Compare And Contrast The French Revolution And The American Declaration Of The Rights Of Man

Throughout history, rebellions, revolts, revolutions, and movements have taken place all over the world. Not surprisingly, no one enjoys being governed or ruled by another person or country, which is when those revolutions and movements arise. Two of the most famous revolutions include the American and French Revolution. With these revolutions, both countries wrote their own Declarations: The American Declaration of Independence and The French Declaration of the Rights of Man. A not so popular document that is closely linked and similar to the American and French Declarations is The Social Contract written by Jean Jacques Rousseau, which was based on an implicit agreement among the members of a society to cooperate for social benefits. These

For one thing, the American Declaration of Independence was written a few years before the French Declaration, which proves that the French would have had time to hear about and read the American document to learn what it was all about and gain perspective on whether any of the ideas presented in it would be applicable and best for the country of France. When their own declaration was being written, they would have had an example to reference to and get ideas from on how to organize it and what ideas to be sure to touch on, as well as some of their own ideas and issues/solutions. Both the French and American Declarations have statements about men being free and having equal rights. For both documents, these statements are located at the beginning, which shows that these ideas were strongly important to both countries. Both documents address and use words such as liberty, life, and natural rights. This shows how similar some of the ideas in the two documents are, which could be due to the fact that the French were heavily influenced by American ideas when considering what to write for their own declaration. Another similarity between the two that stood out to me was the mentioning of taxation and taxes within both documents. Both countries dealt with unfair taxation and, therefore, both felt the need to address the issue in their documents. Although these are simply a few similarities between both documents, there are other details and similarities that could be found between the two documents. The correlation between the two leads me to believe that the French were influenced by the American Declaration of Independence. I believe that the French had their own needs, wants, and ideas to write in their declaration, but I also believe that the organization of it and ideas presented were somewhat influenced by what the