Conqueror of Countries

    Recently, my class started reviewing the life of Napoleon Bonaparte. The essential question for this lesson is, "What was Napoleon's impact on the social, economic, and political systems of Europe?" To get started on the life of Napoleon, we watched the video below,


While we watched this video, we took notes on all the places Napoleon had conquered. My class came up with a long list that included places like Italy, Belgium, Holland, Spain and many more. This helped us realizes that Napoleon was a strong leader if he was able to conquer all of these places during his lifetime. We then looked at two views from different people on Napoleon. The first view was from a women named Madame de Stael. She was a member of the mobility and the daughter of King Louis XVI's former financial adviser. Madame de Stael goes on to talk about how Napoleon would persuade men to go into battle with him and when he became head of government, he had no formal plan for a universal monarchy. The main reason Madame de Stael disliked Napoleon is because he made the classes more even which was a negative to those like de Stael in the higher class. The other view is from Marshal Michel Ney. Ney was an officer that served closely to Napoleon for many years. Ney supported Napoleon by calling him things like sovereign, and says the Napoleon has the right to rule over the country of France. Lastly, we viewed the image below and highlighted Napoleon did that made an impact on the whole world and on France. The text highlighted in pink represents pink and the text highlighted in orange represents the rest of the world. 





    From these sources, we can see how Napoleon impacted the areas in the Essential Question. He impacted the political system in a positive way by his ideas of meritocracy which rewarded people based on their talents and hard work, not because of their social rank. Napoleon impacted the social system by giving more people the rights to property and access to education. Lastly, he impacted the economic system in a positive way by removing trade barriers and stimulating industry. He also was able to steal money from Italy, and created the Bank of France which involved having a budget system and massive public work systems. At first look at Napoleon Bonaparte, you might think more along the line of Madame de Stael, and think that he is a greedy tyrant that will trick and force people into war with him. But, when you see how a lot of his actions have greatly impacted France in a positive way. In the words of the former Duke of Wellington, (Napoleon's greatest nemesis), "Napoleon was the greatest general that ever lived".  

Which Way Works?

     The other day in class, we did an activity that would later connect to our newest lesson plan. We were trying to understand the ideas of Karl Marx and Adam Smith on the economy. My teacher started giving us two pieces of chocolate, with the exception on two students that got eight pieces. This represented the 90% of poor citizens during this time, while the other 10% being wealthy. My teacher then instructed us to play rock-paper-scissor. If we lost the game, we would have to give up a piece of chocolate. If we won the game, we would receive a piece. When all of your candy was gone you would have to sit down. The trade of candy and our freedom of competition represents Adam Smiths idea of the the invisible hand which found out would be Capitalism. The tournament went on until only a few students had the majority of the candy. We came together as a class after and concluded that the students that started with more candy had an advantage over everyone else. My teacher then unexpectedly collected the candy and redistributed the candy so everyone had two pieces. This was representing Karl Marx's idea of socialism and how the government would take all materials and redistribute them equally among the traders. The people who had won the candy for themselves thought this was unfair because they worked for the candy and then they had to share it. A question was then posed that if we had a chance to play rock-paper-scissors again to potentially gain or loose candy, would you do it? When we all agreed to sharing an equal amount, this represented communism and the government no longer being needed. This activities purpose was to connect us to the theories or capitalism, socialism and communism. I liked doing this activity because it made me more interested in the lesson because it was a change from just taking notes. Also, every step we took during the activity connected to something we were learning so it was easy to follow. 

   Since we now know Karl Marx's idea of socialism and the theory of communism, we can compare it to the ideas of Adam Smith. To get to know a little about Smiths ideas, we watched the video below:



This video talks about Adam Smith's idea of "the invisible hand". The idea of the "invisible hand" is that government should leave people alone to buy and sell as they please. This leaves sellers to compete with each other and the consumers would be drawn to the supplier who is selling the most for as little money; almost by a invisible hand. This theory and Capitalism are the same thing. Smith thought that Capitalism would be the best plan to help with the poor because the prices of good quality supplies would go down due to supplier competition. Karl Marx argued that this theory does not help the poor and they will later revolt. Marx thought the best way to help the poor was by creating a system themselves that would end in everyone being equal. This would eliminate class division.

    I think that the idea of Adam Smith's would be the best way to go. The idea leaves government out of the equation, so nobody would have anyone to blame but themselves. Also, prices would go down in result from suppliers having to compete with each other. Also, those who have worked the hardest would see the most benefits because they are not bound to be equal than those who have not worked so hard. I think it would help people realize that the government cant control everything and that people had to work hard for themselves.