Monday, December 19, 2016

Document 4.8 --- from Rousseau, "The Social Contract"


Making the restraints on man legitimate
  • so Rousseau was all about "man was born free, but everywhere he is in chains." He wanted to make sure that the "chains" were legit. 
    • the chains become legit:  
      • when people are willing to give up their rights to society, contrary to being forced to give them up 
      • when natural rights are forsaken for the social contract which ensures a different kind of right---> the right of societal unity 
        • natural rights/ milk into social contract/processing machine into societal rights/cheese 
        • cheese is still a form of milk just as the rights guaranteed by the social contract are still a form of rights 
    • Image result for milk into cheese
      • man must transfer his natural rights to the community. the community enforces the same conditions for everyone thus no one will try to make equality worse for the members of the community because he would then be making things worse for himself 
      • if social contract is violated, man gets his natural rights back 
    • Is this a suggestion for a strong government? 
      • we don't have enough information yet to come to a conclusion but it is an idea to keep in mind 
      • possibly because it creates a untied force that seems powerful 
    • Is this what the government should be doing or is this a social standard for society?Image result for questioned face gif
(me this entire class) 

Individuals Wills and the General Will 
  • man has free will and should have it according to Rousseau until that will becomes harmful to the state then"Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be forced to obey it by the whole body politic, which means nothing else but that he will be forced to be free." which means he will be cut loose from the perfect society 
  • is there a Socialism vibes? 
    • Brielle says yes because its giving up everything for the greater good 
    • but it's more likely no because socialism usually gives things out for free (like college), it doesn't take things from all peopleImage result for bernie sanders gif socialism
  • the general will is to protect the members of society from harmful things. in doing this people are protected from being killed randomly. General will institutes laws that members must follow for the greater good. 
  • Can individuals revolt? 
  • Being forced to be free--> the combination of everyone giving up their natural rights and then obtaining rights that unify them and then looking down on people who stray from the unified bunch is what it means to be forced to be free. it deals with negative and positive liberty 
    • negative liberty--> "freedom from" 
    • positive liberty--> "capacity to"
    • for example, with the social contract an individual does not have the positive liberty to commit murder and the other members have the negative liberty of the threat of murder
Indivisible, Inalienable Sovereignty
  • sovereignty--> not the people, it is the ruling power 
  • general will alone may direct the forces of the State to achieve common good 
  • the government is split into what is equivalent to the U.S. President's cabinet. it has members assigned to specific tasks, for example foreign relations 
    • Did Rousseau believe that this system worked?  


Wednesday, December 14, 2016

12/14/16 -


BAGGED MILK IS A THING

Image result for BAGGED MILK




Class thesis based on DBQ.... well, we actually never came up with one
Image result for oops sorry gif


BUT we did come up with a bunch of assumptions on which you can formulate your own thesis if you would like....


basically here is a list of the assumptions


1. Parents didn't get attached to their kids as a means of survival. 
       - kids were likely to die at a very young age, causing a lot of grief for the parents. solution? just      don't care for them at all... that doesn't create a vicious child death circle or anything

       - as kids got older, parents started to get more attached to them... prime example of martin luther talking about how he is sad that his daughter died at 13.


2. Parents only started caring about their kids when the kids started to be helpful.


okay Rousseau wasn't really any assumption thing so i'm not gonna make him #3 but he's under the same idea of childrearing practices...


Rousseau --> excess rigor vs. excess indulgence
 - he def thought that indulgence was worse than rigor because indulgence makes them soft and delicate... aka not apt for surviving the harsh life of the 18th century....

- he basically was like find the middle ground with your children


the picture also doesn't really go with the assumptions... ugh why did i even bother numbering one and two i should have.... oh whatever

anyway, the picture... Image result for children's games pieter bruegel




so besides for the kid hitting his head (although it sort of looks like a handstand) most kids are kind of having fun... mainly because NO ADULTS ARE WATCHING THEM ITS LIKE HOME ALONE WITHOUT CHRISTMASImage result for HOME ALONE GIF

just imagine they had BB guns in the 18th century....

