Citizenship Throughout History

Objectives

• [ ] Ancient Era: Athens
• [ ] Ancient Era: Rome
• [ ] Modern Era: France
• [ ] Modern Era: America

Citizenship throughout History

• A product of world history in many societies.
• There are countless experiences of citizenship all over the world.
• Four major contributors to our history of citizenship and democracy: Ancient Athens, Ancient Rome, Modern France, and Modern America.
  • These are great civilizations that have rich written resources about citizenship (books, manuscripts, and manifestos) that give us many ideas about citizenship.

Ancient Era: Athens

• Citizenship in Athens happened around 500 BCE.
• It emerged with the rise of a revolutionary political system of direct democracy.
• Athenian citizenry consists of free-born males over the age of 21 with a narrative Athenian father.
  • Exclusivity was further codified and protected in terms of consanguinity later (the mother must also be an Athenian native).
• This excluded some people from citizenship, namely:
  • Women (including firstborns)
  • Resident aliens of Athens
  • The slave population (it might have been 1/3 of the population in Athens at the time; an estimate of 60,000 in population)
• The exercise of freedom of speech, while free, was driven towards unity and consensus.
• Athenian democracy (existed for 200 years) and its practice of citizenship declined with the rise and expansion of the imperial power of Macedonia in the north which exercised control over Greece and Athens starting 338 BCE.

Ancient Era: Rome

• Citizenship in Rome happened around 509 BCE-27 CE.
• This was under a political system of oligarchy (Roman Republic) established after the overthrow of kingship or monarchy.
• Citizens in Rome were originally only for politicians but were gradually extended to plebeians who acquired citizenship status later on.
  • Politicians consisted of: noble class, wealthy landowners, and from old families
  • Plebeians (common men): craftsmen, performers, and productive jobs
  • Without them, the oligarchy would not be sustained.
• Some women were citizens but did not have rights (nominal citizens).
• Citizenship was also expanded to residents of conquered territories, unlike in the Greek order.
  • Athens also expanded to nearby territories, but the residents were not given Athenian citizenship.
• Slaves were not citizens, but freed slaves’ coils acquire citizenship.
  • Once slaves were freed by masters, then they become citizens.
  • A notable slave who became a citizen: Epictetus (philosopher)
• Citizens enjoyed legal and social advantages.
  • To vote and hold public positions, make contracts, own property, have lawful marriage.
  • To sue, to be sued, and to defend oneself in court.
  • To not be tortured, whipped, or receive the death penalty (unless found guilty of treason).
• If you are a citizen in Rome and convicted of a crime, the jury/senate would want to physically eliminate you.
  • You are not given a capital punishment, you are ordered to commit suicide by drinking poison; a symbolic gesture that the state did not order your death, that it was your choice to commit suicide (a soldier would watch and make sure you really “commit suicide”).
  • Example: Seneca (philosopher and poet) was ordered to drink poison because of a crime he was suspected of being a tutor of Nero during his childhood; he was falsely accused during his advanced years of being a conspirator of Nero
• Political systems later on shifted from the power of the Senate towards the dictatorial rule of the Emperor until the fall of the Roman Empire by the 476 CE.
  • Roman Republic gradually evolved to Roman Empire.
  • The emperor ruled over the Roman Empire
  • The Roman Senate’s name was maintained, but did not have any significant function.
  • All power was on the emperor.
  • Citizenship in the Roman Republic faded away during this time.

