The legacy of the french revolution?

Answer 1

The world has seen two different important revolutions, the American and the French. The only way to describe the legacy of one is to compare it to the other one. (The Communist Revolution was basically a form of the French Revolution without Thermador.)

Before the French Revolution, chaos reigned. Various people had overlapping responsibilities. France reorganized with an extremely structured centralized government totally organized at the top. The entire country went over to the Napoleonic Law Code and the Metric System of Measurement. Everything was standardized. However, when problems arise which can only be solved by changing the part of the system, it becomes almost impossible to make the required changes.

The United States also had chaos. The king's tax collectors did not obey local laws. The

United States created a Federal System. The National Government only assumed the necessary authority to keep peace between the states and to stand up to foreign nations. The United States has not so much emphasized the rights of man like the French but instead emphasized restrictions on the government. Gradually the Federal Government assumed more power, but it was power over the states. The local states adjusted the laws to meet local problems. Problems can be solved much faster than in the French system. A weakness has been the inability of the United States to decree the use of the Metric System.

Brazil uses a French court system. Due to the incompetence of many of its judges, it is being forced to adopt some features of English Law and get away from total reliance of the French pattern.