Revolutions from 1830 to 1848

Note: This was supposed to be uploaded a while ago, but the draft was either deleted or never saved by Blogger, so thanks Blogger.

Were the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 really failures as many historians have concluded?

This is the essential question that my class was attempting to figure out most recently. The revolutions between these times were widly considered by most historians to be failures; many people died, and in most of them little change occured thanks to these revolutions. But that is mostly untrue. While in one of the revolutions we looked at had many casualties and little change from it, even that wasn't a comeplete failure. The definition of a revolution failing that we decided was if absolutely no change occured from a revolution, and all the people revolting were captured, killed, or in some way 'controlled'. To learn about each of these revolutions, we split into groups, and made  survey with information from the sources we were given.

The revolution I had was the French Revolution of 1830. This revolution was based off of unrest toawrds King Louis XVIII, who was appointed by the congress of Vienna to rule France in more of a constitutional monarchy as apposed to an all out monarch. Over time, the compromises that Louis made towards his power pleased less and less people. After some time, he abdicated the throne and Charles X took to the throne, but he turned out to be even worse. One of his proclamations went as far as to restrict the freedom of the press, disolve the chamber of deputies (Legislatures put in place by the Congress of Vienna), and then say he as the king had every right to limit these. After some time, Charles was removed from power, and Louis Philippe was put in place. While He was better, only the upper class prospered under his rule. The picture below is the results from my groups survey, with more information on this topic

And lastly, this is a link to the survey. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MX7JGS7

So, in answering the essential question, none of the other revolutions or mine were failures. Some change occured from all of them. In mine, Charles was removed from power. In others, if no change occured, the revolution still lived on in other people, and in others small changes occured that made something come from the revolution. Even if these were little victories, little victories are still successful, not a complete failure. I think this is something that is important to remember, as none of this was in vain, something always came from these people's sacrifice.

The rise of democracy

Democracy is the inclusion of a country's people in making key decisions in governmental elections. Recently we started discussing how democracy started to spread in the US. Not only place to place but over time to more and more people in places that already had it. Originally, most places had a legislature that voted on behalf of the people. The few places that allowed their people to vote, voting was limited to white male land owners, as well as payed taxes. If you didn't meet a single one of those qualifications then you were not aloud to vote, so naturally a fraction of the population could make decisions regrding elections. But at about 1832, all states except for one or two had eliminated legislatures, and very slowly over time more demographics could vote. Some of the sources we analyzed included charts of which sates allowed people to vote, the amount of people voting, a document protesting the lack of public voting in Rhode island, and more. We used these documents to put together the chart below.

The following is a DBQ we did on the Haitian Revolution in the past week

Toussaint Louverture: Leader, Liberator and Military genius

Haiti is a special case in our world. It is one of the only cases of successful slave revolt. Led by Toussaint Louverture, this revolution is about the colony of Saint Dominique separating from France. Toussaint, playing an obvious key role in this, is an interesting person himself. He liberated the slaves of Haiti from French rule, but soon after they were back working in the fields, under the overview of the same people as before. His genius and role in this revolution is necessary for it’s success, but he was rather unfavored towards the end of his life. Despite this Toussaint Louverture is still an important figure. Toussaint Louverture should be remembered as a liberator of the slaves and a brilliant military leader, due to his role in liberating the slaves in Haiti, his role in ruling over Haiti, and leading people to fight against the invasion brought back to re-enslave the people of Haiti.

L’ouverture was quite accomplished as a military leader. In 1794, slavery was abolished in France and all of it’s colonies. However, in 1796, 3 men, L’ouverture, General Dessalines, and General Christophe organized an army against the British, who were suspected of expanding their colony of Jamaica into Haiti. (A) However, two years later the British were defeated leaving Louverture the ruler of Haiti. In between those events, L'ouverture also was in contact with France saying if they ever tried to come back to reinstate slavery in Haiti, the people on the island would not stand by and watch their freedom strippped from them. (B) However this did not stop the French.  In 1802, French troops were ordered to the island to reinstate slavery. While the troops were defeated, Louverture was captured and died in jail one year later. Haiti declared independence, and because of the contribution and actions of Louverture, remained independent from France after that.

