Posted: March 5th, 2022

This question is based on the five accompanying documents. The documents have been

Directions: This question is based on the five accompanying documents. The documents have been
edited for the purpose of this exercise.
In your response you should do the following.
 Respond to the prompt with a historically defensible thesis or claim that establishes a line of
reasoning.
 Describe a broader historical context relevant to the prompt.
 Support an argument in response to the prompt using at least four documents.
 Use at least two additional pieces of specific historical evidence (beyond that found in the
documents) relevant to an argument about the prompt.
 For at least two documents, explain how or why the document’s point of view, purpose, historical
situation, and/or audience is relevant to an argument.
 Use evidence to corroborate, qualify, or modify an argument that addresses the prompt.
Evaluate whether the French Revolution was motivated primarily by Enlightenment ideas or by
economic concerns.
Document 1
Source: Arthur Young, British agricultural expert, diary of his travels in France in the late 1780s
JUNE 1, 1787. The same wretched country continues; the fields are scenes of disgraceful management.
Yet all this farmland could be improved, if they knew what to do with it: Heaven grant me patience while
I see a country thus neglected—and forgive me the oaths I swear at the absence and ignorance of the
landlords.
JUNE 10. Met many beggars, which we had not done before. All the country girls and women are without
shoes or stockings; and the ploughmen at their work do not have clogs. This is poverty that strikes at the
root of national prosperity.
Document 2
Source: Charles, Count de Calonne, proposals presented to the Assembly of Notables [a group of French
noblemen called together by the king to enact financial reforms], 1787
Tax exemptions are defended by self-interest, influence, wealth and ancient prejudices which seem to be
hallowed by time. But what are all these together compared with the common good and the necessity of
the state? These abuses oppress the wealth-producing, laboring class. Unjust tax exemptions only relieve
one section of taxpayers by aggravating the condition of the others.
His Majesty has decided to remedy these defects by applying the rules of a strictly distributive justice, by
restoring the original intention behind the vingtième tax [a type of income tax], and by raising it to its true
value without increasing anyone’s contribution, and finally by abolishing every kind of tax exemption.
The vingtième will be replaced by a general land tax, covering the whole area of the kingdom.
Document 3
Source: List of grievances by anonymous women, early 1789
We have a right to complain about the education we are given, about the prejudices that make us slaves,
and about the injustice with which we are deprived at birth of the inheritances that nature and equity
should assure us.
Could it be possible that philosophy would be mute with regard to our situation, or rather that men, deaf
to its voice and insensitive to its light, would persist in rendering us victims of their pride and injustice?
We do not aspire to the honors of government, or to the advantages of being initiated to the secrets of
ministries. But we believe that it is just to count the votes of women, because they are obligated, just as
are men, to pay the royal taxes and to fulfill the engagements of commerce.
Document 4
Source: “He was only wishing us well,”* anonymous satirical cartoon, November 1789
*The title of the cartoon is a pun in French that can also be read as saying “He only wanted our
property.”
The figure in the center is a Roman Catholic bishop. The figure in black is a church official counting
money at a table.
Document 5
Source: Nicolas de Condorcet, “On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship,” pamphlet,
July 1790
Habit can familiarize men with the violation of their natural rights to the point that, among those who
have lost them, no one dreams of reclaiming them or believes that he has suffered an injustice.
For this exclusion not to be an act of tyranny one would have to prove that the natural rights of women
are not absolutely the same as those of men or show that they are not capable of exercising them. Now the
rights of men follow only from the fact that they are feeling beings, capable of acquiring moral ideas and
of reasoning about these ideas. Since women have the same qualities, they necessarily have equal rights.
Either no individual in mankind has true rights, or all have the same ones.

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