- represents the indifferent attitude of parents (does that mean they are going to the vestibule of hell i'm sorry i couldn't resist a dante joke)


Continuing from parental neglect (its a wonder anyone survived really)....


we move into diets aka your economic status affected the way you ate

- poor --> veggies, little meat, bread --> not balanced, not enough vitamins
- middle (artisans, etc) --> veggies and meat, bread --> balanced
- rich --> meat, meat, meat --> too high in fats and such, unbalanced

Image result for i love bread gif
apparently Oprah has a thing with bread bc every gif about loving bread was about oprah


BREAD LITERALLY MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND (until potatoes of course and then it gets replaced, at least in the hearts of the irish)

until bread starts to "become as white as snow" and lose its nutritional value... same thing happened with sugar...


continuing on --> RELIGION 

Related image
the low church on feast days

sooooo.... the high church vs. the low church???

the high church --> ex: the vatican --> they follow the rituals of the church to the letter

the low church --> ex. the backwater parish of wherever --> combine the traditions of the village with the church rituals to make practices more appealing to the townspeople

aka the low church had a lot of fun making pilgrimages and having super fun parties




the protestants (a subset of christians, but not an actual religion) -->

are the protestant revival and pietism the same thing? I don't really know

all i know is that the protestants became hypocrites bc the things they spoke against were things that they did (was that a little harsh i apologize its been a rough day)

anyway pietism was the whole like feelings into prayer and God thing... aka where methodism comes from remember that --> J

ohn Wesley --> bunch of methodist colleges named after him --> mainly important because he founded methodism talking in


we sort of got distracted by the end of the class because Lily wasn't here to keep us on track (we missed you) and also Julia pls come back we missed you also and you were not a second thought if thats what you were thinking I thought of you and Lil at the same time <3 <3 to our sick kids (was that weird i don't even care anymore)


final note for the test:
more info will probably come from chapter 19 in terms of multiple choice but writing will be a combo of both.

GOOD LUCK STUDYING!

Monday, December 12, 2016

Ricky Ricardo

So our main topic of today's class was Ricardo.

- He wrote "Principles of Political Economy and Taxation" in which he criticized the Poor Laws and called for their abolition
- He hated the Poor Laws because they taxed the wealthy to give support for the poor, so he viewed them as making the rich less rich and making the poor lazy because they expected charity to get by
- Therefore, he believed helping the poor was ruining the state, because it wasn't really helping anyone



Ok, Ok so basically Ricardo thought that if the poor received welfare they would never develop independence and therefore never work for their own living

OBVI this is kinda not true, because it is kind of our moral duty to help the poor but...

His Solution: 

So instead of having the rich taxed to support the poor, Ricardo wanted there to be no laws or taxes towards the poor and have them work out their problems by themselves.. Because they need to stop being lazy and get their act together!!!!
 - He basically thinks that the reason people are poor is because they are lazy and too dependent on the government for help
- and he didn't even really give a real solution, because he thought that everything would work out by itself



So, if we give the poor a nice pat on the back will that solve all their problems?! haha no



Now lets talk about Adam Smith....

- According to Maeve, he basically started Capitalism, meaning he was basically the star of it
- he published a book about it, and really got the ball rolling
- He would be great friends with Ricardo because they were both on the employers' side, not the workers

Ricardo would also be BFFs with Thomas Malthus
- Malthus stated that there were way too many people in the world- a population explosion

Ricardo is in support of Natural Law: 

which means that only nature is the authority over man
- this goes with his whole idea of letting the poor people work it out on their own

So whats the whole deal with them not loving their children?? 
      • Because it is an economic burden
      • They don’t get attached to them
      • Even the rich didn’t care about their kids→ out of sight out of mind
      • They were neglected because they didn’t think they were gonna live so they didn’t want to get attached to them
        • But then they didn’t care for their children and they died
      • So many nurses because rich people didn’t want to care for their kids- un-ladylike
      • But poor women also needed workers because they needed to go work


Thursday, December 8, 2016

Marriage and Family

With all the changes in the economy and business systems, the lives of the people who made up these systems changed too.

This has to do with the cottage industry as discussed in chapter 19.
  • How, therefore, is chapter 20 a result of chapter 19?
- The cottage industry led indirectly to younger marriages and more premarital pregnancies. Before this change in industry, lower class communities lived in villages where they were subject to traditional rules and customs. As cottage workers, however, young people were given a certain degree of independence from their parents or neighbors' watchful eyes.



The first area that felt these changes was the basic institution of family...

          - Even though living with the entire family under one roof was not exactly popular in Europe (oddly enough, this isn't that surprising) , there had been this kind  of extended, familial-like relation to the other townspeople a peasant lived around.