Louverture was also considered the liberator of the slaves. The Constitution of 1801, signed by Louverture, existed to abolish slavery, stay agriculturally based colony and now give workers in fields some revenue. It also existed to make Louverture ruler of the colony. (C)  Louverture worked hard to abolish slavery, being a key person in the event. But even after they were separated from France, Louverture wrote to the French “We have known how to confront danger to our liberty, and we will know how to confront death to preserve it.”(B) The Haitian colony has worked hard to free themselves of slavery, and they are not going to watch it get stripped from them. Toussaint defended his people with all his might from slavery, and it was with his actions that Haiti is still free today.

The final aspect of Louverture he should be remembered by is leading the country of Haiti forward after slavery. Louverture realized that Haiti was reliant on the money they received from growing sugar. However, people were very upset when he said that they should go back to working in the fields, under the same people that were slave drivers before. The difference is now people were getting paid for their labour. That being said, that changed little about how people thought of this order, since it minimized what change had occurred due to the revolution. “As soon as a child can walk, he should be employed on the plantation according to his strength in some useful work…” (D) This was a proclamation that came from Louverture. While he was technically right in saying Haiti was dependant on the money from sugar, that changed nothing in the eyes of the people, and over time his approval rating dropped on the island. Despite this, no change would have occurred without Louverture, making him an important man despite his loss of popularity.

Toussaint Louverture is one of the most important people who had a role in shaping the world we live in now. He had a huge role in arranging the army that defended Haiti, and beat back Napoleon’s brother from taking the island back as a french colony. He governed the island and made tough choices that while lead to his impopularity, were still necessary to be made to keep Haiti in tact financially. While most people don’t know of him, he is surely an important man.

Citations

Document A: Timeline created from various sources

Document B: Toussaint Louverture, “Letter to the French directory, November 1797

Document C: The Saint Dominique constitution of 1801. Signed by Toussaint Louverture in July 1801

Document D: Toussaint Louverture, “Proclamation, 25 November 1801”

Document E: Madison Smartt Bell, Toussaint Louverture: A Biography, 2007

Document F: William Wells Brown, “A Description of Toussaint Louverture,” from The Black Man, His antecedents, His Genius, and his Achievements, 2nd edition, 1863. Engraving of Toussaint Louverture, 1802.

Less known Revolutions

Recently, we have been disscusing the Latin American revolutions; more specifically the revolutions in Brazil, Mexico, and Gran Columbia. To study this the class broke up into 3 groups nd each studied one of the revolutions. But first we looked at the somewhat rediculous social classes in these areas and the combinations one could make with the different races, and also how about 1% of the populaiton has all the power. 

The picture above is the timeline my group created, noting all of the important events in the Gran Columbian revolution. All of the revolutions shared some attributes, and all of them were very different. For one, all the countries were revolting for independance from another group of people. For another, all the countries were trying for idependance from a European country. However, they were not all the same. Not all the revolutions called for a constitution. Also, not all the revolutions were against the same social group of people. While Mexico and Gran Columbia were against the upper 1% of the population, Brazil was not.

Today, while fights against race has come far, it has not come far enough, in my opinion. While yes, people of other races have many more rights, they still are far from equal. In recent months, there have been cases of police shooting young men of color for mostly petty theft. In all of these cases, the young men died, and through most accounts of the event, thee person had already surednered. While  not all of theese events may hae been based of of race, far too often does this happen to people of color, and they rarely happen to those not of color. 



                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

How Napoleon fixed and broke Europe.

*This blog post was supposed to be posted around the 15th, but for some reason was not.

