1 It is because the French Revolution ended so violently that many Frenchmen are troubled about celebrating its 200th anniversary. French author Leon Daudet has written: “Commemorate the French Revolution That’s like celebrating the day you got scarlet fever”. An Anti-89 Movement has even begun to sell moments reminding today’s Frenchmen of the excesses of the Revolution, including Royalist black arm bands and calendars that mock the sacred dates of the French Revolution. The French should indeed be uneasy about their Revolution, for whereas the American Revolution brought forth a relatively free economy and limited government, the French Revolution brought forth first anarchy, then dictatorship.
Eighteenth-century France was the largest and most populous country in wester Europe. Blessed with rich soil, natural resources, and a long and varied coastline, France was Europe’s greatest power and the dominant culture on the continent. Unfortunately, like all the other countries of 18th-century Europe, France was saddled with the economic philosophy of mercantilism. By discouraging free trade with other countries, mercantilism kept the economies of the European nation-states in the doldrums, and their people in poverty. Nevertheless, in 1774, King Louis XVI made a decision that could have prevented the French Revolution by breathing new life into the French economy: he appointed Physiocrats Robert Turgot as Controller General of Finance. The Physiocrats were a small band of followers of the French physician Francois Quesnay, whose economic prescriptions included reduced taxes, less regulation, the elimination of government-granted monopolies and internal tolls and tariffs – ideas that found their rallying cry.