The French Revolution

Daphne: Don’t you just love this part of American history?
Niles: I’m not much of a Civil War buff.
Daphne: Really? It’s fascinating. Much more so than the English Civil War.
Niles: Impossible! Didn’t you want to be there when Charles I unfurled his standard at Nottingham in 1642?
Daphne: Ugh. You sound like school. Frasier Crane is at the counter getting his coffee.
Niles: Ugh, we’ll let Frasier settle it. Which civil war was more interesting?
Frasier: Spanish!

This being the year I love the French, I started reading the joint to the right, and I hafta say that I'm fucking embarrassed at how little I know about the French Revolution. I mean for fuck's sake I was BORN ON BASTILLE DAY!! and yet I've never bothered to learn anything about it. Which I guess is par for the course - Americans think of the American Revolution and that's it. I don't know what I thought the French Revolution was about, I feel like I just kinda lumped it in with our own, since they were so close together. Obviously I knew France was France, but when something is "The __________ Revolution," I guess I just stamp the American timeline onto it and vaguely parallel the two and move on.

Same thing with the British Civil War. Obviously "The Civil War" means a specific thing to me. It's never occurred to me to read about the British Civil War and how different a thing it might mean from our own. Okay, at least with France I can say that as a red-blooded American tough guy I sneered at France, but hell, England ruled the world at one time including, you know, my own country.

I have also found that in reading about the different pasts some countries have, it's the similarities of those pasts and one's own present-day country that can be the most striking, eg incredibly expensive wars along with tax loopholes for the wealthiest causing financial crisis in pre-revolution France.

Vivá la Revolution!!!!