Simon Schama

In the following viewpoint Simon Schama argues that the financial difficulties France experienced in the 1770s and 1780s were not a primary cause of the revolution. According to Schama it was the perception, not the reality, of irreparable economic problems that caused anxiety and unrest. He contends that although the various wars France fought during the eighteenth century created substantial debts, those debts were no worse than those of other European nations. Schama is a professor of history at Columbia University in New York City and the author of Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, the source of the following viewpoint.

If the causes of the French Revolution are complex, the causes of the downfall of the monarchy are not. The two phenomena are not identical, since the end of absolutism...