At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the term democracy referred to a primitive and failed form of government used in ancient cultures. Popular government, their worldview held, would lead to conflict and turmoil. Every person would desire to be master over others and no one would want to obey.
Modern countries, so the argument went, needed to have an ordered system whereby some ruled and others obeyed, so that they could engage in foreign trade and defend their independence. Democracy was only fit for small communities hiding out in harsh places where they needed to be frugal, disciplined and hard-working to survive. But what worked for a city republic would not work for a country. Self-interest, love of money, and inequality was what allowed modern eighteenth century states to survive and prosper. But unbridled self-interest led to excess, which needed a monarch to contain it.
These philosophers didn’t want to give power to the multitude, but to correct their vices, instead. In this way, commerce could reign supreme, bringing wealth to those nations who succeeded in the marketplace.
One of the great debates of the century was whether commerce would channel aggression, or become another reason for aggression. Some argued that people would reject war in order to trade. Others that competition over trade would lead to war.
Even so, a number of influential thinkers were committed to the idea of a republic. They proposed that people could only be free if they were actively committed to and participated in public affairs. A monarch, even one that did not abuse his or her power, make the people unfree by definition. However, a republic would not work unless everyone was committed to the wellbeing of the community. Self-government required moral behaviour.
English and European philosophy are midwives to a new republic
The thinking of these philosophers influenced the American founding fathers.
The right to representation, political independence, separation of church and state, nationalism, slavery, the closure of the Western frontier, increased taxation, commercial restrictions, use of the military in civil unrest, individual freedoms, and judicial review were some of the salient issues that boiled up in the revolutionary cauldron of Britain’s American colonies. [https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/creating-the-united-states/revolution-of-the-mind.html]
They argued, it is true, about whether what they were creating was a democracy. It all depended on how you defined democracy. But there’s no doubt that the Declaration of Independence had many democratic features. It called for no taxation without representation. It denounced unearned titles. It demanded that all institutions were subjected the test of reason. And the final version of the Constitution isclearly envisaged what most of us would call a democracy.
“The Revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington.”
John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, August 24, 1815
The French seek liberty, equality, and fraternity
In the eighteenth century, France was rapidly changing from a fundamentally agricultural society to a commercial empire with many overseas outposts. The population was increasing, and industrial production was rising. And the French Enlightenment was focused on transforming cultural, scientific and political thinking. Thinkers such as Helveetius, Dietrich, d’Holback, de Condillac, de la Metrie, and Rousseau explored different fields, but agreed that tradition was a bad guide to the future, that government and justice needed radical improvement, and that free-market economics was the way of the future.
Montesquieu, who admired the way in which the English king shared power with Parliament, wrote The Spirit of the Laws, a survey of political insititutions throughout the world. Rousseau’s seminal work was The Social Contract, speaks of empowerment through united with other public minded citizens. He argued that men are by nature free, and so should all have equal rights and should be able to participate in deciding the laws under which they live.
Scholars argue about whether the monarchs of the ancien regime chould have reformed enough to prevent the revolution. They agree, though, that tens of thousands of people formed by the writings of the Enlightenment weren’t prepared to tolerate being disempowered any longer. War, taxes, the widening gap between rich and poor, the intransigence of the various French Parlements, all contributed. In the end, the revolution came and swept away the ancien regime.
For a brief few years, before its own excesses, political infighting and outside threats made an Emperor look enhancing, France was a representative democracy. Perhaps only a third of all eligible men voted in the first election, but that was still more than any other country in the world at the time. Even after the monarchy was restored, the fight for liberty, equality and fraternity continued to fire the hearts of the French people, as it still does today.
Paine reintroduces democracy as a positive
Thomas Paine was first man in modern times to present democracy as a positive term. To do so, he redefined democracy. He suggested that, while direct democracy (where everyone voted on everything) was inconvenient, representative democracy (where everyone voted on the people who would decide everything) avoided the problems of both direct democracy and oligarchy or autocracy. His writing caught the attention of American intellectuals, and the modern view of democracy was born.
Sources:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241861074_The_Idea_of_Democracy_and_the_Eighteenth_Century
http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/essays/before-1800/was-the-american-revolution-a-revolution/a-democratic-revolution.php
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/french-political-thought-from-montesquieu-to-tocqueville/political-thought-in-eighteenthcentury-france-the-invention-of-aristocratic-liberalism/A5DFA7F70E6C0AF2333CA9888448947E
https://www.britannica.com/place/France/The-causes-of-the-French-Revolution
Those of us raised in the English tradition of democracy are often told that it started with the Magna Carta. But before that came the Witan and the Moot. These were the government, legislative, and judicial assemblies of Anglo-Saxon Britain, and they were adopted, with changes, by the Normans. The Witan was called by the King and comprised the individuals he wanted to include. Their job was to advise the king. In theory, the king did not have to listen to their advice, but these were powerful men with troops behind them. The balancing act between king and council was underway, and would continue for centuries.
The issue was taxes. The King wanted to pay for his war in France. His barons were not happy. They rebelled, and the Magna Carta was the charter in which the King agreed he was not above the law. The Magna Carta established the law as something separate to the will of the monarch. This is the fundamental principle on which Western democracy is based–that the leader of a country is bound by its laws, though that principle was not the issue for most of the barons. They just wanted to make certain that the king could not impose ruinous taxes without the consent of his council.
Representative government. Sort of.
The English Civil War in the seventeenth century was also a fight between the unelected King and the Parliament. Again, it was mostly about taxes. Parliament won and executed the king, having convicted him of treason. Twelve years later, Parliament welcomed back his son to take the throne. Before the end of the century, in 1788, came the so-called Glorious Revolution. Parliament was dissolved by the king, who decided to rule on his own. So they decided to pass the crown to one of his daughters and her husband. William of Orange entered the country and won the throne without a shot being fired, but first he and his wife Mary agreed to a bill of rights that would mean Parliament and those who held power in the land could not again be removed by the king. Those rights?
In the seventeenth century, John Locke built on the ideas of Aristotle and others to come up with a theory of the legitimacy of government. He held that government represents a social contract between the ruler and those ruled. He did not state a preference for democracy, oligarchy, or autocracy, but he did state that, if the ruler failed to meet his side of the social contract, the people had a right to rebel.
Studies of hunter-gatherer societies today show them to be hierarchical but egalitarian. Despite differences in climate, culture and history, their government structures are similar across the globe. They operate in kinship groups, with wider connections according to exchange information, goods, and non-related mates.
With the development of wide-spread agriculture, two forms of government emerged. One was autocratic. The other was at least proto-democratic.
The city states of Greece borrowed their popular assemblies from Syria-Mesopotamia. In Athens, between 508 and 260 before the common era, male citizens met every 10 days to debate and decide laws. Athenian women, slaves, and resident aliens did not get to vote.
In the Roman Republic, the patricians—the wealthy aristocracy—were initially the only people who could vote and hold offices. The assembly they elected was called the Senate, and it was an advisory body to those assemblies that actually made the rules. However, over 200 years, the plebians gained the right to elect their own kind to the Concilium Plebis, which regulated the plebians.