In class, we recently reviewed Napoleon, and his impact on the European nations. Napoleon conquered much of Europe in the nineteenth century. However, while he wanted to be the ruler of all of Europe, he was not all of a bad person. Much of the people in the countries he conquered were given more rights in the end then they started with. Most rulers in power stayed in power, they just had to follow what Napoleon told them to do. Really, the biggest difference is that most of Europe belonged to France. With more people having rights, people were happier, just not those with power. Napoleon afterwords inspired some countries to move to a constitutional monarchy after Napoleon was defeated, to keep some of the people who had rights under his rule, with rights.

Congress of getting stuff done, probably.

In class, we started discussing the congress of Vienna following the reign of Napoleon. It consisted of 4 countries; Great Britain, Prussia, Austria, and Russia. It was also joined by France later, after they reestablished their government. The congress discussed how they should handle France to prevent the spreading of revolution, as the ideas that were widley spread by the revolution were still talked about, and by many, preferred to the current system of government.
 This congress was also effective in talking about what they planned for rotecting eachother's power, including the right for one country to go into other countries to stop and revolution. This was both a good in bad thing for the people involved, as it meant that less people would die in these revolutions. However, these revolutions were not all bad. While they were bloody, and violent, they were often necessary to bring change to an unjust rule. But, at least like I said they avoided all the bloodshed that could have occurred. It should also be noted that Great Britain did not participate in this.
Regarding my opinion on this congress, I have mixed feelings on it. I think they had the right ideas in mind, but their goal was to keep powerful people in power and keep people where they are in life, which for the majority of the people living was not a good thing. At least they did not punish the people of France, since this really was not their fault.

Ideologies - How government actions should work

In class, we just learned about some political Ideologies, specifically Liberalism, Conservatism, and Nationalism. My group specifically worked on defining liberalism and what it would be like in the 18th and 19th centuries.  In class, there were two groups who had each subject and we had to make a minute long video or some form of presentation that was a minute long. My group used a program called chatterpix which allows you to make pictures speak and record your voice over it.

This was my groups project. Note: Not my voice in recording

Liberalism was an interesting idea. It focuses mostly on new things that seem to work, and eliminates any traditions that don't work or are unnecessary. This most benefits the middle class as they also get much more of a say in the government. Liberalism was not supported very much in Europe, as most people trying to find a system that works were upper class, and therefore favored conservatism, as it put monarchies back into place, and would keep most nobles where they are on the social latter.

The two other ideologies we talked about were nationalism and conservatism. Nationalism most benefited the poor, as it united the smaller states of a country to have a role in the government. Conservatism is mostly believing in restoring things to the way they were. This was the most supported, as it would keep the rich rich and in power over all the people.

Why the economy is forever screwed

Recently in class, we have been discussing different economic systems and how they came to be. This proved both interesting and frustrating to me, as I have always been interested in world economy and how it functions, but frustrating as it is very hard to find an economic system that works. The 3 we discussed were communism, capitalism, and socialism.

Karl Marx and Adam Smith are the two people credited most with the development of these theories. Both of them wanted to help the poor, but in very different ways. In Marx theory of communism, resources would be spread evenly among everyone, therefore there would not be a poor or rich, or a government all together, as there would be piece as no one would fight over resources. In capitalism, over time the economy would slowly even itself out leading to higher quality goods at lower prices. In socialism, there are less regulations over products, making it easier to sell goods no matter what the quality is. Also, Smith's theory on the invisible hand, which is the source of most theories he is part of, was the theory that is the government stayed out of the way of economics, then it would slowly over time rise to become a better over all economy. This would help the poor as an over all better economy results in more chances for someone to gain more wealth, and more jobs that have to be filled with people.

In my opinion, Capitalism is the best. It seems to me like the most reasonably attainable economic system there is. While along the way of setting it up it would be hard, over time the economy would benefit the most out of it. It would be harder to 'get going' along the way, as starting out the system stalls and massive job loss occurs. The problem is that this system is almost worse to the economy then the systems in place today. Below is 3 videos, one on Marx, one on Adam Smith and one explaining the invisible hand theory.

The pull of the mills

Most people know about the Lowell mills. For those who don't know, it was almost forced labor for young to late teen girls to weave, with awful conditions and small pay. But what possible motivations could these girls have had? 

