Date: February 3rd, 2005 02:04 pm (UTC)From:white_hart
Well, there has been an English parliament in existence in some form or another since 12-something and Simon de Montfort, although the social composition has changed hugely over the centuries. So there's always been some tradition of non-absolute monarchy (from what I recall Anglo-Saxon traditions tended to involve decisions made by council, so I suspect there was inbuilt resistance to Norman autocracy), which goes right back to Magna Carta and the power of the barons.
The French and Russian revolutions were led by middle-class intellectuals. Lawyers, journalists, doctors, teachers. The anciens regimes in those countries restricted the freedom of the middle classes so much that educated people with some money/property felt compelled to rise up against the system. Without them the peasant uprisings would have been fairly rapidly squelched. Whereas, if you read Jane Austen, who is fairly contemporaneous with the French Revolution, you can see how much the professional classes were integrated with the gentry - there's little real distinction between the baronet, the clergyman and the doctor, and often the titled nobility were the poorer. The British bourgeoisie were just too comfortable to want to rock the boat.
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Date: February 3rd, 2005 02:04 pm (UTC)From:The French and Russian revolutions were led by middle-class intellectuals. Lawyers, journalists, doctors, teachers. The anciens regimes in those countries restricted the freedom of the middle classes so much that educated people with some money/property felt compelled to rise up against the system. Without them the peasant uprisings would have been fairly rapidly squelched. Whereas, if you read Jane Austen, who is fairly contemporaneous with the French Revolution, you can see how much the professional classes were integrated with the gentry - there's little real distinction between the baronet, the clergyman and the doctor, and often the titled nobility were the poorer. The British bourgeoisie were just too comfortable to want to rock the boat.