French Revolution Review

French Revolution: Who revolted against who?

• The peasants revolted against the privileged
• The "oppressed vs oppressors" dynamic shifted over time as the "oppressed" killed most of their "oppressors"
• The Third Estate revolted against the other two estates and the monarchy
• They then declared themselves the National Assembly, which the king tried to stop
• This led to the Great Fear
• The king began caving to the people's will, which led to the Declaration of the Rights of Man

What is the difference between the Revolution and the Second Revolution?

• The First Revolution was pretty tame
• There were minimal to no murders and no storming of prisons
• Why did it become so radical?
• Transition from words to actions
• The power went to the peasants' heads and they began pushing the limits and they weren't sure what to do with it

"The Laboring men and women of Paris always constituted the elemental force that drove the revolution forward."

• The National Assembly wasn't full of poor people
• It was the upper-end of the lower class
• However, the National Assembly wouldn't have been successful without the support of the common person
• The true common people didn't know what was going on - they just cared about bread 

• The poor people weren't the "elemental force that drove the revolution forward," but they benefitted from it

Were the actions of the people in charge proactive or reactive?

• Reactive
• The people were dissatisfied with events, so they revolted as a reaction

Does the international war play a big role in this?

• France was fighting with basically everyone at this point
• War was started with the Declaration of Pillnitz, as France saw it as a declaration of war
• War made it possible for Robespierre to rise to power 

• To Robespierre, basically everyone was an enemy of the state 

Why didn't anything like the Reign of Terror happen in America?

• France was in a mad scramble for power because of the divide between Girondists and the Mountain
• The American Revolution was more of an "us vs them" situation with clear distinctions
• French Revolution was an internal problem while America was trying to separate from another country

How did Robespierre gain power?

• He banded people together against the common enemy
• The people were used to having a strong leader, which made it easy for him to take all of the power that he did 
• His love of the guillotine made it easy for him to scare people into line

Over the 10 year revolutionary period, have the French improved?

• They were going fine for a while, but then everything spiraled out of control
• The French didn't want someone in charge of them but they then allowed Robespierre to become a dictator
• The younger people took charge and didn't care as much about repurcussions
• The ball was rolling, so they kept running with it
• The French made important social changes but not many legislative changes
• In the end, the price of bread went up again, so there was no improvement

12/13 Class

• The Great Fear led to the Feudal system being abolished
• The declaration was passed because it reinforced the changes that were being made
• What did the national assembly want?
• wanted to give more equality and change the government
• Give more power to the people
• The declaration of man was the foundation for the changes
• 
  
• 
  The church is a source of traditional power and had a lot of influence
• The French tried to weaken power of the church because of their large influence
• Tried to give power back to the people
• 
• International response to the revolution
• Edmund Burke of Britain- he felt the French was throwing the baby out with the bath water
• Meaning they took the revolution went too far with the Revolution
• Jacobin is everyone in the convention
• Separate groups were the...
• Girondists and the Mountain
• Girondists are moderate closer to the center
• The Mountain are radical
• The change of the calendar (10 day weeks) and creation of metric system was to deemphasize the role of the church
• When they divided the land into 83 districts they wanted to get rid of of the land to get rid of the feudal system
• How the revolution that was supposed to be based on equality and enlightenment ideals for all end in a dictator?
• Robespierre got in charge
• He was guillotined in 1794

Bread and liberty are the same thing

What is the National Assembly?

Originally, the National Assembly was known as the Third Estate. According to Sieyés, the Third Estate is everything, it has been nothing, and it wants to become something. The National Assembly formed when the Third Estate elected to call itself the National Assembly, comprising mostly of delegates from the Third Estate who represented the common person. While the other two estates in the Estates General dealt with minority groups of the nobility and clergy, the third estate dealt with a people who were in the majority but underrepresented in the Estates General. By transforming into a National Assembly which had significantly more power and, at least ideally, fairer representation of the common man, the National Assembly aimed to completely change the French government and to give the power back to the people. 

Does the National Assembly actually represent the common person?

