Imperial Overstretch And The Great Price Revolution

To begin, the economic situation prior to the onset of the revolution needs adequate explanation. According to political economist, Dr. Eugene Nelson White, “In the century preceding the Revolution, the French Crown was subject to persistent budgetary crises.” These budgetary crises stemmed from Imperial Overstretch and the Great Price Revolution. While the stress caused from these situations was profound, many other European nations and nation-states found ways of working around this issue through some form of governmental address. Weaknesses particularly unique to the French political structure hampered their ability to properly adapt to these increased level of debt, which forced strain on an already socially stressed lower class. …show more content…
In a review of Earl J. Hamilton’s work American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501-1650, John Munro using Hamilton’s work notes that the Great Price Revolution was an extended period of inflation seen in the European economic realm, but acknowledges that it was unique in that the “persistence and duration of the inflation [was] over a period of at least 130 years.” While explaining the origins of the price revolution as situated in the rise of the colonial trade system alongside the rise in gold and silver in the fiscal system itself, Dr. Ömer Lutfi Barkan notes that, “an inevitable result of this situation was an immense inflation throughout Europe, with vast repercussions in its social and political order.” In order to raise the proper level of funds to combat this issue and stabilize the French economy, the French monarchy chose to attempt increased levels of taxation on its citizens. While the upper classes struggled, for the most part successfully, against the monarchical attempts at stripping them of their protection from taxation, the third estate faced an exceedingly convoluted tax system, diverse to each area, filled with old and forgotten laws and …show more content…
Small actions such a refusal by young peasant men to make ‘signs of submission’ to seigneurs, obscene jousts in prose directed at the monarchy even to the point of inferring sexual inadequacy in the king due to the size of his member, showed a bold disregard of respect for the conventional forms of social order. This blatant disregard of respect seen openly writhing within the lower class added to their long-term and short-term fiscal hardships eventually built up into the fervor of revolt seen later in the