They did it first. That scared the shit out of our aristocracy and they cracked down on agitators.
We had the civil wars a century and a half earlier.
They resulted in the king being killed, although no-one wanted thay at the start, and a commonwealth being established for a while. Then a king was restored.
It is estimated that between 100,000 and 200,000 people were killed over that period.
At the start of the French revolution, no-one wanted the king to be killed, but he was. Following the revolution a king was restored.
It is estimated that around 100,000 people were killed across France.
Looked at like that, the two were not so different.
This is exactly why the revolution didn’t spread to Britain. They has just gone through the most cataclysmic internal conflict where they traded one, moderately awful king for a brutal, borderline genocidal, dictator who outlawed pretty much everything that didn’t fit with his puritan faith, including Christmas and plays.
After the restoration there was no appetite among the British citizenry to go through anything like that again, especially once the Reign of Terror really kicked into gear.
I think the GP has it more correct; France wanted a democratic parliament with representation for all*. What they got instead was a socialist revolution led by a paranoid puritan.
England had already survived Oliver Cromwell (their version of Napoleon) and had an established parliament with representation for all* and strict controls on royal power.
Meanwhile, British forces were all out trying to keep the colonies under control; you could easily argue that the formation of the US is the British version of the French Revolution — and then it happened again in other colonies, until England got sick of the liabilities and told the commonwealth to go manage itself.
Why does socialism seem so correlated or directly causitive to mass killings, I dont mean Denmark socialism, I mean like russian and the french kind at the time you’re talking about.
I thoroughly support socialized medicine and collective access and all the “goodies” stuff about socialism, I’m just curious how theres was always at some point a leap from the good shit to dystopia.
Unfettered neoliberal Capitalism is no better but its a whole lot better at sweeping all the social murder under the rug and gaining political support every other 4 years the pendulum seems to incomprehensibly swing the far opposite direction…sigh
