Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The French Republican Calendar

Episode Date: July 8, 2022

In 1792, the people of France overthrew their monarchy and established the French Republic.  The leaders of the French Revolution didn’t just want to change the French political system, they wanted to radically overhaul French culture and society as well.  That extended all the way to the very calendar which was used to keep track of time.  Learn more about the French Republican Calendar, how it worked and why no one uses it today, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Darcy Adams Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Search Past Episodes at fathom.fm Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ Everything Everywhere is an Airwave Media podcast." or "Everything Everywhere is part of the Airwave Media podcast network Please contact [e-mail] to advertise on Everything Everywhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1792, the people of France overthrew their monarchy and established the French Republic. The leaders of the French Revolution didn't just want to change the French political system. They wanted to radically overhaul French culture and society as well. That extended all the way to the very calendar which was used to keep track of time. Learn more about the French Republican calendar, how it worked and why no one uses it today on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? throughline is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world now.

Time travel with us every week on the Thulein podcast from NPR. The French Revolution was about a lot more than putting their king in a guillotine, although to be fair that was a pretty big part of it. Changing the political system in France was only the start of things which the revolution, revolutionaries wanted to change. The government took control of the church. All the members of the clergy became state employees, and all church property was confiscated. They desecrated the graves of former French kings and queens in the Cathedral of Sand Denny. They also wanted to make basic changes to everyday life. Many of these changes fell under the broad category of decimalization. I don't want to downplay the idea of decimalization because many decimalization schemes actually made

a lot of sense. In 1795, the French Republic introduced a new decimalized currency called the French Frank, which replaced the Libra. They were following the lead of the United States, which had recently become one of the first countries to decimalize its currency. The movement for decimalization also led to the creation of the metric system, a system of weights and measures entirely divided into units of 10 with a universal standard of measure. Despite the reluctance of the United States to embrace the metric system, I think most people would say that the metric system and decimalized currencies have been a good thing. But not every decimalization effort was a success. In particular, the attempts to decimalize time.

Before I get into the French proposals to change how we track time, I want to give a brief overview of how we measure time. At first glance, it's understandable why someone could find our system of timekeeping to be very strange. There are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour, but 24 hours in a day. There are seven days in a week, 28 to 31 days each month, and 12 months in a year. year. This isn't the sort of system that you would probably create if you were starting from scratch. The number of seconds in a minute and the number of minutes in an hour have ancient roots. It probably came from the Babylonians who had a base 60 counting system. Day and night was always divided into units of 12, probably by the Samarians and the Egyptians, which, when put

together, make 24. Grouping days together in units of seven to make a week probably started with the Assyrians and their king Sargon of Akad in 2350 BC. The names of the the days of the week in English come from ancient Norse, as does the word week itself. I've done episodes in the past on the creation of the calendar, and the development of the Julian calendar and its related Gregorian reforms. Prior to the development of the Julian calendar, the Roman calendar was a massive mess, and other countries with lunar or loony solar calendars have dates that can float all over the place. On top of that, the dating of years in the Western world was based on what they thought was the birth of Jesus, which didn't sit well

with the French revolutionaries. So given all these odd systems of time measurement, it's easy to understand why someone might want to try to simplify the system. And in addition to the complexity of the time system, in the French religious calendar, every single day of the year was dedicated to at least one saint. So calendar reform wasn't just a matter of simplicity, it was also a matter of secularization.

The National Convention, which was basically the French Parliament once the Republic was established, created a committee to create a new campaign. calendar for the Republic. The person who was appointed ahead the committee was a mathematician by the name of Gilles-Ber-Rome. Rome and his committee consisted of several scientists and at least one poet, and came back with a proposal for a total overhaul of the French calendar. It was proposed to the National Convention on September 23, 1793, and it was adopted one month later. And here I should note that Gébert-Rome, like so many others in the French Revolution, later became one of its

victims. Just two years later, he was sentenced to the guillotine, but stabbed himself to death on the out of the courtroom after he was sentenced. At this point, you are now probably wondering, so what exactly was this new calendar adopted by the French Republic? For starters, they picked a new date from which to start this new epoch. There was a great deal of debate about which date should be used, and even what year. Some thought it should start with the French Revolution in 1789, and others that it should start with the founding of the Republic in 1792.

There was also debate about if January 1st should continue to be used as the start of the new year. Eventually, they settled on year one of the new calendar beginning on September 22, 1792, the establishment of the Republic. However, the actual start of the year was pinned to the autumnal equinox, which often did fall on September 22nd. This was done retroactively as the new calendar was proposed and approved in the year 1793. So, according to the new calendar, it was adopted in year two. According to the conventions used, the year number was supposed to be expressed in Roman numerals. which, if you think about it, flies in the face of the entire purpose of trying to decimalize everything. The months were a much bigger change. There were now to be 12 months in each year, with each month being exactly 30 days.

