lecture circuit
A Revolutionary Take on Today’s Debt Crisis
H
ow did a debt crisis spark the French Revolution, and what does it have to do with the current economic crisis in America? Historian and professor Lynn Hunt, Ph.D., answered that question and more in her presentation, When a Debt Crisis Turns Revolutionary: The French Revolution of 1789, at Manhattan College’s 13th annual Costello Lecture in September. Hunt is an author and professor emerita at UCLA, whose work ranges from the origins of human rights, French Revolution, historical method, epistemology, time in history, the origins of religious toleration, as well as the history of pornography. Her most recent publication is the book jointly edited with Suzanne Desan and William Nelson titled The French Revolution in Global Perspective. She is currently working on a book titled Writing History in the Global Era, an essay on neuroscience and history, and a study on French revolutionary prints and visual culture. Her textbooks are widely used and her writings have been translated into 11 different languages. A debt crisis is what started the French Revolution, Hunt revealed. She shared original accounting charts and documents from the French Revolution, which she found in the British Library on a recent trip to London, to shed some light on the real finances of France at the time. Pairing forensic accounting and anthropology, Hunt explained that corrupt leadership, irresponsible spending, poor borrowing practices and overly funded military forces caused France’s debt crisis to become revolutionary. As with many other great countries, she continued, France let itself become increasingly dependent on an international capital market to bankroll its debt and, in many cases, its daily operations. “To give you an idea of why exactly this was a problem, which is exactly our problem, is the gap between fixed revenues and fixed expenses,” she said,
paralleling the French Revolution with today’s debt crisis. When compared to other European countries at the time, France seemed to continue to spend more to service its debt and the ever-growing interest on this debt, which in the early 1780s took up 42 percent of its national budget. “In the 1780s, France had to pay more and more to maintain its overseas empire, and it borrowed more and more from international creditors to do so,” Hunt said. Desperate to increase funds from domestic and foreign sources alike, the French government encouraged a speculative boom in the mid-1780s. Its collapse undermined the credibility and consequently the credit of the monarchy, which was the ultimate catalyst for the revolution, according to Hunt. The Costello Lecture was established in 2001 in memory of former Manhattan College history professor Brother Casimir Gabriel Costello and his passion for history, especially the French Revolution and Renaissance. This lecture series is sponsored by one of Costello’s grateful and generous students, Roger Goebel ’57, professor of law at Fordham University and director of the Center on European Law. Throughout the years, the College has attracted many leading historians with a variety of presentations. For the first time at this event, a faculty member from the School of Arts was presented with the inaugural Brother Casimir Gabriel Costello Award for Excellence in Teaching for exemplifying the exceptional teaching that is part of both the characterization and central mission of Manhattan College. This year, the honor went to Ashley Cross, Ph.D., professor and chair of the English department.
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