The common person at the time did not care about the technical process of gaining liberty and equality. When the National Assembly issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, peasants were guaranteed equality before the law and individual freedom. The problem was this declaration had no real-world effect for the starving and poor peasants of rural France. The economy was not fixed through this declaration; it simply placed the wealthier liberal elites on the same level as the nobility. Even though serfdom was abolished, peasants did not have any land to sustain themselves on their own. The National Assembly did not make any real change for the majority of the people through these declarations- they were just words. 

When the National Assembly put an end to the tithes people had been paying to the church, they cut the funding for women who looked to the church and relied on its assistance in order to survive. These displaced women marched to Versailles and demanded that some real action be taken. One women yelled "That's not the point: the point is that we want bread." This signified the issues that the common person had with the National Assembly: they were making no real changes for the living conditions of the common person. The people did not want revolutionary words that hardly affected them; the common people just wanted bread. 

Class 12/11

FRENCH REVOLUTION !! 

What were the causes of the French Revolution?

• So France is super in debt from the 7 Years War. Who is the French Crown depending on get money from to pay back these war debts? --> the 3rd estate.
• The nobility is exempt from paying taxes. Therefore, people bought patents of nobility because if they are a noble then they don't have to pay taxes.

• 'Merica contributed
• America borrowed a ton of $$ from France during the French and Indian War.
• The French who went over to America to help fight were inspired by our ideas of liberty and government system in which a larger amount of people had a say. The fact that there were no divisions(like the estates in France) was also appealing. The French were inspired and brought back these ideals which spread. 
• Enlightenment influence 
• Ideas about representative government, individual rights, political freedom were appealing.

But what actually starts the French Revolution? What group?

• Louis XVI inherited all the problems which Louis XV left behind. Because France is in such great debt, Louis XV imposed a general tax to basically keep France running. Meanwhile, a large portion of the money that France does have is going toward Versailles and paying back war debts. This general tax requires everyone to pay taxes, including the nobility who were previously exempt. The nobility is not happy about this and tells Louis XVI that he needs to get approval from the estate general, who had not been summoned for an extremely long time before this. Louis XVI doesn't care and does whatever he wants--> nobility very mad 

What is the Tennis Court Oath?

• Basically, all vowed to protest together until they got what they wanted. --> what do they want?
• Before, there was one big vote during which each estate got 1 vote. The 3rd estate thinks this is unfair because the first 2 estates can always overrule the 3rd. They want 1 vote per person. 
• What was the King's response?
• "disastrously ambivalent"--> he seemed as if he was going to comply but then used violence 

Why is the French Revolution seen by some as the "Revolt of the 3rd Estate"?

• The 3rd estate is angry about each estate getting a single vote. They believe that each person should get 1 vote because the majority of the population is in the 3rd estate. 
• However, some see the French Revolution as Poor vs. Wealthy
• This implies that the connections between the rich in all 3 estates and the connections between the poor in all 3 estates were stronger than the connections between people in the same estate. 
• Not everyone in the 3rd estate(everyone besides clergy and nobility) was necessarily poor just as not everyone in the 1st(clergy) and 2nd estate(nobility) were rich. 

Class 12/5

How do you justify Enlightenment thought and how they treated people in the New World? How do you justify spreading Christianity while practicing slavery? 

• During the Enlightenment, a person's worth became more important. Unfortunately, most Europeans did not view Africans and Native Americans as people because of racial differences. Because of this, they were perfectly fine with practicing hypocrisy. 

"Us vs. Them." Is it the same in America as it is in Europe?

• In America, the primary divide was by race, and in Europe, it was by country. However, there were often distinctions made between whites born in Europe and whites born in America. In this case, the "us vs them" is the white (Europeans) against the Native Americans and slaves. 

How can you Christianize people who don't have souls (Native Americans/Africans)?

• Europeans used religion as a tool for controlling people. By eliminating old, tribal based religions, they made it more difficult for slaves/Native Americans to band together over similar interests. 

The Protestants weren't that interested in conversion. Why?

• After the Reformation, the Catholics felt like their religion was under attack. As a result, they tried to prove their dominance with numbers by forcibly converting native people and slaves in the Americas

What major European powers controlled Asia at this time? 

