In 1793, French King Louis XVI and Queen Mary Antoinette were sentenced to death and France declared war on England. In the same year, Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes, a Spanish painter, went deaf from an unexplained illness, which most likely led to the destruction of the Spanish fleet 
by the British in the battle of Cape St. Vincent in 1797. Only a year prior, eighteenth century British author Mary Wollstonecraft wrote Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, after also having written A Vindication of the Rights of Men in 1790—a work that helped propel the British pamphlet war over the French Revolution—the same Revolution that greatly influenced the Irish Rebellion of 1798 by a group called the United Irishmen. In 1803, Napoleon imposed the Convention of Artlenburg in Germany while Spain completed the process of ceding Louisiana to France, followed shortly by the defeat of the Spanish naval fleet by Lord Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar. In 1813, Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Leipzig in Germany, leading to his first abdication where he was exiled to Elba, a costal island of Italy. This was where I traveled abroad.
London, England; Dublin, Ireland; Oslo, Norway; Frankfurt, Germany; Barcelona, Spain; and Rome, Italy.
These were the places I traveled while I studied abroad. All of them, chosen at random, to say the least, and all connected by one singular event: The French Revolution. It is the cause, the effect, the rhyme and reason for all things. The French Revolution. The globalization of such an event is romanticized in, well, my Global Romanticism course, and that is speaking modestly. Everything that occurs is caused by the French Revolution, and everything that happens is a result of it—so says Professor Kucich, and why shouldn’t it be true? The effects of globalization include transforming local or regional phenomena into global ones, and that is exactly what the French Revolution did.
The Revolution, that was by no means small, but generally, physically limited locally to European boundaries, has made its impact on me—a first generation Vietnamese-American female from Oklahoma studying abroad from a private Catholic university in London, England. For further explanation, let me elaborate. My parents came to American from Vietnam in the 1970’s. My mother, from South Vietnam, came over right before it was liberated in 1975 and had lived almost her entire life in Vietnam as a French colony, going to a private French school and speaking fluent French. From the mid 19th century, France had exploited Vietnam for its raw materials and cheap labor by the French monopolies. This type of treatment mimics the upper class French nobles and clergy and their oppression of the lower class—the very reason that brought about the French Revolution. Likewise, after years of enduring an oppressive society and finally standing up for what they deserved, the idea of fighting for what you believe in and achieving justice and equality has become a theme of the French Revolution, revolutionizing the ideals of the world, in a global sense. It gave people the idea that if they tried, they could re-evaluate, restructure, and reorganize a society whenever it was needed. The greatest legacy of the French Revolution was the realization that people can effect change, and the global effects of that are still woven into our social and political fabric today.
The French Revolution was a battle to achieve equality—a concern more universal than the immediate economic struggles that France alone was experiencing in the 18th century. The Revolution led to the development of new political forces such as democracy, nationalism, liberalism and socialism. By questioning and challenging the authority of the so-called upper class, the Revolution gave new meanings and ideas to political ideas of the people. As a result of the French Revolution, these new political ideas have worked their way into the governmental framework of Ireland, which includes a partly nationalist government, Norway and Spain—both parliamentary representative democratic constitutional monarchies, Germany, a federal parliamentary representative democratic republic, and Italy, a parliamentary democratic republic.
The socialists ideals that are bourn out of the French Revolution encompass economic theories of social organization and even distribution of wealth and power, the liberalist ideals focus on individual liberty, rights and opportunity, and the nationalist ideals refer to the form of culture or ideologies that focus on the nation.
All of these political ideals are encompassed in Global Romanticism—not only the course, but the subject matter itself. Romantic nationalism embraced the French Revolution at first, like many Romantic writers of the time, such as William Wordsworth, but likewise, around 1793 backed away from the Revolution because of the violence and began fighting the counter-Revolution, taking a more conservative stance. Other romantic authors such as Joanna Baille and Mariana Stark reflect themes of feminist cosmopolitanism as a form of liberalism through their works by embracing women’s individual liberty by coming out of the female experience of subordination. These new ideas shape what we today know as aspects of “romanticism” and are influenced directly by the French Revolution.
Everywhere I’ve gone and everywhere I’ve been, bits and pieces of the Revolution have followed me. The Revolution influenced some of the greatest Irish uprisings on the same land that I touched down on only a few months ago.
As they fought for equality and national identity, I too, fought for my identity (I almost lost my passport in the airport and thus, was without an identity). I ate gelato and stood in the Vatican in Italy, the same country where Napoleon—a name so greatly affiliated with the French Revolution, was exiled. This country today, as many do, still sees the ideals of youthful revolution and examples of it daily.
The Spanish fleet set sail from the same waters that I dipped my feet in 211 years later and were defeated by the same country I currently call home. Only a few years after, only just over 200 years ago, the effects of the French Revolution meet two of my fall break destinations with Napoleon branching his power into Germany and Lord Nelson, whom I see almost every single day, defeating the Spanish navel fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar—the Battle that gave the square that I go to school in its name, the square that I pass through every day and the square that marks a national icon in the place where I studied abroad for a semester.
Ireland. Norway. Germany. Spain. Rome. London.
All different places, but all connected by at least two things: The French Revolution and me.
All images and text in this essay copyright Michelle Nguyen