                     - However, with more work able to be done away from open-sharing land villages, the nuclear family started gaining importance. Now, a couple would have their own house with their children rather than having their parents ,siblings, and neighbors  know everything about their lives.




In terms of social structure, is this nuclear family more or less stable than the extended family?

             - Observing how many social traditions fell apart with the new system of marriage and separated family members, life with the extended family could be seen as more stable for larger implications. For example, the later explosion of unwed, pregnant women could attest to the fact that their separation from the rest of the family led them to a life of promiscuity that  might have ruined their chance for a stable,married life. It also led to a large population of illegitimate children.


Another aspect that evolved during this time was the reasons behind marriage.
  •          For the larger part of their history -->  members of the lower/middle class  were not interested in the romance part of a partnership, but rather survival.

- Daily life  = a constant struggle for the basic necessities
  •  Therefore -->  if Jacques was a really nice guy, but was known not to bring home as much food or had to wait a while for his father to die to get his land,chances are there would not be a Mrs. Jacques the Peasant walking down the aisle anytime soon.

  •   Now, however, the young men were getting their own jobs through the putting-out system.
 
  •  Men --> able to establish themselves financially without having to wait for land or rely solely on crops. With this new economic "freedom", couples could marry earlier knowing they had a relatively stable income. This enabled more couples to marry for love.


As the 18th century went on, however, a lot of men and women decided to drop the wedding part and opt for just  premarital sex.


- With many people working outside the home = less restrictions placed on relationships by the outside world.

- Without fear of being paraded around on a donkey as public shaming, men and women carried on affairs without being married. Many, but not all,  women in these relationships then ended up pregnant.
  •  No watchful eye of close-knit communities --> many premarital relationships did not end in marriage, regardless of pregnancy.

  • Although many men promised a proposal afterward, the thought of a burden caused by a wife and child caused this rise in unwed mothers.


  • At this time, there was a rapid spike in the amount of illegitimate children born to unwed mothers.

  • Not to be overlooked is the fact that not all illegitimate children resulted from couples --> some children resulted from assault on working women by their bosses (ex: fathers/sons of the families these women worked for)
In line with the last point, many of the women that left home found work as a housekeeper or maid in the homes of higher class families.

      - How were these women treated in this environment?
  • It was not uncommon for these women to be mistreated, whether it was a result of sexual, physical, or verbal abuse. Evidence of such treatment is detailed in court cases from the period where female servants would bring their mistress or master to court for legal remedy. The likelihood that these cases were decided in favor of the servant were slim.
      - Did holding this job affect how respectable ("marriable" ) a woman in this group was?
  • While the abuse of female servants may suggest the feelings of their masters about their respectability, holding this job did not hinder most women from eventually settling down in a domestic life. It was becoming a commonplace for young people to leave home to start working for wages. Therefore, it was almost customary for women of this class to establish themselves financially just as their male counterpart before marriage. In addition, the traditional village rules not longer decided for the young person. Rather, the decisions fell into the hands of the young adults themselves.






Wednesday, December 7, 2016

The Putting Out System

The Putting Out System 

The Putting Out System is essentially where merchants gave farmers raw materials (contrary Julia, it was not seeds :)) and asked them to produce a product, while also making a certain quota. 

          Why is this system so great? 

Mainly because it was new. The putting out system and its participants were part of a pre-industrial age, where the brink of factories, companies, and monopolies was looming ahead. 




  • this system, and the people who "ran" it, were known as proto industrialists.

Putting Out system vs. Mercantilism? Similar or Different? 
  • mercantilism, by definition, is the: belief in the benefits of profitable trading.
  • its main goal was to make the monarch rich  

Yet the putting out system was more locally based. The main goal was to profit the private owners, rather than the nation                                                
  • it did not just sell things, but it locally produced and made goods. 
I believe we came to the conclusion in class that the two systems are just too different for one to be better than the other. 
  • the industrialists are benefitting because they are getting cheap labor and are selling their product at a high rate. 
  • Yet, the rural workers are also benefitting, for they still have a job and are getting consecutive wages, no matter what the weather is. 
the two systems: one is agrarian and one is a pre-industrial age. We can contrast them and kind of see similarities, but they can't fully be compared. 


Bosses: So this system, which can also be called the cottage industry, worked well for everyone.          when the bosses were away, profiting and selling their goods, the workers "played"
  • when the cat is away, the mice will play. 

