Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution receive undue credit: While prophetic on the revolution’s violent end, Burke’s analysis of its causes—blaming Enlightenment ideology and “monied interests”—is superficial and unsupported by historical evidence. 

Revolution driven by privilege and power struggles: The revolt was led by the lower nobility (noblesse de robe) seeking greater access to state positions, not by a rising capitalist class or radical philosophers; feudalism had already declined under centralization. 

Ideology secondary to practical grievances: The revolution stemmed from fiscal crises, taxation disputes, and political maneuvering in the Estates General, not abstract theories; Burke’s narrative ignores these structural realities and overemphasizes ideological fervor.

The thing we now call “conservatism” in the West largely comes out of a reaction against the French Revolution and other revolutionary movements inspired by it. The Continental conservatives—e.g., Joseph de Maistre, Friedrich von Gentz, Klemens von Metternich, and Juan Donoso Cortés—embraced monarchism, often including its more authoritarian and absolutist varieties, in an effort to avoid the excesses of the French revolution. The conservatives also opposed economic liberalism in the form of free trade and bourgeois “free markets” because these were associated—wrongly in many cases—with the French revolutionaries. 

In the English-speaking world, the most well-known conservative of this type is Edmund Burke. Compared to the more dogmatic and authoritarian conservatives—especially de Maistre—Burke is quite moderate. Yet, Burke was a conservative innovator in that he was one of the earliest commentators to condemn the French revolution in his 1790 pamphlet Reflections on the Revolution in France. Burke proved to be quite prophetic in the Reflections, even correctly predicting that the revolution would end with a military strongman taking power as did happen when Napoleon seized power with a coup in 1799.

Burke also has become influential among American conservatives, thanks to the rise of the conservative movement in the United States in the 1950s. Up until that time, the American “Right” had been primarily the domain of laissez-faire liberalism—what we’d now call libertarianism—descended from Jeffersonian, Jacksonian, and anti-imperialist schools of thought. In the fifties, Russell Kirk, followed by others of the Buckleyite movement, managed to insert Burkean conservatism into the anti-communist right.  Burkean historical interpretations—especially on the French revolution—thus now remain influential in some corners of the American Right. 

This can be seen, for example, in ongoing efforts within conservative publications to push the Burkean view of the revolution, as with this 2023 article in National Review, or this article from last week in the National Catholic Register. In both cases we get the usual Burkean message on the French Revolution, especially by way of contrasting the French revolution with the American one. Burke’s emphasis on defending the monarchy as the alleged guardian of religious and moral traditionalism has also struck a chord with the modern post-liberal Right which tends toward anti-capitalism and monarchist-tinged traditionalism. 

Burke’s Reflections, however, receive far too much credit as reliable analysis of the revolution. This is largely because the Reflections were very correct on some matters, especially how the revolution would degenerate into a violent mess that would need a militaristic police state to finally end it. 

When it comes to the actual causes of the revolution, however, Burke displays very little insight, and rather provides only some very facile explanations that tell the reader very little about the origins of the conflict. It would seem that, if avoiding a repeat of the revolution were an important goal, we’d want a nuanced and thorough understanding of its causes. On this, we cannot look to Burke. 

Perhaps one of the most illuminating critiques of Burke’s reflections comes from British historian Alfred Cobban, the anti-Marxist revisionist. In his 1968 book Aspects of the French Revolution, he writes:  

In so far as [Burke’s] Reflections deal with the causes of the Revolution, then, they are not merely inadequate, but misleading. …On the American colonies he had been one of the best-informed men in England … On the other hand, his one visit to France had left him with strong prejudices, which the information provided by emigres, especially priests, did not correct. His knowledge of France was limited and it is difficult to believe that he ever understood the pre-revolutionary situation. As literature, as political theory, as anything but history, his Reflections are magnificent.1

In so far as [Burke’s] Reflections deal with the causes of the Revolution, then, they are not merely inadequate, but misleading. …On the American colonies he had been one of the best-informed men in England … On the other hand, his one visit to France had left him with strong prejudices, which the information provided by emigres, especially priests, did not correct. His knowledge of France was limited and it is difficult to believe that he ever understood the pre-revolutionary situation. As literature, as political theory, as anything but history, his Reflections are magnificent.1

So, what did Burke say were the causes of the revolution? He offered two main arguments. The first was that the French people had been swept away........

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