So while the American Revolution is considered a pretty good thing, the French Revolution is often seen as a bloody and arctic mess and there's no- Mr. Green, Mr. Green, I bet like always it's way more complicated than that. Actually, no, it was pretty terrible. Also, like a lot of revolutions, in the end it exchanged an authoritarian regime for an authoritarian regime. But even if the revolution was a mess, its ideas changed human history far more, I will argue, than the American Revolution. INTRO Right, so France in the 18th century was a rich and populous country, but it had a systemic problem collecting taxes because of the way its society was structured. They had a system with kings and nobles we now call the Ancien Régime. Thank you, three years of high school French.