Role of Women
Triangular Slave Trade
Throughout the 18th century, France faced a mounting economic crisis. A
rapidly growing population had outpaced the food supply. A severe winter in
1788 resulted in famine and widespread starvation in the countryside. Rising
prices in Paris brought bread riots.
Parisian women on their way to Versailles. This print is one of the many pictorial representations
of the events of 5 October 1789, when women marched to Versailles and brought the king back
with them to Paris.
Nanine Vallain, Liberty.
The painting is a female allegory of
liberty – that is, the female form
symbolizes the idea of freedom.
This is one of the rare paintings by a
woman artist. The revolutionary
events made it possible for women to
train with established painters and to
exhibit their works in the Salon, which
was an exhibition held every two
years.
France Becomes a Constitutional
Monarchy
The Constitution of 1791 vested the power
to make laws in the National Assembly,
which was indirectly elected. That is,
citizens voted for a group of electors, who
in turn chose the Assembly. Not all citizens,
however, had the right to vote. Only men
above 25 years of age who paid taxes
equal to at least 3 days of a labourer’s
wage were given the status of active
citizens.
The remaining men and all women were
classed as passive citizens.
She was one of the most important of the politically active
women in revolutionary France. She protested against the
Constitution and the Declaration of Rights of Man and
Citizen as they excluded women from basic rights that each
human being was entitled to. So, in 1791, she wrote a
Declaration of the Rights of Woman and Citizen, which
she addressed to the Queen and to the members of the
National Assembly, demanding that they act upon it. In
1793, Olympe de Gouges criticized the Jacobin government
for forcibly closing down women’s clubs. She was tried by
the National Convention, which charged her with treason.
Soon after this she was executed.
Olympe de Gouges
In the early years, the revolutionary
government did introduce laws that
helped improve the lives of women.
Together with the creation of state
schools, schooling was made
compulsory for all girls. Their fathers
could no longer force them into
marriage against their will.
Marriage was made into a contract
entered into freely and registered
under civil law. Divorce was made
legal, and could be applied for by both
women and men. Women could now
train for jobs, could become artists or
run small businesses.
When National Assembly voted in April 1792 to declare
war against Prussia and Austria.
Thousands of volunteers thronged from the provinces to
join the army. The revolutionary wars brought losses and
economic difficulties to the people. While the men were
away fighting at the front, women were left to cope with
the tasks of earning a living and looking after their
families.
Large sections of the population were convinced that the
revolution had to be carried further, as the Constitution of
1791 gave political rights only to the richer sections of
society. Political clubs became an important rallying point
for people who wished to discuss government policies
and plan their own forms of action. Women too, who had
been active throughout this period, formed their own
clubs. In order to discuss and voice their interests women
started their own political clubs and newspapers. About
sixty women’s clubs came up in different French cities. A sans-culottes couple.
The Society of Revolutionary and Republican
Women was the most famous of them.
During the Reign of Terror, the
new government issued laws
ordering closure of women’s clubs
and banning their political
activities. Many prominent women
were arrested and a number of
them executed. Women’s struggle
for equal political rights, however,
continued.
Women’s movements for voting rights
and equal wages continued through the
next two hundred years in many
countries of the world.
The fight for the vote was carried out
through an international suffrage
movement during the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. The
example of the political activities of
French women during the revolutionary
years was kept alive as an inspiring
memory.
It was finally in 1946 that women in
France won the right to vote.
TRIANGULAR SLAVE TRADE
In France, the slave trade began in the
seventeenth century. French merchants
sailed from the ports of Bordeaux or Nantes
to the African coast, where they bought
slaves from local chieftains.
Branded and shackled, the slaves were
packed tightly into ships for the three-month
long voyage across the Atlantic to the
Caribbean. There they were sold to
plantation owners. The exploitation of slave
labour made it possible to meet the growing
demand in European markets for sugar,
coffee, and indigo.
Port cities like Bordeaux and Nantes owed
their economic prosperity to the flourishing
slave trade.
The National Assembly held long debates
but took not political step.
It was finally the Convention which in 1794
legislated to free all slaves in the French
overseas possessions. This, however, turned
out to be a short-term measure.
Ten years later, Napoleon reintroduced
slavery.
Plantation owners understood their freedom
The emancipation of slaves.
as including the right to enslave African
This print of 1794 describes the
Negroes in pursuit of their economic
emancipation of slaves. The tricolour
interests.
banner on top carries the slogan: ‘The
rights of man’. The inscription below
Slavery was finally abolished in French
reads: ‘The freedom of the unfree’. A
colonies in 1848.
French woman prepares to ‘civilise’ the
African and American Indian slaves by
giving them European clothes to wear.
Thank You