THE RECORD
What changed
The Estates-General, Bastille, abolition of privilege and Declaration of Rights were followed by republic, Terror and war.
EVIDENCE
What remains
Assembly records, newspapers, pamphlets, petitions, trials and objects document mass politics.
WHY IT MATTERS
Why it matters
It spread citizenship, national sovereignty and legal equality while also producing war, empire and exclusion.
OPEN QUESTION
Where interpretation begins
A single bourgeois-revolution model cannot contain peasants, women, enslaved people or colonial revolution.