1023 at the End of Term Paper

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Robespierre had Danton and his followers arrested, convicted, and beheaded.

A movie produced on Danton by Poland's Andrzej Wajda in 1983 clearly showed the zeal of the revolutionaries against this Rule of Terror (Weiss). The movie argues that Robespierre was so concerned with keeping his own power, he destroyed the principles on which the revolution was founded. In a scene of the film, the Convention realizes Robespierre's intentions, and someone yells, "Down with the dictator!" Robespierre destroys the revolution by using violence to enforce democratic ideals. During the trial Danton sums up what Robespierre has done: "Revolutionary principles have made you forget the revolution."

The Enlightenment ended after the devastation of the French Revolution and Napoleonic era, rise of a religious revival and growth of the Industrial Revolution and business class. However, much of the philosophies of this time continue today through constitutions of countries including the U.S.'

France was not the only country impacted by the Enlightenment. This excerpt is taken from Alejo Carpentier's the Kingdom of this World, recounting the insurrections led by slaves Mackandal and Bouckman against King Henri Christophe:

Macandal was now lashed to the post. The executioner had picked up an ember with the gong. With a gesture rehearsed the evening before in front of a mirror, the Governor unsheathed his dress sword and gave the order for the sentence to be carried out. The fire began to rise towards the Mandingue, licking his legs. At that moment Macandal moved the stump of his arm, which they had been unable to tie up, in a threatening gesture which none the less terrible for being partial, howling unknown spells and violently thrusting his torso forwards.
The bonds fell off and the body of the Negro rose in the air, flying overhead, until it plunged into the black waves of the sea of slaves. A single cry filled the square: Macandal saved!

The slaves rose up in 1791 and by 1803 had driven the whites out of Saint-Domingue, declaring the independent Republic of Haiti.

Driven by slave labor, the colony of Saint-Domingue produced a variety of products for motherland, France. When the French Revolution broke out, there were distinct sets of interest groups in Saint-Domingue: wealthy whites plantation owners and their slaves; merchants; 30,000 free persons of color; 500,000 slaves; and maroons, run-away slaves living in the mountains.

The Saint-Domingue slaves, motivated significantly by the Enlightenment that talked of human equality in France, wanted a similar movement in their country, but the white landowners resisted. Twelve years later, after a brutal revolution, the slaves were victors.

The Enlightenment proposed a new way for political reorganization. The leading thinkers promoted innovative ideas of individual and collective liberty. It is this philosophy that definitely helped to precipitate the French and Haitian Revolutions.

Belloc, Hillaire. French Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1911.

Carpentier, Alejo. The Kingdom of this World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989.

Cranston, Maurice. The intellectual origins of the French Revolution. History Today, 1989, 39.

Dubois, Laurent. Avengers of the World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004

Weiss, Andrew. Danton and the Destruction….....

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