We Want Peace!

The Congress of Vienna was a peace conference in 1814 that was held in Austria. France, Prussia, Austria, Russia, and Great Britain gathered to come up with a peace treaty following Napoleon's defeat.

Our lesson on the Congress of Vienna started with an essential question that asked what people in power should do if their power is threatened. Our lesson continued when we read a background reading from Vienna 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna. I learned the information I wrote in the introduction form the reading as well as who attended the conference. Kings, queens, princes, and diplomats all made the journey to Vienna. The Congress of Vienna was a laid back conference and consisted of many balls and events. They realized toward the end that they needed to speed things up and did just that. The treaty was signed on the ninth of June in 1815. After reading the background essay, we watched a video that reenacted the meeting between prince Clemens von Metternich and Napoleon Bonaparte. Metternich seeks peace for France and requests Napoleon to stop his conquests and for the original boundaries to be restored. Napoleons response is that he will reduce Vienna to rubble and mentions how then multiple soldiers would have died for nothing if the boundaries were going to reset.

Metternich

Napoleon

Napoleon's power was diminishing. Now that Napoleon's threat no longer existed, what was to be done about the boundaries, France, and preventing future revolutions? The congress of Vienna met to plan for a future without Napoleon Bonaparte.

One thing that resulted form the Congress of Vienna was the Holy Alliance and Principle of Intervention, both of which were to prevent future revolutions. The Holy Alliance stated that monarchs had the divine right to rule and so if there were any revolution, it was reason and against God. This helped the powerful people attending the Congress of Vienna to make sure their power wasn't threatened because the people during this time were very religious and wouldn't want to ever be told they were going against God. The Principle of Intervention was an ideology that gave the great powers the right to send troops into a country to stop a revolution and restore monarchs. This also helped to prevent revolutions and power being threatened because there was always a chance that an army can send troops and make things even worse in order to stop the revolutions.

In my opinion, what the attendees of the Congress of Vienna did was effective and the right choice. I think they should have not completely just make decisions and take away land from other countries like Italy because it wasn't fair, but for the most part what they did prevented revolutions for the next 40+ years. I think that the people with the most power always should make sacrifices and give up some of their power to others in order to keep any issues from arising. Napoleon had gained so much power he just fell apart and people were upset everywhere with some of what he was doing. Life isn't fair, but sometimes you have to make it a little more fair than it is to keep yourself safe from conflict.

Napoleon Picture Site
Metternich Picture Site
 
For an interactive map showing the changes in Europe during the 19th century click here.

Taking a Closer Look at Napoleon Bonaparte

The essential question for our lesson on Napoleon is as  follows, "What was Napoleon's impact on the social, economic, and political systems of Europe?" The first thing we did on class to learn about Napoleon was watching the short five minute video below.





While watching this video, we were asked to write down the places that Napoleon conquered. We came up with a long list by the end that included places like Egypt, Austria, Prussia, Italy, etc. We soon realized that Napoleon was very successful in his conquests. Then we took a look at two different views on Napoleon.

From thew two views we learned that Napoleon was someone to be admired because he was able to keep thousands of people in his army over the years and was a brilliant military strategist, but that he should also be guarded against because he has so much greed that fuels his conquest. Marshal Michel Ney refers to Napoleon as "our august emperor". Madame de Stael believes that Napoleon is a cunning tyrant.

 Lastly, we took a look at this image above and highlighted what Napoleon did that made an impact on the whole world and on France. (pink= France) (orange= world)

From this, it was clear to see how Napoleon impacted the areas in the Essential Question.

He impacted the social system in a positive way by giving more people access to education and the rights to property. He also impacted the political system in a positive way by his ideas of meritocracy which rewarded people based on their talents and not because of their social rank. Lastly, he impacted the economic system in a positive way by stimulating industry and removing trade barriers. He also was able to steal money from Italy, and created the Bank of France which involved having a budget system and massive public work systems. Upon first glance, Napoleon may seam like a greedy man who just wants all of the power in the world, which is true to an extent,but taking a closer look shows how Napoleon was able to impact France in positive ways.

Many People, Three Ideologies

To begin our lesson on the ideologies of the 19th century, we were given an essential question. The essential question is as follows, "What were the major political ideologies of the 19th century and how did they influence social and political action?". After we were given the question, we took some time to look at the words conservative, liberal, and nationalism. We defined them ourselves and used them in a sentence. Then, we discussed what exactly an ideology is and learned that ideologies are ideas that are formed by someone or a group of people, that forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy. Now we had an idea on what the ideologies that we were going to look at were going to be by defining the words in the beginning and broke off into groups.


The class was divided into six groups; two groups per ideology. In the groups, we were asked to make a sixty second presentation on our assigned ideology. My group got conservatism and decided to do a common craft video. You can view it below.

Our presentation gives a definition and overview of the beliefs of conservatism with the audio and images. Conservatives believe that the traditional political and economic ways should be kept in use. They do not believe in reform and do not want a revolution. They wanted to preserve the system of aristocracy and set social structures. They liked traditional monarchies. This influenced social and political action because it was giving power to specific people like the monarch.