The people who would recruit the girls were very smart. In a way, they would try to appeal more to the girl than the parents. In a video we watched in class about a specific girl's experience, the person would try to convince the parents. They would be told of all the benefits, but the parents were not convinced. The girl then took what she heard and glorified it to her parents. 

The mills were not all bad. It gave some families an income that some needed. It gave experience with the real world to the girls.  The big city seemed interesting to most people, as they worked on farms. But the big thing about it was it was the beginning of girls working. Before this, girls stayed at home, and it was unheard of for them to be working. At the same time, people at the time were really confused, and almost disgusted at the thought of the girls working, as again, it was unheard of. 

However, the good part of the mills stops there. The conditions were awful, leading to many children being mutilated, maimed, and not uncommonly killed by the machines they were working with. Over time, as the demand for cloth dropped, so did wages for the girls. They were getting paid almost nothing, making their roll at the mill almost pointless.

Voice chat with England

Last Tuesday in class, we had a voice chat with Jamie, someone who works at a museum that focuses on the mill industry in England in the 19th century. To prepare for this, we did some research of our own on topics such as the food they had, accidents that could occur, and other stuff. We looked at a website containing some cases that actually were reported from the mills. We also watched a video sent to us by the museum, describing some of the machines that were used, which we then looked up on Google to figure out what each one of them was.






During the video, we were shown a few of the machines and some pictures depicting them in use or how they could have injured people. I learned that until later, all these machines were not independently powered, and thus could only be turned off at one point and often took a while to be turned off, and thus if someone was caught in the machines, they would often be either maimed or killed by the machines. They were also extraordinarily loud, often resulting in people going deaf quite quickly. The revolution was quite a double edged sword. People would have more clothes food, and soon home amenities such as electricity, However, the conditions some of these people would have to go through to make these happen is downright disgusting. Also, one thing I didn't quite realize before this talk was how much research has to be put into museums. Jamie had said that he had to put tons of hours of research into this to make things happen.

I think that overall I did learn quite a bit from this, however a lot of it was information I already knew and was being repeated. However, it does help to reinforce information that I might has been shaky on. I would definitely like to do something like this with more experts, as hearing something directly from them helps keep information straight in my head.

Running the Revolution

In class recently, we were given 5  or 6 sources to analyze to research a common theme. My groups them for example was how the Industrial Revolution impacted nature and people.

Picture of my group's poster. Apologies about the quality, it had to be

scaled down to be able to fit the given space.

Zoom in to read

After putting this together, I realized that curating a museum is much easier and harder than I thought. While actually putting something like this together is relatively easy, it can be hard to remember to include roughly only what people would find interesting. If you give detailed descriptions then you will lose people's attention, but if you cut things too short then you won't be able to include everything you have to.

Some of the other groups topics were also rather interesting. One gave a rather detailed explanation on how a steam powered transportation worked. This was complete with how steam engine works to a diagram of where resources were in comparison to transportation. The second went into more in depth detail on how people's lives were made worse. One focus was on the age of people working and how much they would be working at a time. The third poster was about spinning mills. More specifically, it was about how conditions in them turned very similar to slavery soon after they began work. The last exhibit was slightly related to the last. It was about how the demand for  cloth began to rise as populations would, needing more and more cloth to be able keep the population warm.

How to bake an industrial cake

The industrial revolution is one of the biggest events in history ever. With advances in all mechanical fields, life was more advanced and more materialistic than ever.

In class, each group would research one of the aspects of the Industrial Revolution. For example, my group researched transportation, while others did people, technology or resources. All of these fields are those that had major improvement.


Resources were now easier than ever to get. In mines, they would use pumps to get water out, and use the coal that they could now reach to power a steam engine with that water which would power those pumps and other electronics, creating a vicious cycle. Beyond that, moving these resources was easier with steam powered boats and trains.