  • from the book, we know that the cottage industry workers would make their quota, drink all of their money, and then rush to make the next quota. The bosses were not concerned with them personally, as long as the quota was met. 
  • these peasant workers were not interested in becoming the next merchant, only really wanted some short term money. 

Our favourite thing from APUSH is making its comeback... Triangular Trade!!! 
  • the American colonies were solely meant to produce raw goods and send them back to Europe.
  • Britain even enforced the Americas to stop in all sea ports and trade there, before trading with other countries. 
  • back in America, this founded the anger and hostility in the colonists
  • but in Britain, it was creating an increased demand for the cottage industry:) 
Europe was gaining tons of land at this point, thus creating more demand and reliance on the industry, which later leaked into the organized industrial revolution.  



Class Recap: 

I think because Maeve was absent everything was pretty quiet today... 

Only thing we did was putting out system and talked about how crazy a certain teacher is. 

we miss you Marve 


Looking for the Children

The Vanishing Children of Paris

  • I will not be giving plot summary so hopefully you read the book...

Were the events of May 23 a Riot or Revolt??
  • Definitions:
    • Riot - spontaneous and violent outburst of a crowd
    • Revolt - an attempt to end the authority of a person or body by rebelling (premeditated)
SO WHAT WAS IS??
You be the judge...
That feeling when the words basically mean the same thing
  • Could be Riot - unplanned, other riots (despite following a similar pattern) were not connected, random, no major leader 
  • Could be Revolt - people shared a common enemy (corrupt police), so many people were in the right place at the right time (can't be coincidence), large number of riots connected by distrust of police.

Were the children just a means to an end?
    Were towns people just using the emotion surround the disappearances to push for a more just police?

  • The disappearance of the kids exacerbated tension that was already there
    • Not clear enough facts to give defined answer

WHY REBEL??
  • Among other reasons, the police and the people had CONTRASTING views of ORDER
  • People's response to cop shenanigans 
    • PEOPLE - already believed order was gone
      • They were doing their part to restore order by punishing the child thief themselves
    • POLICE - believed that order was threatened by disturbances caused by the people
      • They were doing their part to restore order by punishing the people more than the police.
Are the riots happening today similar to these of the book?
  • The resemblance is uncanny:
Fueled by emotion
adulteration of the truth
easy acceptance of rumor (partially true)
victims mixed with criminals
solutions address symptoms, not the problem
police mismanaged
no one knows the whole picture
divides people and the police
parents upset because their children are killed in the street
no justice
That feel when it's been 200 years but nothing's changed
  • Differences
    • Paris was not about race relations

Are there RULES in a REBELLION
  • Mass movement = successful with the loss of individuality
    • Do you believe that?

How does the crowd behave?
How a crowd turns into a riot
  • 2 ways (on page 52) 
    • 1) everyone gets caught up in the crowd and lose their own principals
      • Maybe a person in the crowd would have killed Labbe alone, but in a crowd, got carried away with emotion
      • Leviathan without a head
    • 2) One must look at WHO is in the crowd in order to find the justification for their actions


