JULY is the month the Bastille fell. Centuries ago, in Paris. For most of us who studied history in English-medium private schools, history tended to focus on the West, as the West has prepared the syllabi we follow. As a result, the French Revolution or the Boston Tea Party are familiar events — as familiar as the 1857 war of independence. And so hopefully, readers will also be familiar with the fall of the Bastille which is synonymous with the French Revolution — when ordinary people brought down one of the most powerful dynasties in Europe. The first blow was struck when they took over the Bastille prison, which was seen as a symbol of Louis XVI’s oppression.

But while the stories about the French Revolution of 1789, the Bastille and even poor Marie Antoinette who is still associated with a phrase she never uttered are perhaps well known, few realise how long this revolution had been in the making.

The financial crisis, at the heart of the matter, dated back multiple decades. The French had spent enormous amounts on fighting wars. The last war it waded into was the American War of Independence in which Paris assisted the rebels against the British. Most people know how that ended but it was a victory that brought no advantage as such to the French (except that they got to help inflict a defeat on the Brits, a long-time enemy). But in the process, the state simply added to an already precarious........

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