People lives were also better than ever. Advances in agriculture and clothing made society able to support more people than ever, resulting in huge population growths. While people would not necessarily have cleaner places due to large amounts of pollution from engines and power generation, more people overall lead to more people that have the potential to survive


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_engine#mediaviewer/File:Stott_Park_Bobbin_Mill_Steam_Engine.jpg, March 6, 2008

How to Google correctly

How many times do you use Google in a day? If you are anything like me, at least too many times a day. The problem is, there is quite a bit of crap on Google. Some recent class activities showed how to get actual information from Google, a nice example of this being 'A Google a Day' activity. Wikipedia is nice, but if you need a reliable source then they fall short. But Wikipedia is not even close to the only offender. But we will get back to that.

agoogleaday.com

A Google a Day is a part of all the websites Google owns. The website gives you three questions a day and your job is to find the answer by finding key words in the statements. Actually beating it is quite invigorating, and a lot of fine, using a product to find answers that the product gives you. However, this being technology, there are flaws. If you are one letter off, and sometimes capital letters matter too, then it is considered wrong. However, that is the only flaw I find in their system. They even use a custom version of Google to remove anything that blatantly gives you the answer, however the questions are usually harder then those that give you one word answers. 

http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

There are 3 major areas one must look to find a good source: Accuracy, authenticity and reliability. Accuracy is how close the information given is to fact, authenticity is how genuine the information and whether or not the author is a reliable source, and reliability is how easy it is to trust the source.

That website refers back to the question of reliable sources. This is a relatively serious looking website. However, do a little digging and you will find out a lot more about the website. The author of this article and its subsections is Lyle Zapato. This site is not associated with any school or educational organization, other than the Kelvinic University branch of the Wild Haggis Conservation Society. Not to be confused with the Pacific Northwest Octopus Tree.    That is a direct quote from the website, found at the bottom of the page. They out right say they have almost no educational ties, and Lyle Zapatao has little to no real information on him. The website, or source, has dedicated itself to report on 'conspiracies and other diversions'. The information on the page, while at first glance seems reliable, any cross checking on the information will lead you to websites talking about the fact that this is a hoax. If you don't fact check, you should be at least a little curious to the part where it talks of it's primary predator being the Sasquatch. This website is commonly used by teachers, such as my own, to see if students can figure out the source is a hoax. 

Citation:

Plpnetwork, http://plpnetwork.com/2012/03/29/building-web-search-skills-the-fun-way-with-a-google-a-day/

Good teachers are a life long gift

Hello!

I would like to start of this blog with a writing about teachers and education in general.

What makes a good teacher good? While this seems like a really simple question, it is much harder to answer then it seems. Teachers who are boring are the opposite of good, because if people are too bored to learn then that class is effectively useless to the students in it. Teachers who do the same thing over and over again fall victim to this. Teachers that are too nice, while it hurts me to say this, are also in general not good as in my experiences they struggle controlling their class. The mix of the two makes a good teacher, someone who is interesting enough, and while not always nice are usually nice. My favorite qualities of past teachers are those who are entertaining people but still visibly teach. If I don't feel like I am learning, but do well on tests that at the very least seem difficult, I like that class. Also, I personally do not learn well conventionally in class, meaning taking notes constantly and giving quizzes and tests on said notes etc. I learn best with technology, so teachers that either encourage that or at least let me prove that I will either do better with technology in the class or won't be distracted by it are also of my favorite teachers.

A recent event regarding education is a video by accomplished author and Youtuber John Green. He made a video describing why he supports public education despite the fact he does not have a kid in school. One of the things he says in the video is that he supports public education because he doesn't want to live in a country full of stupid people, and that this education is not free to the students, it is their job to benefit society as a price for their education. Personally, I could not agree with his statements more. I am a big fan of everything John Green does, and this is no exception. Public education is one of the most valuable things to human kind, even if the poeple receiving it do not value it that much, they should. I personally love school as I find little more invigorating then setting and breaking goals. I love music and computers all the same, and use those to better myself every day. While my school year is going to be hard (taking 2 math classes and 3 honors classes) I am already developing better study habits and better habits in general.

I will leave you with the video from John Green, and I hope to talk to you later.