Monday, November 10, 2014

LETS ALL TAKE SURVEYS YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Last week I learned about European revolutions in 1830 and 1848. My class was tasked with the question of whether or not these revolutions were really failures as most historians have concluded. We began this lesson by analyzing Klemens Von Metternich’s idea that “When France sneezes Europe catches a cold.” We deduced that Metternich was talking about the French Revolution and how it sparked lots other revolutions through Europe. We also created a scale that we could use to determine the success or failure of a revolution.
 
Our scale used to determine the success of a revolution




            Each group in my class was given a revolution to research. My group was assigned to the French Revolution of 1848. We read a document summarizing the revolution, and were given several primary sources to use to create a project. We learned that in the French Revolution of 1848 the lower class was revolting against the middle and upper classes. The lower class also believed that Louis Phillipe’s government had become corrupt and they wanted to replace his rule with a French Republic. This revolution divided the country. “The [French] troops, fatigued from seeing no enemy, yet feeling hostility on all sides, stood faithful but sad at their different posts.” (Alphonse de Lamartine) Victor Hugo also describes how successful the lower class French people were in shutting down French cities and towns. He says that “The barricade Saint Antoine was monstrous; it was three stories high and seven hundred feet long.” He also states that “Nineteen barricades  stood at intervals along the streets.” After gathering information from the packets we made surveys for our classmates to fill out so that everyone in the class could learn about each of the revolutions.
Here is a link to the survey we created on the information from the packet.
As you can see the class mostly got the answers correct, but they got confused on some questions.

 











            I agree with the historians who think the revolutions that we studied were failures. For most if not all the revolutions there was little to no improvement that was a result of the revolution. The French Revolution of 1848 was a partial failure because the lower classes got the ability to vote, but at the same time a monarch took control of France. The Hungarian Revolution of 1848 was a failure because the Budapest rebels were defeated and exiled, imprisoned, or executed. The Decembrist Revolution also failed because Czar Nicholas ended up killing his own people by accident. It is unfortunate that these revolutions had to end so poorly, but as more and more revolutions occurred little steps are taken to make places around the world better. 

Quotes

Alphonse de Lamartine: History of the Revolution of 1848 (Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co., 1849), pp. 28-29, 3C-38, 46-49, 51.

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255/la/1848barricade.html

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