• In the beginning, the Portuguese and Dutch controlled Asia. However, England soon replaced both of them as the leading European power in Asia. 
• France held a lot of territory in Asia, but they ceded most of it to England in the Treaty of Paris. 
• India was under English control while Southeast Asia (particularly Vietnam) was controlled by France. 

11/29 class

11/29

What were Guilds and why did they become controversial in the 18th century?

Guilds

• 3 levels of guilds
• Where you lived depended on the protection of interests the Guilds offered
• German guilds were more powerful and exclusive
• They were very exclusive which provided more protection
• Benefits of a guild- honor, respect, good worker
• They had to be christian and have a lot of work experience
• Why were the guilds so controversial?
• The people who didn’t like them (peasants, people not allowed in, Adam Smith) opposed them
• 

Adam Smith

• Adam Smith was the opposite of priming the pump
• He thought if the government had a lot of power, it could take away the power of the people
• Economic Mercantilism --> The invisible hand- the collective self interest of the people in a society that makes the market move
• He didn’t like Guilds because they regulate the market and he doesn’t believe that should happen
• It should be a free market which the Guilds don’t allow

Mercantilism- more exports than imports, more money is more power

• Under mercantilism economic activity under mercantilism is a zero sum game
• If someone is making a lot of money, another will make less
• If you’re getting more, someone is getting less
• 
• Free trade everyone has an opportunity to make more money

Were the Navigation Acts for mercantilism truly economic warfare?

• Yes Britain used them for control over goods so they could get all the money from the raw materials and finished products
• They weren’t enforced until William and Mary after the Salutary Neglect in America
• 

Why did the population explosion happen in the 18th Century?

• There were a lot of problems that affected population prior to the 18th century:
• Famine: years of famine resulted in lots of people starving to death and population shrank throughout European villages that were affected
• Bubonic Plague killed thousands of people every time it reappeared throughout Europe
• Diseases like Typhoid and Smallpox killed off people constantly 
• How did this change during the 18th Century?
• In England roads and canals were built which allowed food to get to places where crops failed. Years of famine still occurred, but their effects were mitigated as people could purchase food. 

• The enclosure movement meant that there would be an increase in production of food which could support larger populations. 
• The Bubonic Plague disappeared and many disease outbreaks were carefully isolated so less people died. 

How did this population growth change rural life?

• Thanks to the enclosure movement, a lot of peasants had no way of gleaning or making money and they needed a way to earn a living.
• The population growth meant that jobs were scarce and not well paid.
• Urban capitalists took advantage of the huge amount of unemployed peasants through the putting-out system
• The putting-out system was set up so that a merchant would give raw materials to a worker in this cottage industry and the worker would make something with the raw materials.
• It was most common for peasants to turn wool into fabrics.
• Proletarianization: transforming large numbers of peasant farmers into wage earners 
• This transformation occurred most dramatically in England
• They had a well-developed system of navigable rivers and canals so goods could get from merchant to worker easily
• Life was not any better for wage-earning peasants than it was for peasants who gleaned during the open-field days. They lost some of their personal identity during this time and in many ways became part of a machine, assembling things for menial wages. 

Class 11/21


"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains"

• chains=government, church, schools 
• These 3 institutions are the social institutions everyone is interested in now. 

"Social order is a sacred right which serves as a basis for all other rights, does not come from nature, but from things we've created" --> agreements 

• Example: A father and his child both have obligations to each other when the child is young and helpless, but, as soon as the child can stand on his own two feet, the decision to continue the relationship between the father and child is completely voluntary. Whatever they decide, they decide through making a mutual agreement between them. 
• father=king, child=people 

What is the general will?

• The general will serves the common good. It is not about the individual, but about what will benefit society in the long term. 
• "Greatest good, for greater number of people"- John Stuart Mill
• Everyone is forced to be part of the general will. Not just 1 person and their beliefs controls the will. 

People care about their own self preservation first 

What is considered right isn't based on anything legitimates --> so how know if whats considered to be "right" is actually right 

War should be star vs. state, not personal 

• It is issues between two states which cause war. Not personal issues between the people. 

