In Mandell’s Article, “Wealth and Power in the Early Republic,” there was a lot of focus on the balancing of powers in the nation and the importance of the common class. Mandell mainly talked about the emergence of America as a nation and the history behind its evolution. There were many influencing factors from nations that were involved and the trading that occurred in the nation. The colonies, just having been formed, had to scramble to create a solid nation where one factor would not overpower the other. In the process of doing so, there was a focus on creating equal distribution via the spreading of properties between all citizens. Viewing this in this article reinforced my knowledge of the concepts employed in nations across the world in world history.
In the French Revolution, one of the most famous lines was “Let them eat cake.” This was said by the Queen of the time, and it signified one of the biggest flaws of the nation at the time which incited the revolution in the first place, which was the negligence of the common class and the imbalance of power. While there was a clear example of this backfiring on the entire nation, Mandell’s article analyzing America’s state at the time confirmed for me how important this topic is. The common class is the backbone of society, yet in the French’s case it was almost entirely neglected. Most thinkers in America at the time of its independence recognized this flaw and pushed towards supporting the common class with property, which they believed would benefit the society as a whole. Keeping most moving parts relatively equal would help the nation grow, and while there were some disputes shown in Mandell’s article the general consensus was that the common class should be tended to. Any nation would fall to ruin without the common class and some semblance of balance. It was shown with the French, and reinforced in the founding of America.
You draw an interesting comparison between the situations in France and in colonial and post-Revolutionary America, but I would caution you that economic and class conditions in the United States were also very different. As Mandell points out, in the colonial and early U.S., there was a wide, in fact probably historically unprecedented, distribution of wealth and land ownership, and a growing “middling” class. In France and other countries of Europe it was nearly the opposite, with wealth and lands concentrated in the hands of a feudal nobility.
That said, there is a historic connection Mandell mentions, in that Americans in the 1790s were influenced by some of the egalitarian and radical ideas emanating from the French Revolution after 1789. How, according to him, did they adapt some of these ideas to American conditions and politics?