Exam 18: The Promise of Enlightenment, 1750-1789

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Answer would ideally include the following. Although the Enlightenment was in many ways an intellectual movement within the middle and upper classes of Europe, one of its effects was that it caused public opinion to matter to governments and thus created a growing expectation of reform in many arenas. Governments had become accountable for their actions to a much wider range of people than ever before. Ordinary people rioted when they perceived the government as failing to protect them from food shortages or from other economic disasters. In the case of tsarist Russia, the serfs and oppressed minorities rioted against a system that kept them oppressed in order to institute different reforms. In France, a group of economic experts called the physiocrats believed that the government should deregulate the grain trade to encourage the free market and agricultural productivity. This project was put in place by Louis XIV's chief minister, Jacques Turgot, himself a disciple of the physiocrats. This deregulation meant that farmers sold their grain to the highest bidder, even if that bidder was a foreign merchant. This led to a grain shortage and higher grain prices in France. The rising prices led the working classes in several provincial cities to riot against the government and attack grain convoys headed to Paris. The rioters were attempting to bring about a renewal of old-fashioned price regulation using the only means at their disposal, as they had no other access to the political system. They also seemed to believe that it was the duty of the government to assure them access to a reasonably priced food supply. In contrast to the Flour War, the Pugachev rebellion was less about economic expectations than frustration with serfdom. Catherine II of Russia had granted her nobles the privilege of exclusive control over their serfs in exchange for the nobles' loyalty to the state; this arrangement left in place an oppressive system that was not in line with Enlightenment ideas of equality or social reform. Catherine II's reforms had little to no bearing on serfs, and their status was in many ways a compromise that ensured her reforms could be pursued in other arenas. Emelian Pugachev, an army deserter who claimed to be the dead husband of Catherine II, rallied the peasants, who believed he was their "redeemer tsar" who had come to free them from oppression. He convinced Cossacks such as himself who resented the loss of their tribal independence, as well as others, to rise up against the Russian government. Nearly three million people participated, making it the largest rebellion in the history of tsarist Russia. They attempted to attack the nobility and seize noble estates, clearly rioting against the hierarchical system that oppressed them.