Social Class System During The French Revolution

The French Revolution was necessary because it successfully solved France’s most pressing problem: the unfair treatment of peasants.

The French Revolution was necessary because before the revolution, there was massive inequality between the peasants and the rest of the estates. In 18th century France, people were classified into a particular social class based on the family they were born into. Peasants were the lowest class, and were destined to work the land of the noble upon whose land they lived on. The realities of this social class system can be seen in the government records of land ownership and taxation before and after the French Revolution. The records are likely from Napoleon’s government in the early 19th century, after Napoleon took control of France. According to the
Instead, the clergy and nobles, which represented only 3% of the population, owned 45% of the land. (Official Records from French Government) These records show the extreme disparity between the resources of the peasants and the resources of the clergy. An extremely small minority owned almost a majority of the land, while the vast majority of people owned a small minority of the land. Instead of working to reverse these inequalities, the absolute monarchy deepened the inequalities by unequal taxation. Although peasants owned a disproportionately small percentage of land in France, they paid the vast majority of taxes. According to the Napoleonic records, peasants spent 88% of their small initial earnings on taxes to the nobility, church, and government. This extreme inequality made the revolution a necessity. A country with such inequalities is not serving its people, and needs to be changed. As John Locke argued, government must have the consent of the governed. When the vast majority of the country is economically disadvantaged and the government further entrenches their poverty by harshly taxing them, the government is no longer