Success or Failure?

   Following the French Revolution, many other revolutions were starting to take place. The essential question for this unit is were the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 really a failure as historians have said? We started learning about these revolutions by looking at this quote by Alexis de Tocqueville,"We are sleeping on a volcano. Do you not see that the Earth trembles anew. A wind of revolution blows, the storm is on the horizon." The class came together to analyze the quote. We said that liberals and nationalists are the sleeping volcano, the winds are the ideas of liberalism and nationalism that are spreading among the people in Europe who are unhappy, the storm on the horizon is the actual revolution that is about to come, and the Earth is trembling anew because the countries are unstable. The class then broke up into groups and we made time lines bout successes and failures. My groups timeline is below.

    The timeline starts all the way at the left with complete failure and ends at the right with complete success. In the middle is not really a success or failure and the others are partial failure and partial success. 

   Now to get started learning about the actual revolutions. we were again put into groups and each group was assigned a revolution. My group had the revolution of France in 1830.  The goals of this revolution were to extend suffrage, or establish voting rights, to win power for the middle class citizens, and to gain a constitution that would recognize the rights of the people. The opponent of this revolution was Charles X, he was the younger brother of Louis XVIII who died in 1824. “The liberty of the periodical press is suspended.…In consequence no newspaper or periodical or semi-periodical work, established or to be established, without discrimination as to the matters which shall be treated therein, shall appear, either in Paris or in the departments,”. This quote from The July Ordinances, July 25, 1830 By Charles X and His Ministers is telling the public that all rights they had to voice their opinions are now abolished. Charles X angered the people when he did this, he was attempting to keep the people in check, and to make sure that ideas of revolt couldn't spread. The outcome of this revolution was the people of France receiving a new king named Louis Philippe, who was also referred to as “The Citizen King”. “The Duke of Orleans [Louis Philippe] is a prince devoted to the cause of the Revolution…The Duke of Orleans is a citizen king, …It is from the French people that he will hold the crown.” This is an excerpt from Theirs, Adolphe.2 “Orleanist Manifesto..., and it tells that the new king was voted on. Louis Philippe extended suffrage but only for the wealthier of Frances citizens. Under his reign the upper bourgeoisie prospered, and the majority of the people were still unable to vote. The French Revolution of 1830 falls under the category of either a neutral revolution or moderately successful revolution; things were changed for the better, but not necessarily for everyone that was asking for the change.

 All in all, I think that the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 were not failures like historians have said. I think that the only one I would call a failure is the Decembrists Revolt. The others were not successes, but definitely were not complete failures. The people were able to put up a fight against their government and see changes although the changes still didn't satisfy everyone. Even if the change didn't last long, the people were still able to get what they wanted across to the government in order for them to make a change. The people of this time were able to make their voices heard.

    

   

Balancing the Peace

   The Congress of Vienna was a peace conference in 1814 that was held in Austria. France, Prussia, Austria, Russia, and Great Britain gathered to come up with a peace treaty following Napoleon's defeat. In class we started with the essential question that asked what people should do if their power is threatened. We then learned about Klemens von Metternich and his relationship with Napoleon. We watched a clip of a movie where Metternich and Napoleon had a meeting were Metternich was seeking peace with Napoleon in Dresden. Then as a class we discussed the Congress of Vienna and viewed a interactive map of the changes in Europe and the land boundaries of that time. By the end of the class, after looking at all these activities, we can up with an idea as to what people do to protect their power.
   
   When powerful people feel like their power is being threatened they will first fight to keep their power, and then create a balance of power that so no one will try to take over and threaten their own power again. As we learned from our sources in class, Metternich, who is an official from Austria, power was being threatened by Napoleons conquests. Other big powers in Europe such as Prussia and Russia, were feeling threatened as well. Surrounding countries held The Congress of Vienna to try to make peace. After a long battle Napoleon was finally exiled to Elba then Saint Helena. The Congress then decided to balance their power between themselves. This was to prevent anyone from taking over land like Napoleon had and causing chaos. Also, as seen in the interactive map, the congress divided land among the four big powers, Austria, Prussia, France, and Russia, and made new boarders for these countries. The government officials were happy with these new changes and some order was restored after the Congress of Vienna.

   In my opinion, what the attendees of the Congress of Vienna did was effective and the right choice. I think they should have not completely just make decisions and take away land from other countries like Italy because it wasn't fair, but for the most part what they did prevented revolutions for the next 40+ years. I think that the people with the most power always should make sacrifices and give up some of their power to others in order to keep any issues from arising. Napoleon had gained so much power he just fell apart and people were upset everywhere with some of what he was doing. What really makes a powerful leader, is being one that is loved by his people, so giving up sacrifices is necessary for this to happen.


             
Napoleon Bonaparte
http://cdn.medindia.net/health-images/nepolean.jpg                Klemons von Metternich
                                                                                  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Graf_Clemens_Metternich.jpg 

The Most Ideal of the Ideologies

   To begin our lesson on the ideologies of the 19th century, we were given an essential question. The essential question is as follows, "What were the major political ideologies of the 19th century and how did they influence social and political action?". To learn more about this topic, we started by looking up the terms liberalism, conservatism and nationalism. We took a few notes on these terms then our class came together to discuss them. we then discussed what the word ideology actually meant. Ideologies are ideas that are formed by someone or a group of people, that forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy. To better understand these three ideologies, my class was broken up into groups to research them. Each ideology was covered by two groups that were responsible to present a sixty second presentation. My group was assigned liberalism. For our presentation, we decided to use the chatter pix to explain our ideology. A screenshot from our final presentation is below.

                                          A screenshot from our video were John Locke was talking
  Our presentation explains the creation as well as what liberalism means. Liberalism is the idea that the middle class has a say in government and that everyone has god given natural rights that need to be protected. Liberalism prevented tyrannic rule and promoted freedom of though and natural rights. However, liberals did not want a democracy, instead they left out the women and poor but gave the middle class a say. It influenced the social and political action because the liberals had opposite ideas from the conservatives and made the middle class happy, but not the poor.  

  After we presented our presentation, we would watch other groups presentations to learn about the other ideologies. Another ideology we learned about is nationalism. Nationalism is when a nation wants to be united and the best and strongest nation it can be. They wanted to be strong and able to conquer others and drive out foreign rulers. Nationalists believed that people were bound together by sharing the same culture, language, and history. The nationalists would not focus on social classes and power as much as how they should all be united as one strong nation. The last ideology we learned about is conservatism. Conservatives believe that the traditional political and economic ways should be kept in use. They do not believe in reform and do not want a revolution. They wanted to preserve the system of aristocracy and set social structures. They liked traditional monarchies. This influenced social and political action because it was giving power to specific people like the monarch.