Sunday, December 4, 2016

CHAPTER 19

  1. Agriculture 
    1. end of seventeenth century Europe - Agrarian 
      1. 80% Westerners drew livelihoods from agriculture 
      2. EASTERN EUROPE PERCENTAGE HIGHER 
    2. Famine Foods
      1.  exhausted soil/drought/bad conditions/withering young stalks = catastrophic famines 
      2. people ate chestnuts/bark /dandelions/grass to escape starvation 
        1. unbalanced and inadequate food = weak/susceptible to illness 
  2. Open Field System:
      1. greatest accomplishment of medieval agriculture
      2. system developed by PEASANTS. no I'm not lying. P E A S A N T S
        • System divided the land to be cultivated BY THE PEASANTS of village into large LARGE FIELDS --> cut up into NARROW STRIPS 
        • Peasants farmed each large field as COMMUNITY (LOSER SQUAD!)
        • the fields were open (Cough open field system)
  3. PROBLEM WITH OPEN FIELD SYSTEM:
    1. Exhaustion of Soil
      1. they would need to save one track of land (FALLOW) and not farm on it in order to preserve soil but there needed to be a way to not waste soil 
      2. In addition to rotating the crops - villages maintained open meadows for pasture
    2. State/Landlords continued to heavily tax peasants/stripped peasants of earnings 
  4. Agricultural Revolution Was it Really a Revolution ???? yes. 
    1. Technological Advancements
      • If peasants could replace fallow w/ crops --> increase land under cultivation 
      • secret to eliminating the fallow = alternating grain w/ certain nitrogen-storing crops 
        • new and sophisticated patterns of crop rotation to suit diff kinds of soil
    2. Cause/Effects:
      1. cause: ENCLOSURE SYSTEM - advocates of improvement argued that land needed to be enclosed and to consolidate holdings into compact, fenced in fields in order to farm more effectively
      2. effect: Selective breeding of livestock = super fat ox/horse = more meat 
        1. with new farming = more ideal feed for animals/ LESS STARVATION 
  5. Cost of Enclosure:
    1. large landowners controlled Parliament - passed Enclosure Acts which authorized fencing of open fields and the division of COMON LANDS in proportion to one's property in the open fields 
      1. AKA PEASANTS WHO HAD SMALL HOLDINGS = NOW HAVE ZIP 
    2. tenant farmers = key to mastering new farming method
      1. financed by Landowners - they fenced fields, built drains, improved soil w/ fertilizer 
      2. gave rise of market-oriented estate agriculture - PRODUCE TO SELL/TRADE
      3. CAUSED the emergence fo LANDLESS RURAL PROLETARIAT
SIDENOTE: WHAT IS A PROLETARIAT:
  • Middle-sized farmers ruled on landless laborers for workforce
  • worked long hors, and lost independence and self respect/common rights 
  • completely dependent on CASH WAGES 
  • Proletarianization = "This transformation of large numbers of small peasant farmers into landless rural wage earners.." Page 636 
    • no longer owned any small holdings of land 
    • completely reliant on their wages
    • needed to produce products for tenant farmer boss or would not get paid / sometimes did not get paid 

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

so hey fam great to be back only to realize i had to do the blog (@maeve sorry for making you do it yesterday)

BUT GUESS WHAT WE GET TO TALK ABOUT MY FAVORITE (and kalyna's least favorite) COUNTRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! RUSSIA...

oh don't forget the finishing of prussia (lol i kid i kid lily and erin frances)

ANYWHO'S I'll start with the end of prussia topics bc chronological order in presentations...

KING FREDERICK WILLIAM I, so mr. yarnall aptly asked us, why do we care?

I can't really answer why you might care, but he was important because he made prussia the third best military IN THE WORLD (thats pretty impressive)
Image result for high five gif
way to go prussia 

he had a super large and powerful military, but somehow managed to stay out of wars... it was because everyone was scared of prussia... they knew that they were the best and they didn't need to challenge them to find out... again, up top for prussia...
side note: king frederick william i liked his men to be tall... REALLY tall 
Image result for tall guy gif


the one downside of king frederick william i was that he wasn't really big into the arts... cue the transition into baroque architecture that keeps coming up and no one is quite sure why!

anyway, lets take a little jog back into the bazillion other fredericka in prussia (we accept lily's apology even though its not really her fault). 

king frederick i was super into louis xiv and his extravagance so he sort of started a period in prussia where all his nobles were building castles (he even built a castle that our own lovely lily has been too!) we couldn't decide the word, but his style was like an omage / ode to louis 

but frederick william i didn't exactly like art (you know the whole thinking for your own thing, he wasn't a fan of) so he sort of "reversed"

one last thing, why was prussia better than louis xiv --> prussia (aka frederick william i) had way more control than louis so he sort of crushed any opposition 

OKAY WE FINALLY FINISHED PRUSSIA... MOVING ONTO RUSSIA!!!!
Image result for RUSSIA JOKE GIF


so russia is just over there being conquested by the mongols... aka THE MONGOLS ARE ONE THE REASONS THAT RUSSIA IS SO DIFFERENT!

so the mongol yoke (not egg yolk @brielle) --> used princes to control people, really only wanted the money

then ivan iii (ivan the great) comes in and is like whoa i am way better than the khan I'm gonna take over.....


ivan the great takes over and becomes the tsar! 


