The True Origin of the French Revolution What Historians Get Wrong

By 1788, nearly half of everything the French crown spent went straight to servicing old debt. France wasn’t a poor country. It had Western Europe’s largest population and a thriving economy. Its government was simply broke, and had been for over a decade before anyone stormed anything. In this video, we trace how that happened: Turgot’s 1776 dismissal for proposing modest tax reforms, the debt-financed American war that followed, Necker’s 1781 Compte Rendu and the accounting gap critics later seized on, Calonne’s 1786 land tax and the Assembly of Notables that rejected it in 1787, Brienne’s 1788 suspension of payments and the call for the Estates-General, the hailstorm and bread crisis that hit at the worst possible moment, and the voting dispute that turned the Third Estate into the National Assembly on June 17, 1789, just weeks before the Bastille fell. This isn’t the let-them-eat-cake version taught in survey courses. It’s the thirteen-year fiscal collapse that made July 14th almost inevitable. 🔔 Subscribe for more deep dives into the hidden forces shaping our world. 👍 Like this video if you found it thought-provoking. #FrenchRevolution #EconomicHistory #Bastille #LouisXVI #RevisionistHistory #Geopolitics Sources: William Doyle, Origins of the French Revolution, Oxford University Press David R. Weir, “Tontines, Public Finance, and Revolution in France and England, 1688-1789,” Journal of Economic History, vol. 49 (1989) Thomas Sargent and François Velde, “Macroeconomic Features of the French Revolution,” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 103, no. 3 (1995) Georges Lefebvre, The Great Fear of 1789, Princeton University Press Encyclopaedia Britannica, “French Revolution” World History Encyclopedia, “Estates-General”