French Revolution. Chapter 17 pp504-507

This section is about the French Revolution. The French government was facing bankruptcy because the government had attempted many times to modernize the tax system and make it more fair for the lower classes, but it was opposed by the more privileged classes. King Louis XVI made an effort to raise taxes by calling the Estates General. In 1789, third estate representatives broke loose and declared themselves the National Assembly. This assembly drew up the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and launched the French Revolution. This revolution was driven by social conflicts. Nobility resisted monarchic efforts to tax them, middle class resented aristocratic privileges, poor suffered from inflation and unemployment, and the peasants were oppressed. The Enlightenment ideas gave people a leeway to  articulate grievances but the Revolution was far more violent than the American Revolution. Effects of this revolution included slavery being abolished for a while, the ending of hereditary privileges, the king and queen being executed, and the Terror which killed thousands and thousands of people.