SOOOOO EXCITING RIGHT?

the russians wanted to make it a third rome... cue quote about two romes falling but how there won't be a fourth rome... and its sort of important to remember why they wanted to be a third rome

rome is a symbol of power, but is also a distinctly european ideal, so it shows the russians were still influenced by the europeans

also ivan iii made religion of russia orthodoxy (not islam bc he wanted to drink) THIS IS ONE OF THE THREE PILLARS OF RUSSIAN ABSOLUTISM

THE THREE PILLARS OF RUSSIAN ABSOLUTISM ARE:
ORTHODOXY (the religion of russia as i just mentioned above)
AUTOCRACY  (another word for absolutism, its the name for a gov with a tsar/supreme leader)
NATIONALISM (thinking that there is nothing better than your country, like nothing, and everything should become like your own country)
Image result for columns gif
look at those beautiful columns/pillars

this whole orthodoxy thing become important later on when nikon tries to create a reform in the church and the people of russia are just not having it --> they become old believers

the fact that the church was broken up kind of weakened the russian state and absolutist bc once again, orthodoxy was a pillar of russia. 

anyway, ivan iv (ivan the terrible) takes over... his reign is divided into two parts because one part was spent conquering the lands of russia and the second part was spent conquering the people of russia... aka the second part he was trying to learn to control them

so for more info on ivan's gain of land you can look at brielle's and i's smore...

moving on to the time of troubles... why was this time so terrible???

so ivan the terrible died, wouldn't that be a good thing??? NO because he had killed his own son, and russia was left with no tsar to rule so everyone/everything went into pure chaos... poor ivan, he went sort of crazy after his wife died early on in his reign. 


so we didn't get to baroque sad day... that'll be on tomorrow's blog! 






Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Eastern Europe



 Europe was pretty much the same through and through with only minor digressions in some areas... BUT then the black plague sweeps the continent causing deaths and labor shortages and West (England, France, Spain, etc.)  and East (Austria, Russia, and Prussia) begin to differ drastically.
What were the differences of Western and Eastern Europe? 




  • treatment of peasants  
    • the West dealt with the labor shortage by raising wages and allowing peasants more liberties including but not limited to the a say in the government 
    • the East reverts to the serfdom of the past but with even more oppression including 
      • being tied to one lord for ones entire life 
      • serfs were tortured if they tried to escape (their ears would be nailed to a pole and then they would be given a knife and had to cut their own ear off ~very extra~)Image result for christmas story gif tongue stuck to the pole
(similar to the Christmas Story but 100x worse)
      • working longer for lesser pay 
      • hereditary subjugation --> the descendants of one family line all belonged to the same lord (aka if Frank had a kid his kid would be tied to the lord and so on and so forth) 
      • NO say in government--> estates and representative governments were demolished (this was not just for peasants the King in Prussia did it to everyone to enhance his power and gain control over the "power of the purse" which the estate held. but it did effect the peasants)
  • nobles 
    • the nobles of the West were weaker because the King had more control over them (i.e. Louis XIV's court)
    • the eastern nobles had more power because of the consolidating of serfdom (aka making the action of strengthening the serf system by embedding it into society or rather the nobles "sinking their claws into the serfs" 
(nobles--> bird / branch--> serfs) 

*summary--- the west had stronger serfs and weaker nobles while the east had stronger lords and weaker serfs*
  • economy
    • the West had a better economy because they practiced mercantilism and had a better location 
      • location
        • access to seaports
        • affected more directly by the Renaissance 
      • more civilized in thought and action because of this 
    • the East did not have a strong economy because of its bad location which neglected to provided the population with a multitude of seaports (aka advantageous trade routes) and the true Renaissance which would have then sparked more development in intellectual thought   
      • less civilized in thought and action because of this 
Austria
  • What's it made of? 
    • the hereditary provinces  
      • Austria (Vienna and stuff) 
      • Bohemia (Czechs) 
      • Hungary
 