Class 11/17

What important developments led to increased agricultural production?

• Crop rotation: farmers would use the three-field system
• Three-field system: farmers would split their land into 3, and at any given time, they would have 2 fields operating at one time. The field not in use was fallow, and the land was resting
• Different fields were used for different crops, which could remove or replenish nutrients in the soil 

What major change occurred because of new farming methods?

• Enclosure movement: its supporters believed that the new farming methods could not work with open fields. Instead, they advocated for building fences around each person's land.

• Peasants were upset by this change because they owned little to no land, which meant that they could not grow much food. 
• Prior to the enclosure movement, peasants would get additional food by gleaning
• Gleaning: peasants would collect crops on communal lands which they would eat or sell. Once the enclosure movement put an end to communal lands, peasants could no longer glean, and they lost food and income sources. 

What were the 3 important changes in this (time) period?

• Cottage industries and putting out system (Proto-industrialization)
• Cottage industry: business conducted in someone's home
• Putting Out System: outsourcing labor 
• Enclosure
• Agricultural revolution

What was up with the Low Countries and England?

• The Dutch had important agricultural technology, which meant that they held all the power 
• Irrigation was like the atomic bomb in that England was able to copy the Dutch and develop its own similar method of doing what the Dutch did

Jethro Tull's idea

• The ox is (potentially) getting to see his future with the meat that the man is processing

• 
  

11/11 class

Blog 11/11

• Pugachev rebellion
• Made Catherine realize there needs to be a limit on the amount of power the people have
• importance of Pugachev rebellion
• Catherine realized she needed to be more absolutists → no more middle ground
• Enlightened absolutism
• Serfdom was in all 3 countries
• Pragmatic Sanction- nobody could split the Habsburg lands when Maria Theresa ascends to the throne
• Austria- Joseph tried to give some power back to the serfs but they didn’t have any money to support themselves and pay the nobles to use the land
• Frederick the Great
• Took over Maria Theresa (who was mad) land
• She allied with France and it led to the 7 years war
• Peter 3rd took control in Russia and got along with Frederick
• Followed up with China for the enlightened thought
• The Allegory of the Cave
• The people chained to the wall are not enlightened
• https://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/cave.htm

• Rank of enlightened absolutists

enlightened	Enlightened absolutists	absolutist
1) Russia- Catherine the great tried to give power to serfs, she brought arts and other enlightenment ideals into Russia	Prussia	1) Austria- under Maria, she tried to reform she reduced the power of the lords over their serfs She reduced the power of others under her increase her power
2) Prussia		2 Russia
3) Austria		3 Prussia

Coffee, Women, Racism

How did the Enlightenment change the way people thought about things?

Religion:

The way religion was viewed during the Enlightenment changed drastically due to the new emphasis on logic and reason. 

David Hume argued that miracles couldn't happen, showing how people valued logic over faith throughout the Enlightenment. Voltaire even said that God was just a clockmaker who created the world and then let things play out with no divine intervention- a drastic change from the earlier ideas of the Reformation, which emphasized Christ's suffering and death in order to save humanity (significantly more personal view on God before the Enlightenment). 

Race:

Racism really began during the Enlightenment. Prior to this time, the differences between races were denoted by nationality, not biology. During the Enlightenment, Carl Linnaeus began classifying plants and species from the New World and so they thought it would be a good idea to classify humans based on the different races. 

Enlightenment thinkers such as Immanuel Kant and David Hume said that whites were biologically superior to all other races. This new way of thinking meant that non-Europeans were "naturally" inferior as well as culturally inferior. This allowed them to justify the enslavement (which they even argued was beneficial) of Africans and Indigenous people in the American colonies. 

Women:

During the Enlightenment, views on women also shifted slightly. Similarly to the supposed "natural" inferiority of non-Europeans, women also became inferior in a biological sense. Their only purpose was to have children so that more men could be made. They were viewed as being physically and intellectually inferior to men. This viewpoint was not always held, however, as people like Marquis de Condorcet argued that men and women should have equal rights (a rare opinion during this time). Some women such as Mary Astell (author of A Serious Proposal to the Ladies) were even able to publish books encouraging women to "lead a life of the mind" and to form a women's college.

