American And French Revolution Dbq Analysis

In the American and French Revolution, both the American and French Revolution tried to use some ideas from the European Enlightenment to help resolve some of the problems that were going on. The Enlightenment ideals were mainly focused on reason to solve problems going on. Philosophers such as Hobbes states that people are naturally selfish, cruel, and greedy and started to question the rights of men that state to have some sort of power given to them. They were influenced by these ideas, trying to use logic to find solutions for their current government and societal issues. Many things worked and many terribly failed. Both had failures, but obviously there was one revolution that was more successful than the other. Although the Americans and French both pursued …show more content…
First of all, both Americans and the French desired for basic human rights. The concept of “natural rights” introduced by John Locke included the idea that all men have the rights of life, liberty, and property. (Doc1). The French, for example, had a problem with the three estates. The nobles and the clergy, who were the First and Second Estate, weren't having to pay any taxes, and the commoners, the Third Estate, instead, had to pay the taxes and weren't getting paid. In Document 3, pre-revolutionary French cartoonist illustrates these plights. The king, the clergy, and the nobles are relying on the labor and taxes of the Third Estate. The suffering of the peasant farmer showed in the drawing proves that the cartoonist, and others of the Third Estate, resented this. The French initially tried to solve this problem, as evidenced in the “Cahier of the Third Estate of the City of Paris” document where educated members of the Third Estate