Where do our ideas about modern citizenship come from? Do they come straight from the French Revolution, or is there more to it? And what does that say about our time?
Sometimes our citizenship ideals seem to come directly from the French Revolution. If citizenship is based on anything, so the thought goes, it is on the well-known slogan 'Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité'. But is the legacy of the so-called revolutionary epoch for thinking about citizenship really so unambiguous? Contrary to what existing visions often suggest, citizenship in the revolutionary era was not a static concept, but rather subject to change.
Revolutionary ideals of citizenship
The revolutionary era, the period between about 1776 and 1800, was undoubtedly a decisive episode in the historical development of our modern understanding of citizenship. During this period, citizenship took on a decidedly political character:citizens were expected to participate in a form of democratic self-government; the inalienable or natural rights of man were enshrined in constitutions; and urban citizenship was replaced by an egalitarian national citizenship.
This legacy of the revolution – equal rights, democracy, nation-state – is all too familiar to our understanding of citizenship and of importance not to be underestimated. At the same time, it is only one side of the coin. This becomes clear when we place the French and our own 'Batavian' revolution in a broader historical perspective – both in space and time.
Trans-Atlantic Revolutions
First, during this period, France was not the only country where revolution broke out. In 1776, American revolutionaries declared their independence from the British Empire by invoking their "unalienable rights." In our own country in 1795, with the help of French troops, the stadtholder of Orange was chased out and the Batavian revolution proclaimed.
But historians are now rightly looking beyond 'the West':in the French-Caribbean slave colony of Saint Domingue, free coloreds and slaves revolted, which ultimately resulted in the foundation of the independent state of Haiti in 1804. Partly inspired by these events, finally broke in the period between about 1800 and 1830 several wars of independence were fought in South or Spanish America. The revolutionary epoch was therefore not an exclusively Western phenomenon.
The Haitian Revolution
This broader perspective on the revolutionary era that includes the non-Western world is important because it reveals the often hidden assumptions about citizenship from that time. The non-Western revolutions have not only helped shape the current world, but have posed a radical question for American and European revolutionaries:who is modern democratic citizenship for?
The events at the French slave colony of Saint Domingue were a defining moment. There, free coloreds (often sprung from a French father and black mother) demanded the same civil rights as their white French compatriots. The new French nation, according to them, and many radical revolutionaries in Paris with them, was one and indivisible. In their view, the French colonial empire should therefore be governed by a single constitution. Not just continental France, but the entire overseas empire should be the framework for modern citizenship.
Similar voices for the constitutional unity of the Dutch empire could be heard in the Batavian Republic. This also raised the question of what to do with black slaves who worked the Dutch and French colonies. This issue was inescapable, especially since in the summer of 1791 black slaves unleashed a large-scale revolt on Saint Domingue.
Soon, the French Caribbean island plunged into a tragic civil war that would last ten years. Not only French, but also English and Spanish troops became involved. In 1794, as a stopgap measure – more pragmatism than idealism – the French revolutionary government granted black slaves French citizenship if in return they would fight against enemy foreign armies.
Civilization Minimum
However, the predominant response to the slave revolt in Saint Domingue from French, Dutch, and American commentators alike has been that the slaves were actually still semi-savages:uncivilized, unenlightened, on the scale of historical development still in the infant stage of civilization. Yes, most Western revolutionaries agreed that black slaves and other non-Western peoples are equally entitled to 'natural' rights.
But they simply weren't "ready," that is, "enlightened" enough, in their eyes, for the rights and duties of modern democratic citizenship. As natural beings, people were (usually) regarded as equals, but the hierarchy of civilization arising from eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinking dictated a sharp civil and political inequality.
This image of the black slave and of non-Western people in general severely limited the opening up of citizenship well into the 20th century. We still see similar thinking patterns emerging. For example, when it comes to whether the Arab or Islamic world is already 'ready' for democracy, or whether people who still live in 'medieval' circumstances are 'developed' enough for modern democratic citizenship.
The Terror of Democratic-Populist Citizenship
Historical research into thinking about citizenship benefits not only from a broadening of the geographical perspective. Also in terms of periodization (as historians say) a focus on only the ideas surrounding citizenship that was expressed during the revolution offers too one-sided a perspective.
After 1815, both France and the Netherlands changed into a constitutional monarchy. Little remained of revolutionary political citizenship. In the last decade of the eighteenth century, too, many voices were heard in the United States against popular democracy and radical equality.
A crucial episode that contributed to the moderation of radical democratic ideas was the Jacobin Terror, which took place in France during the years 1793-1794. During this period, between 35,000 and 40,000 people fell victim to the "Reign of Terror" of the radical vanguard of the Jacobins (a political group of radical French republicans) led by Robespierre. Rather arbitrarily at first, but later increasingly systematically, the "enemies" of the revolution were executed, often by means of the chillingly efficient guillotine. About 500,000 people disappeared in prison.
In the eyes of Dutch and American contemporaries, the Jacobin Tereur was proof of the derailment of direct or popular democracy. As a result, many were left disillusioned after the initially hopeful promise of modern democratic citizenship.
Revolutionary and post-revolutionary citizenship
In 1826, the Dutchman and former Batavian revolutionary Samuel Wiselius looked back with disappointment at the revolutionary era. The "soundness" of the principles of the revolutions was not in question for him. According to Wiselius, the application of these principles went wrong. The reason was that (in his words) "the majority of the French, and the Negroes in general, were not sufficiently enlightened" or "ignorant." They were unable to fulfill their civic duties and had "completely misunderstood" their interests. Black slaves and the mob, in other words, did not correspond to the ideal image of the enlightened, civilized, and morally eminent citizen.
Thus, the excesses of Jacobin democracy and the Haitian Revolution were key moments in what can be called the deradicalization of thinking about democratic citizenship. Post-revolutionary views on citizenship were often moderate, apolitical and focused on the homeland. Citizens had to be economically useful and were allowed to enjoy a modest set of civil liberties. Moreover, with a view to overseas colonies and the non-Western world, admission to citizenship was radically qualified:full citizenship required a certain minimum of (Western) civilization and enlightenment.
All in all, a lot of recognizable, but at the same time strange elements for us when we turn our gaze to the present tense. Contemporary visions of citizenship tend to be a mixture of both revolutionary radical and post-revolutionary moderate elements. Current ideas and ideals of citizenship can only be truly understood historically.