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Contemporary Political History: The French Revolution and its legacy · Causes and Outbreak (1789)

How debt, privilege and new ideas collided in 1787-1789 to turn a royal tax crisis into a revolution.

Contemporary Political History · 28 questions

Try 3 questions

1. In pre-1789 France, society was divided into three estates. Who made up the Third Estate?

  1. Only urban merchants and lawyers
  2. Only peasants who worked the land
  3. Everyone outside the clergy and nobility
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Answer: Everyone outside the clergy and nobility

The Third Estate was everyone who was neither clergy (First) nor noble (Second): about 97% of the population, from peasants to wealthy bankers.

2. Why did Louis XVI agree to summon the Estates-General, which met in May 1789?

  1. A foreign army was threatening Paris
  2. The crown was close to bankruptcy
  3. Peasant revolts had toppled his governors
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Answer: The crown was close to bankruptcy

Royal debt was so large that interest payments consumed about half of state spending, and the privileged orders insisted only the Estates-General could approve new taxes.

3. Which war's costs sharply deepened French royal debt in the decade before 1789?

  1. The Crimean War against Russia
  2. The Hundred Years' War with England
  3. France's support for American independence
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Answer: France's support for American independence

France spent heavily backing the American colonies against Britain (1778-1783), financing it mostly with loans rather than taxes.

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