered at the time as well as what was seen as the opulence and arrogance of the nobility and of the reign of King Louis XVI. By the end of the 1700s, France had incurred tremendous debt (in part because of its support of the Americans against the British in the American Revolution), and a very heavy tax burden was placed on the French citizenry. Although France was a monarchy, Louis XVI had permitted a body, called the Estates-General, to function somewhat as a legislative body. The Estates-General consisted of three groups: the clergy, the nobility, and “propertied” commoners (i.e., citizens who owned property). The Third Estate (i.e., the propertied citizens) quickly broke away from the Estates-General and convinced the First Estate (the clergy) to join them. They formed the National Constituent Assembly, one of whose first acts was to draft what came to be known as the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. The primary author of the declaration was the Marquis de LaFayette, who had served alongside American troops in the American Revolution. In drafting the declaration, LaFayette collaborated directly with Thomas Jefferson. Following the French Revolution and the downfall of the French monarchy, the declaration became the preamble of the French Constitution of 1791.