Modern Era: France

• Modern Citizenship in France; the French Revolution of 1789 to 1799 was a political watershed in the evolution of modern democracy and citizenship.
• In August 1789, after an uprising, the National Constituent Assembly declared the abolition of feudalism.
  • Reigning monarch King Louis XVI was “forced” to declare a kind of constitutional monarchy, wherein his power as the king was considered to the National Constituent Assembly
• In 1789, delegates of the assembly passed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, proclaiming that:
  • Men are born free and remain equal in rights.
  • Social distinctions can be founded only on the common good.
  • The goal of any political association is the conservation of the natural and imprescriptible right of man.
  • Right to: Liberty, prosperity, safety, and resistance to oppression.
  • The principle of sovereignty resides essentially in the nation.
  • No nation, body, or individual can exert authority that does not emanate expressly from it
    • Collectivity of society constituted as a nation.
• The French Convention of 1792 introduced the universal male suffrage (regardless of wealth or property), and the abolition of slavery, although both were revoked a few years later
  • Universal male suffrage was radical/revolutionary because every male person could vote and stand office
  • Unlike the Athenian experience which slaves could not/only male freemen could
  • Like citizenship in Roman Republic - based on a certain level of acquisition of property which had no relevance to universal male suffrage
• Another draft Constitution was made in May 1793, under pressure from radicals and armed citizens, known as the Jacobin Constitution, it adopted and simplified much of the 1792 earlier draft on citizenship.
  • Jacobin: Most radical political group during the French Revolution
• Among other revolutionary provisions, there was a new passage proclaiming insurrection to be: “the most sacred of rights, and the most indispensable duties.”
• The French Revolution was marked by insurrections against the monarchy and mainly centered in Paris by common men (poor, craftsmen, intellectuals, etc.).
  • Brought down the power of monarchy; building of administration and monarchy of Paris.
  • Many killings happened involving Swiss guards of the king and military people.
  • One account of a killing spree: killings started during the night, and roughly by the afternoon of the following day, about 70,000 people were killed and their bodies laid in the streets to rot (exhibited mob psychology).
  • Radical idea: The Jacobin Constitution did not condemn that violence.
  • It was celebrated as a legitimate right of oppressed people, against the forces of the monarchy/allies of the monarchy.
  • It proclaimed and celebrated resurrection - the most sacred of rights.
• The Jacobin constitution was quickly ratified by all eligible French citizens, but it was never implemented and set aside indefinitely in October 1793, (after the Reign of Terror) when a “Revolutionary Government,” endowed with extraordinary powers to repress “counterrevolutionaries” was declared - marking the beginning of the Jacobin Reign of Terror.
• Although the Revolution did not bring democracy to France (instead it led to the authoritarian rule of Napoleon Bonaparte), it introduced the ideals and principles in Europe.

Modern Era: America

• The inspiration/guiding principles of the American Revolution came from the French Enlightenment political and moral philosophers.
  • Ideas adopted by the colonies (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson) were the ideas of French philosophers of the Enlightenment who germinated ideas from the French Revolution.
• The colonists' revolution against the British Crown adopted in 1776 the Declaration of Independence.
  • Principles of the latter became the basis of the US Constitution ratified in 1789.
• The Declaration, among others, set that “all men are created equal” and that the government derives its power from the ‘consent of the governed.’
  • Foundation of the power of the government.
  • Significantly contrasts with the idea/principle of the French Revolution.
• In the US Constitution in 1789, voting was restricted to white, property-owning Protestant men.
• Further on, two years later, the US Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution, providing guarantees for personal freedoms and rights (including a free press), and placing significant constraints on the power of government.
• Slaves did not exercise civil and political rights.
  • Freed slave Afro-American men were only granted the right to vote in 1870.
• American women struggled to have suffrage rights since 1848, but the right to vote for women was won only with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.
• There would be continuing restrictions on the ability of the blacks to vote (such as poll taxes, literacy tests, lengthy residence requirements, etc.) which continued up to the 1950s, until they were over-fumed by the civil rights movement of the 1960s and legislated in civil rights law in the late 1960s.
• Racist systematic discrimination on certain citizens rights (especially against the blacks) continue to date in the US and is a current focus of social movement.

Summary

• The development of citizenship is historically contingent
  • Athens: Grew out of a political order (direct democracy) that emerged as a result of an uprising against invaders who wanted to reinstall and oligarchy that allied the opposition
  • Rome: Citizenship in the Republic was a consequence - the overthrow of the monarchy
  • France: Citizenship Overthrow of Feudalism and the Monarchy by the popular insurrection in Paris
  • America: Citizenship was constructed for the immediate consolidation of an independent America
• Discourse on citizenship does not arise out of a social and political vacuum
  • It emerges out of the subjects’ mass aspiration and active participation in a momentous political movement
  • The mobilizations, particularly the configuration of power in a momentous political event between the major protagonists define the emergent discourses on citizenship
• Terms and scope of citizenship are not uniform nor universal
  • It is exclusionary; some social classes and groups belong while some do not
  • Redefinition of citizenship has always been an intense and long struggle for inclusiveness
  • Example: The right of citizens to vote and hold office in the ancient era excluded propertyless, slaves, and women; the civil rights in America of the blacks were held in check, and only substantially recognized after the 1960s
• The space of citizenship historically evolves, but it is not along a smooth linear path of advance
  • Reversals, overturning and rescinding of the space of citizenship are common
  • Example: From tyrannical monarch to citizenship in a democratic city state then back to repressed subjects of tyrant rulers in Athens; the suspension of a newly acquired rights of citizens in France for a long period due to installation of a period of dictatorship
  • The Jacobin dictatorship followed by the Napoleonic rule
  • The terms of existing citizenship is in flux and far from being permanent and unchanging

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