Weeks were now to be replaced by a set of 10 days known as a decade. People would be expected to work for 9 days and then get the 10th day off, and a half day off on the 5th day. The names for the days of the week would simply be the first day, second day, third day, etc. Each month would consist of exactly three decades. Now, at this point, you might be wondering, but Gary, 12 times 30 is equal to 360, and there are 365 days in a year. What happened to the other five days? That is an excellent question. At the end of each year, there would be a period of five days known as Les Sandsculatides, named after the common people in France called the Sancoulat's, which literally translated means without underwear.

It was later changed to the much more generic Les Jures complementaire, which just means additional days. There would be a sixth additional day every fourth year for the leap year. These additional days would be holidays in France. Each day would honor some noble attribute. They would be virtue, talent, labor, convictions, and honor. And the leap year would be the day they celebrated the revolution.

The names of the months were also all totally changed. Instead of Roman names, they adopted new names which reflected the seasons. The first month, again beginning on the autumnal equinox, was von der Meier. This was named after the grape harvest. The second month was Brumere, which comes from the word mist. The third month was Freemere, which comes from the word for frost. You'll notice that all three months in a season have the exact same ending. The fourth month was Nivos, which comes from the word for snowy.

The fifth month was Pluvios, which comes from the word for rainy. And the sixth month was Ventos, which comes from the word for windy. The seventh month was Germinal, which comes from the word for germinate. The eighth month was Florial, which comes from the word for flower. And the ninth month was prarial, which comes from the word for prairie. The tenth month was mesidor, which comes from the word for harvest. The 11th month was thermidor, which comes from the Greek word for heat. And the 12th and final month was fructador, which comes from the word for fruit.

So far, this has been a whole lot for the average person to wrap their head around. But wait, there's even more. They also changed how time was kept within a single day. Each day was to be divided into 10 decimal hours. Each decimal hour was to be divided into 100 decibel minutes, and each decimal minute was to be divided into 100 decimal seconds. So the decimal hours were actually 144 minutes. Each decimal minute was 86.4 seconds,

and each decimal second was 0.86 seconds. There were decimal time pocket watches created and clocks, which today are highly prized because they're so rare. And at top of all of this, the calendar of Saints' days was replaced with each day representing some sort of plant or mineral. So, instead of referencing the Feast of St. Agnes, for example, you would now reference the day of broccoli. And yes, that was actually a real day. So if we fast forward 230 years, we find most of the world using decimalized weights and measures as well as decimalized currencies. However, no one uses decimalized time or the French Republic calendar. What went wrong? Well, there's a whole bunch

of that went wrong. For starters, selecting the beginning of the year to always begin on the autumnal equinox didn't fit with the leap year pattern. It sounded good on paper, but it didn't quite work out. In our Gregorian calendar, the equinoxes and solstices happen when they happen, and we don't schedule anything around them. Another problem was that no one else used this calendar. Whereas something like the metric system could be adopted, Conversely, no other country was going to set their calendar to the start of the French Revolution. It simply made everything confusing with dealing with anyone outside of France. Also, people are just stuck in their ways.

And once you're old enough to read a clock, the time system we have really isn't that confusing. It was more confusing to adopt a something new than it was to keep using the old way. Also, a system of 10-day weeks where you get one day off is far worse than having one day off every seven days. but mostly common people just never bought into it and kept using the old calendar. The entire Republican calendar system, as well as decimal timekeeping, was abandoned when Napoleon Bonaparte came to power in 1805. It lasted for all of 12 years. It did make a very brief comeback for 18 days during the Paris Commune in 1871, and there has never been any grassroots movement to bring it back. There are a few historical events that occurred during the French Republic, which are referred to by their Republican

calendar dates. For example, the coup which brought Napoleon to power is still known as the coup of 18 Brumere. If you want to mess around with it just to be cheeky, there are online calendars which will convert Gregorian calendar dates to French Republican dates. For example, the day I am publishing this podcast is 20 Messador in the year 230. There have been many attempts at creating alternative calendar systems, which I know because I've researched the heck out of them for other episodes. The fact is, no other calendar is ever going to be much better than what we have right now. And that's because our days, months, and years do not evenly divide into each other nicely, which means that we're always

going to have some sort of messy leftovers to deal with. The French Republican calendar ultimately failed because it was trying to solve a problem that was never really a problem, and it provided an alternative that wasn't any better than the system it was replacing. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The executive producer is Darcy Adams. The associate producers are Thorne Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener G-Man Brad over at Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, So glad I found this podcast.

How this podcast can be so consistently fascinating is a testament to its creator. I look forward to every new episode. Thanks, G-Man. The key to making episodes that are fascinating is that I just pick topics that I find fascinating. It's worked so far, and I figured that there are lots of inquisitive people out there just like me. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you two can have it read on the show.