In Ancient Greece and Rome, populist movements sought to re-equilibre the distribution of wealth and power. Though less prominent during the feudal Middle Ages, occasional peasant revolts and urban resistance disturbed the social order. In France , in , a populist-aristocratic, political schism violently redesigned the society.
In post-revolutionary France, reordering this division became the major point of political contention over the next centuries. Having slumbered since the Pax Romana , these struggles are once again at the forefront of western and, indeed, world politics. The most violent opposition to the French revolution internally came from the Vendee. These peasants and their lords were to the political right of the Girondins and even further right of the constitutional monarchists in the National Assembly.
They were the main political opponents of the revolution. The Vendeen opposition was: monarchist, nationalist, Catholic, moralist, rural, and anti-democratic, which are many of the characteristics retained by factions of the modern French far right.
The Jacobin left, leading the revolution, were: egalitarian, internationalist, anti-clerical, libertarian, urban, cosmopolitan, republican and democratic. These are characteristics embraced by the French left today. The conflict in the Vendee was so bloody, that some historians have called it genocidal.
This was followed by the UN Charter a century and a half later, and two years after by the European Convention. This concept broadly defined, while often breached in practice, did allow France to extend citizenship to its overseas possessions along with voting rights. With this, France differed fundamentally from the United Kingdom and other colonial powers.