Another ideology is liberalism. Liberalism is the idea that the middle class has a say in government and that everyone has god given natural rights that need to be protected. Liberalism prevented tyrannic rule and promoted freedom of though and natural rights. However, liberals did not want a democracy, instead they left out the women and poor but gave the middle class a say. It influenced the social and political action because the liberals had opposite ideas from the conservatives and made the middle class happy, but not the poor. The last ideology is nationalism. Nationalism is when a nation wants to be united and the best and strongest nation it can be. They wanted to be strong and able to conquer others and drive out foreign rulers. Nationalists believed that people were bound together by sharing the same culture, language, and history. The nationalists would not focus on social classes and power as much as how they should all be united as one strong nation.

Help the Poor!

     In order to tech the class the ideas of Karl Marx and Adam Smith about the economy, our teacher set up a fun activity to help us better understand what exactly Karl Marx was trying to accomplish. In this activity, each student was given Hershey kisses. Most of the students in the class including myself! were given two Hershey kisses. Two kids however, were given 8. The Hershey kisses were a representation of money and the people who had more were wealthy and the rest of us, which was over 90%, were poor. Then, we were given instructions that we could get up around the class and play Rock Paper Scissors shoot with others. If you lost, you would give the winner a Hershey kiss and vice versa. Our freedom of competition and trade of Hershey kisses represents Capitalism which we would later find out to be Adam Smith's idea of the invisible hand. Pretty soon a lot of students including myself, were sitting down because we ran out of Hershey kisses and had nothing to trade. Next, we ended the game and everyone sat down with their Hershey kisses if they had any. Our teacher then took back all of the Hershey kisses and redistributed them so every student had the same amount of Hershey kisses. This was representing Karl Marx's idea of socialism and how the government would take all materials and redistribute them equally among the traders. Finally, we were shown how communism worked when we all agreed on having equal Hershey kisses and not trying to play the game again. After that, we were free to do as we wanted with our two Hershey kisses. I knew exactly what I wanted to do and that was eat them! When we were free to do as we wanted, it was representing his with communism the government is no longer needed because everyone agreed to having equal amounts of materials.

Now we know what Karl Marx thought was a well developed system, and it was time to learn more about Adam Smith and his theories on economics. To do this, we watched this short video below that gave us an overall main idea of this system that was easy to understand.

     Adam Smith's idea of "the invisible hand" sounds a lot like capitalism doesn't it? That's because they are the same thing. Karl Marx says that Capitalism isn't fair for the poor and it's not going to work out because the poor will revolt. Marx  idea of helping the poor is having them help themselves by creating a system where in the end, everyone was equal. It helped them by eliminating class division. However, Smith thinks that it would be better to help the poor when everyone is allowed free of trade and commerce because businesses will realize that people want good quality products that are at low price. This means competition between businesses will occur and some will fail, but it will provide the poor with the things they need because the prices will be better because businesses are competing with each other which in most cases, results in the drop of prices in order for companies to try and get business.

     I think that the ideas of Marx would be the best way to go. I think that if everyone had equal supplies and class divisions were eliminated, everyone would get along better and no one would try and revolt against the government. The government wouldn't even be needed! I think it would make most people feel better about their life knowing that everyone had gotten the same as them to begin with.

Why on Earth Would Anyone Want to Work at the Mills?

   

     Knowing what we know about the mills and factories during the industrial revolution, most people today would definatly not want to go work their. So what attracted all of these young girls during the time that they would leave their farm life and family behind them?

    The image to the left show an illustration of the Lowell Mills. Notice how pretty and peaceful the artist makes the scene look in order to draw people in. 

 These young girls were motivated to work in the factories because they could put money away for their dowry, and they could have money to spend on themselves. They also felt like by leaving their family and going to work by themselves showed how they were independent and mature. The idea of having the working and living experience in the city also drew some girls in because it was something they weren't used to and curious about. Another reason girls were attracted to the mills because it was thought as of a temporary job, so they could get married and have kids after.  Families were also having to make a big decision on allowing their daughters to work and I think that a lot of what made the decision easier is how they were going to send back money home to help with their families if they needed it and how factory owners told the families how beautiful the mills were. They also let the families know that they will be cared for and still have morals enforced. Painters used to paint the mills as this peaceful beautiful landscape surrounded by clean water, when in reality it was anything but peaceful. When everyone is telling you such great things about a place why not go? Well for mill girls here's why; girls suffered in the working conditions, their health declined, they weren't treated well by the overseers, they had to leave their life behind, they didn't get good meals, they were under strict rules, it could possibly prevent you from getting other jobs in the future, it was damaging to their reputation, and they were always at risk for injuries. I would not want anyone I know to have to experience what these girls experienced in the mills.

In class we learned most of this information watching "Daughters of Free Men". Click here
to visit a web page including a short clip from this documentary.