How did these new ways of thinking get around?

Coffeehouses:

Books and newspapers were still difficult to get copies of, especially for middle class people who could not afford them. Coffeehouses offered places where many people could meet and discuss current events and ideas. Foreigners could come to offer a broader worldview about life. While women were mostly excluded from joining in on conversation, they served as waitresses and could overhear current events. 

Salons:

Salons offered a place for the wealthy and elite to meet once a week to discuss findings and share research. These places were not meant for just any person, but instead for those who had accomplished something big during this time. 

11/7/17

So who are the important people from the Enlightenment?

Voltaire

• He believed in deism- set up then just let everything happen, no intervention, everything just runs its course.
• very radical
• people don't like--> like knowing that the good they do is being rewarded
• He didn't believe in social or economic equality.

Montesquieu

• He used satire to critique European government.
• hated absolutism, but wasn't exactly a democrat 
• separation of power- political power divided among different classes and legal estates which hold unequal rights 

David Hume

• He thought that since miracles can't be proved empirically--> very unlikely that they actually exist
• things don't just happen, there are reasons for everything 
• How do his beliefs about miracles have to do with the Enlightenment?
• The Enlightenment was all about proving accepted beliefs and facts with proof. This is what Hue wanted to do when it came to miracles. He attempted to empirically prove them. Empiricism is a huge part of the foundation of the Enlightenment. 

Adam Smith 

• He is the Father of Lazier Fair.
•  The government is only responsible for basics, like national defense. 

Rosseau

• He's not a fan of rationalism.
• He started the Romantic Movement.

Class Notes 11/3

Article Discussion

• What is Enlightenment?
• According to the article, "Man's release from self-incurred tutelage"
• But what does this mean?
• People are too unintelligent to do things by themselves, so they need a leader to tell them what to do
• People are too scared and lazy to think for themselves
• It's easier to pay someone else to do it for you
• People were afraid to defy the people doing the thinking for them
• People don't have to think, so they don't learn how to think for themselves, which makes them afraid to try it and fail. 
• How do you break away?
• Slowly. You can't tear down a system that's been around for so long
• This system hurts everyone
• People can't think freely
• The "guardians" doing the thinking had to be responsible for the general population 
• How do you become enlightened?
• Freedom
• This is difficult, because it's restricted by everything 

Textbook Discussion

• To what extent is Enlightenment related to the Scientific Revolution?
• The Scientific Revolution created the proper environment for the Enlightenment
• People asked a lot of questions, which led to the Scientific Revolution
• They continued asking questions, which led to the Enlightenment
• John Locke
• If you can't see it, it didn't happen
• If you can't prove it, why are we going about these rules?
• Why do we have somebody in charge of us without there being a reason for it?
• Without a strong ruler? The center falls apart 

11/2 The Scientific Revolution

• The scientific revolution is the beginning of the modern world
• Differences between the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution
• Renaissance looked back to the classics
• Scientific revolution looked forward
• Science before 1500 was based in theology, took greek philosophy and christianized it
• People start to question the scientific teachings
• The different reactions between what the protestants and catholics originally say
• At first Protestants were against it because they are fundamentalists
• This shifted to catholics against it because they opposed heliocentric view
• Why did the Protestants become pro-science?
• they did not have a Pope as an authoritative power over them
• The scientific method is very important
• Bacon and Descartes changes things from speculation to an empirical formula
• Before empiricism people just thought about things and didn’t have any logic behind it

• 

  Descartes 

• Inductive reasoning- from specific to general
• Inductive and empiricism are together
• Add more knowledge to see more parts and an answer
• Deductive reasoning- from general to specific
• Look at the parts of the concept and try to deduct to see the final parts
• As we get to the enlightenment people take these ways of thinking and apply it to society not just things in nature
• Pascal's Wager- created this wager to say it’s unlikely there's a God but it's beneficial to believe in him
• The punishments of not believing in him can be worse than actually believing in him