Question

Explain the rise and importance of the middle class in the French Revolution.

Answer 1

Instructions:
This answer for this question can be broken down into three parts.

1. Three estate divisions and its members
2. Emergence of middle class from the third estate-cause
3. Ideas they spread

Solution:
French society was divided into three estates, where estate 1 had clergy, estate 2 had the nobility and estate 3 comprised peasants and working class people. Eventually the Third Estate became prosperous due to industrialization and trade. They got access to education and new ideas. The eighteenth century witnessed the emergence of new social groups, emerging from the third estate called the middle class. The middle class included professions such as lawyers or administrative officials. All of these were educated and believed that no group in society should be privileged by birth. Philosophers like John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau envisioned a society based on freedom and equal laws and opportunities for all. In his Two Treatises of Government, Locke refuted the doctrine of the divine and absolute right of the monarch. Rousseau proposed a form of government based on a social contract between people and their representatives. In the Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu proposed a division of power within the government between the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. These ideas eventually led to revolutions and made France a republic.