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.


    

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.



 

Working Women

            Recently, we learned about an experiment that was used during the Industrial Revolution to convince girls to work in the Lowell mills. This experiment was used because unlike Great Britain, the U.S. did not have an abundance of cheap labor. The Lowell Experiment was a way to convince young girls and their families to let the girls leave home and come work in the mills. The mill recruiters would promise families to watch over the girls and instill a mature code of behavior. The girls would get paid and send home some money that would help their families cover their debts and expenses. Mill recruiters would make going to work at the mills seem like an amazing experience. The girls benefited from going to the mills by being bale to get some spending money themselves so they could buy whatever they would want. Also, the girls time worked in the mills were temporary and they would leave as soon they were old enough to marry. The downside to working in the mills were that the girls were separated from their families and would miss part of their childhoods. The girls would also face wage cuts and get little pay for all of the long hours of work. Lastly, the mills were a very dangerous place to work. Many cases of working in mills would often lead to serious injury or even death. During this time, mill owners would feel that they could do anything they felt would improve their own status because they knew that working in the mills were the only jobs most of the girls would ever have. This reflected views of women during this time because it shows that women were not valued as workers and the mill owners could treat the women as they pleased. Eventually, the wage cuts left women to start revolting against the mill owners. These revolts left a mark on labor rights for the future years of the Lowell mills.

Above is a picture of some girls that worked in the Lowell mills during

The Lowell Experiment and the women's worker revolt.

Google Hangout

     This week in class, we got the opportunity to chat with Jamie, an expert/explainer from the Museum of Science and Industry. To start with this activity, we watched a video of Jamie giving a tour of the museum. He showed all of the old machines that were used during the Industrial Revolution. My class then searched the web for some of the definitions to the machines Jamie was talking about. We then made questions that we could ask Jamie when it was time to video chat him.
 
      After doing some more backup information, we were ready to start our chat. Jamie started by going around to each machine and explained how they were used. Jamie said that the earliest machinery was a loom that was used in houses. When more product was in demand, people were forced to abandon the at-home looms and go to factories. We learned how cotton was turned into product starting with the hopper feeder scutcher and ending with the flyers. Jamie also talked about the living conditions while working in the mills. Children were forced to go work at the mills to pay off their families debt. While working, the workers would get ill and physical deformities from standing all day and breathing in the contaminated air. Eventually, factory owner would take orphans form the local orphanage to do the work because it was cheaper than hiring other workers. Jamie then went on to talk about his work at the museum. He wanted to work at the museum because he has always been interested in the Industrial Revolution. He walks around the museum giving tours and answering questions for visitors. My class was very fortunate to get an online tour.
   
    Overall, I thought this experience was very helpful for better understanding life during the Industrial Revolution. It was helpful to see the machines not in a picture and to have each piece be explained. One drawback to the online hangout was that the Internet would sometimes cut out which would make it hard to hear what Jamie had to say. I hope that in the future my class will be able to do another web chat from and online source because it gives us more first hand information without actually be there in person.