> Thanks for the different perspective.

Indeed - after being on the Internet for a while, I learned that what is taught on this topic in the Anglosphere and the rest of the world !greatly! differ. In high school curriculum, we were taught what the French Revolution did, what were its principles and how it related to our current society. What is incessantly drummed up in the Anglosaxon literature as 'the terror' was just mentioned as a part of the turmoil that was the revolution and the ensuing war. But of course, its no surprise how then-existing Anglosaxon establishment and its modern contunity hated 'the terror so much':

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/989759-there-were-two-reign...

Because 'the terror' was directed against the aristocracy. It did not matter whether hundreds of thousands of French died during the famines in which their aristocrats starved them for maximum profit to keep their luxurious lifestyle. It matters that ~3000 aristocrats and upper class were executed by those very peasants.

> The same case can be made for the american revolution, which was earlier, and which legacy is longer lasting

That is also a proposition of the Anglosaxon literature, and there is a quite different view of it outside that literature for that topic as well:

Whereas the French Revolution totally did away with all the existing political and social norms and brought an egalitarian and meritocratic format into politics and the society, the American Revolution was more a rebellion in which the elite of the colonies broke away from their motherland in a move to protect their privileges and position by incorporating some of the Age of Enlightenment principles. We see total commoners get into positions of power at the end of the French Revolution, whereas the American Revolution (or rather, rebellion) does not disturb the existing power structure in the colonies aside from ousting the parts of the elite who were royalists. There was also large scale land appropriation and land redistribution done at the end of the rebellion.

That is extremely important - because that is the reason why the leaders of the rebellion created an anti-democratic political structure: The American founding fathers thought that this kind of land redistribution could easily target themselves (and there were voices demanding it), and they wanted to protect their holdings and power. Which is why de facto architect of the American constitution, John Adams, openly and contradictorily advocated that the government should protect the society from 'the tyranny of the majority'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

The tyranny being democratically voted and enforced land redistribution, obviously. American founding fathers were rather blunt about it in their memoirs, letters and private communication. Some did openly politick against it as well.

This is the reason for the existence of the electoral college, the senate, and the 'checks and balances' in the American system - all of those were devised as ways to enable overriding or controlling the democratic majority so that they wouldnt come with pesky land redistribution schemes. So at the end of the 'revolution', we see the exact American elite occupying the same positions of power and privilege, but with the losing segments of the elite who sided with the crown removed. The actual aristocrats who sided with the rebellion kept their possesions after the rebellion, with the exception that their nobility titles not having a legal basis anymore. Which did not matter since it was the possessions that made the title.

On top of that, the Age of Enlightenment ideals were not fully materialized into their radical forms at that point. So what the nascent American republic did was to mostly copy the earlier Dutch Republic, the oligarchic trade/merchant republic that was seen as the pinnacle of systems at the time. The Dutch Republic had had copied its systems and format from the Venetian Republic in turn. So even from the start, the US was set up as an oligarchy and it shows even today. So if the US looks like a merchant oligarchy in which the merchants, traders and businessmen dominate the entire society, its not a happenstance - it was made to be that way.

Additionally, the nascent republic maintained the medieval feudal common law system that it inherited from Great Britain, which created the hodgepodge of legal mess that exists in the US when the holes of the medieval common law were plastered over with the civil law that originated from the French Revolution later. Its not so surprising that they kept common law since the colonists, including the American founding fathers did not want to break away from Britain at the start and for a long time after that - their demands were representation and/or abolition of the new taxes and being left alone like how it was in the earlier centuries. It took a lot of work by a few founding fathers to agitate for independence and a republic. (reading about Thomas Paine and his activities immediately before and after the rebellion could give some perspective)

So unfortunately, contrary to what is heavily advocated in the Anglosaxon (or rather, mostly American in this case) literature, the American revolution/rebellion was not the paradigm-shattering event that shaped the modern society - it was at most a step in the process, which definitely helped the leaders of the French Revolution to crystallize their ideas after seeing how the incumbent elite was able to protect their power during the process of the American rebellion. Leading to the crystal clear egalitarianism and absolute abolitionism of privileges seen in the Revolution later.

At this point we must note that the entire world uses civil law, a product of the French Revolution, whereas only a few countries (like the UK) and a few small islands still use the common law. Even the US has a mixed common law + civil law environment. Merely the major difference in between these tells how different these two events were and why the French Revolution is the event that shaped modern society:

In common law, the judges still act as the stand-in for the local feudal sovereign with the power to 'interpret' the law and override it with those interpretations, leading to 'precedents' that end up becoming de facto laws themselves.

Whereas in civil law, the judge is just the speaker of the democratic parliament that has written any given law, tasked with communicating and precisely implementing the pre-written law with literally no interpretation. Even in cases in which the existing law does not cover something in the exact manner, the judge is responsible with falling back to a broader law that does cover that specific thing and implementing its articles in an exact manner - he or she can not 'interpret' any law or set any 'precedents'. All the power lies in the people who make the law, and those who implement the law are just their representatives.

...

Of course, these are quite large topics with a lot of reading buried in them, so its a bit difficult to recommend stuff that could bring a different perspective - especially from the Anglosaxon literature. But reading Howard Zinn's A people's history of the world is one shortcut - it would touch a lot of similar subjects as well.

However still, its not difficult to find some articles that were compiled on the matter:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2141520.pdf

https://www.stratford.org/uploaded/faculty/jjordan/Viewpoint...