Today is the Bastille Day, the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille in Paris on 14 July 1789, a turning point of the French Revolution that would give birth to a new nation of values and ideas rooted in liberty, equally, and fraternity.
The visioneries of the enlightenment period could not have foreseen the domino effect that democracy would have across the world, as ‘Liberty for all’ became the motto of their time.
From the shores of France to the shores of San Domino, the Enlightenment ideas would bloom many years later during the first successful anti- abolition and anti-colonial revolution led by self- liberated slaves against their oppressors. Herein, the idea of “man as a citizen” was born and a new era of dignity ignited. The great hope for universal fraternity became concretes when the declaration of Human rights was adopted in 1948.
The influence of ‘Bastille Day’ forever defined the collective world. It truly became “An Idea that changed the world”.
( Painting: “The Storming of Bastille”, by Jean – Pierre Hoiel)
-Unesco