  • ruled by the Habsburg family (famous for ruling Holy Roman Empire/ German Empire) 
    • ruling characteristics:   
      • imposed taxes 
      • standing armies for internal and external matters 
      • dealt with other states as they pleased 
    • separated into separate political jurisdictions which can be boiled down to small cities -> medium-size states--> larger territories 
  • the 3 regions (Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary) made the empire diverse and powerful 
    • 3 separate political and social environments united under one monarch to form the empire
    • Pragmatic Sanction issued by Charles VI strengthened the empire by stating it must remain in one piece and be handed down to a single heir 
  • Internal conflict
    • keeping the diverse regions together as one 
  • external conflict
    • the Austrians had to fight to defend and extend their borders and religion 
      • the empire was predominantly Catholic because the ruling family was 
      • the Catholics fought the Protestant Czechs and the Ottoman Turks who were Muslim 
        • The Turks 
          • Austria bordered the Ottoman Empire which can be seen as a help and a hinderance to the development of absolute monarchy in Austria 
            • help--> common enemy that helped unite the empire 
              • the Austrians feared the Turks bc of the different religion and because most captured Christian boys were put into the army in the worst rank (basically set up to be killed) 
                • the Turks had an interesting rulers called Sultans who were like kings but better because they supported protected the peasants from greedy officials 
            • hinderance--> time and effort that was used to fight the Turks could have been used to dissolve the internal problems 
    • conflict could also be found between Austrian thought and Western European thought 
      • the West was progressing into scientific and intellectual thoughts while Austria was stuck in the age old warfare over religious differences 
  • Do they like art? 
    • yes, they enjoyed the Baroque style that Louis XIV began 
      • the Habsburg were influential in spreading it in the empire 
        • the Turks destroyed some of it (bc it was Catholic) when they invaded so the Habsburg's had to rebuild it 
        • mostly seen in architecture but also painting, decoration and music 
Prussia 
  • What is it made of? 
    • what is today the central part of Germany 

    • it is oddly spread out which creates many borders and internal areas where problems could arise 
Image result for christmas story gif fragile
(people's thought on the Prussian Empire) 
  • How did they move from German prisoners to an absolute monarchy?
    • nobles with land replaced the princes- notably the Hohenzollern Family who through dukes, the elector of Brandenburg, and the Estates (representative body)
    • dukes dies-- elector of Brandenburg and Estates put their ~dukes~ up for power and the elector win and then Fredrick William becomes the "Great Elector"
  • Who were the absolutists? 
    • Great Elector Fredrick William 
      • wants unify 3 provinces (Brandenburg, Prussia, German territories along the Rhine)
      • standing army 
      • helped by constant war and Junkers--> nobles who were willing to give up political power as long as the go to keep special privileges 
      • really gets the ball rolling for an absolute monarchy in Prussia -- he lays the cement for the foundation 
    • King Fredrick  
      • the king title means the absolute monarchy was in place 
      • wanted to expand arts 
      • he gathers the supplies to build the house (absolute monarch) on the foundation 
    • King Fredrick William I 
      • more into military than arts 
        • created the best army in Europe
      • citizens were blindly obedient, a centralized bureaucracy was created, and absolutism spread  
      • calls Prussia Northern Sparta 
Image result for this is sparta gif
      • he builds the house (established the absolute monarchy)



Monday, November 21, 2016

Monarchy and the Enlightenment

SO the big question of the day was: Was the monarchy enlightened? 

A few answers: (since there's never just one)

  • Some people who became enlightened were doing it just for their themselves- like in a selfish way 
    • For example: Some of the monarchs said they supported the enlightenment and were enlightened just to get the support of the people and therefore gain power. 
  • What sort of actions would name an absolutist leader "enlightened"? 
    • enlightened absolutists would let their people use their own reason 
    • Therefore they could usually practice whatever religion they wanted (except for Judaism of course) 
    • One problem with this was that any absolutists who were in favor of enlightenment usually had to quarrel with Parliament a little- because Parliament wasn't really into the whole let's make Europe great again thing
Side Note!!: 
  • Parlement v. Parliament 
    • PARLEMENT- a judicial body located in France 
    • PARLIAMENT- a representative body located in England 


So now back to absolutism and the Enlightenment: Could an absolutist monarchy really be enlightened? 
- Well, no. 
- This is mainly because for a monarchy to be in favor of enlightenment and therefore in favor of all people using their own reason, that would make the monarchy a constitutional one 
- Bottom line: A constitutional monarchy is NOT absolutism so there can be no enlightened monarchy. 


