Jul 14th, 2008
Fête Nationale
The United States isn’t the only nation out there celebrating a historical red, white and blue event in the first 2 weeks of July; France follows 10 days behind our 4th with Bastille Day.
This day celebrates the storming of the Bastille which occurred 14 years after the U.S. Independence, and in part because of it. France’s participation in the Revolutionary War led to a financial crisis that was made all the more vivid to the French populace by unfair taxation – an issue with which the new United States was more than familiar.
Thomas Jefferson was serving as the Minister to France at the genesis of the French Revolution and witnessed this historic event; he then wrote a letter to John Jay, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, describing what he was seeing in Paris.
There are some very interesting parallels and overlap between the history of the French nation as we know it today and our own United States, but for the purposes of this blog post we’ll simply say: Happy Bastille Day, France.
[...] Bastille Day today, so a big shout out to France on your symbolic independence day. The storming of the Bastille was exactly 200 years ago and paved the way for a new French [...]