But where does this leave Catherine the Great? 
- True- she is known as a constitutional monarch, but how? and why? 
- Catherine allowed her people education through reforms and the publication of the Encyclopedia, HOWEVER, she still kept them in line and showed who really was in charge 
- she was also a big fan of domestic reform, and expanding the borders (she put the state first, a characteristic of a monarch) 
- so basically, she did it all 
she was also way better than Peter, mostly because Peter the Great westernized Russian armies, but it was Catherine who westernized the thinking of the Russian nobility



Image result for catherine the great gif

Other Important Monarchs that you should probably know: 


Fredrick: 

  • Good old Freddy was a big old hypocrite 
  • He condemned serfdom, but then didn't actually free anyone from it 
  • yet another example of a ruler saying they are for something just to gain power 
  • The reason he didn't end up acting on his words was because freeing people from serfdom would undermine his own power

Maria Therese: 

  • she went into a lot of expensive wars, something a monarch happens to do very often 
  • as Lily said, she "started the wave of enlightened absolutism" 
  • She also had three pretty cool reforms: 
  1. Limited the influence of the papacy 
  2. sought to improve agriculture 
  3. series of administrative reforms to strengthen the central bureaucracy
Joseph II: 

  • a revolutionary Habsburg 
  • he was the son of Maria Therese 
  • He continued to support the state like his mother
  • In terms of religion, he wanted Catholicism to be the guiding force of faith but was tolerant to other religions, even Judaism and Protestantism (gasp!) 
  • He too, like Fredrick, wanted to abolish serfdom
    • the difference between the two is that Joseph actually tried, even though he failed 
  • This is the weird part- the reason he failed at abolishing serfdom was not only because the upper class were against it, but the workers enslaved by serfdom didn't even want to be freed! 
    • What?! 
    • basically, the serfs didn't know any other life outside of serfdom, and they feared that if they were freed from it, they would no longer have jobs and the monarchy would never be able to pay all of them 

* due to the fact that I am unable to find the exact map in the book that you all requested, here is a different but similar one* 



Image result for map of europe during enlightenment

So, the European leaders were trying to get rid of Poland by slicing it up and dividing it among themselves 



Now, for some laughs:

The emotional stages of when Yarnall assigns a test the last day before break: (told through gifts of Aro)

Stage 1: Shock
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Stage 2: anger
Image result for twilight aro gif


Stage 3: Hysteria

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Stage 4: acceptance and realization that in two days you will be in a food coma anyway


Related image



Saturday, November 19, 2016

Philosophes of the Enlightenment

- Some philosophes during the Enlightenment didn't even like to stick with the ideas of the other Enlightenment thinkers, and started to branch out with their own thoughts.

David Hume
  • Although he was totally into coming up with one's own thoughts, his ideas were undercutting the whole Enlightenment he was a part of.  
How, then, did David Hume undermine the Enlightenment?
             -- To start, let's look at Hume's basic beliefs :
-  One of Hume's prominent beliefs was that the human mind was made up of a bundle of impressions. These impressions, however, came from sense experience. Therefore, because our mind joins different sense experiences together, it has all these impressions inside it.

              -  I know, this probably isn't helpful in explaining how he undermined the Enlightenment.


So, in other words:  

-  Hume essentially believed that any ideas you have had to have come from senses, or something you've experienced. When you answer a question, you wouldn't be solely using reason, but rather concrete senses. So, because he was  deemphasizing any role reason played in your decisions/thought, Hume undermined the whole "reason over all" idea of the Enlightenment.

                                    - But does that mean that Hume denied reason?
                   -No, Hume didn't deny abstract things like reason, or freedom. He just believed in /emphasized concrete thoughts that could be proven through the senses rather than abstract feelings/ideas.
-One more thing about Hume --> did he believe in miracles?

                - Yes, but not in the same way most considered what miracles are. He weighed if something was a miracle based on testimony and what has happened in nature. If the testimony was more credible than not and the event had never happened in nature, Hume believed it was a miracle.

                   - Hume wasn't the only philosophe though...
Jean-Jacques Rousseau , General Will, and Education
          - Rousseau wrote the Social Contract  where he talks about the general will. The general will reflected all common people.
                   -Idea wasn't the same as Hobb's Leviathan --> because Rousseau believed the people = holders of power as opposed to the monarch. Also, the will of the people was sacred, and any changes could only be made based on what the people  not the monarch was saying

- Also, Rousseau believed that education was needed to teach children how to live--> idea contained in Emile

- Rousseau was also into the idea of being untouched by society as being the best route.  People had to be protected from society because society ruins the person --> have to get back to nature.

            That was a lot about the guys of the Enlightenment, but women played an important role too
Women and the Enlightenment
- They weren't technically allowed to participate in public intellectual settings
- Set up salons (not to be confused with ones for hair ) -->which provided social elites a place to talk about their ideas without leaders knowing
- Women ---helped spur the Enlightenment thinkers to develop their ideas further