LOS AMIGOS HIGH SCHOOL
AP EUROPEAN HISTORY
Unit
XV: THE AMERICAN and FRENCH REVOLUTIONS
The American Revolution and Europe (535-541)
Sons of Liberty, The Townshend Acts of 1767, The
Boston Massacre,
The Intolerable Acts of
1774, The Quebec Act of 1774, The American Revolution,
The Declaration
of Independence, The Commonwealthmen
LITERATURE
(* Not in Flash-Cards)
*Common Sense by Thomas Paine
*Cato's Letters by John Trenchard and
Thomas Gordon
*The North
Briton, issue #45 by John Wilkes
GUIDED READING QUESTIONS:
1. What two
imperial problems were faced by the British government after the Treaty of
Paris
of
1763 which ended the Seven Years' War (French and Indian War)?
2. Why did the
British consider tax measures such as the Sugar Act of 1764 and the
Stamp Act of 1765 both
legal and just? How did the
American colonists react to these acts?
3. Why would
the American colonists have considered the Intolerable Acts intolerable?
4. What were
the achievements of the First Continental
Congress of 1774?
5. What actions
of the Second Continental Congress of 1775 prompted King George III to
declare
the colonies "in rebellion?"
6. In what ways
were American political ideas influenced by the struggle of 17th century
English
aristocrats and gentry against the absolutism of the Stuart monarchs?
7. Why did
George III abandon the alliance between the crown and the Whigs that had existed
since
the time of the Hanoverian succession?
8. Why, for six
years, did the government of George III prohibit John Wilkes from assuming the
seat in
the House of Commons to which he had been elected? How did the affair of John
Wilkes
influence attitudes toward George III and his gov't in pre-revolutionary
America?
9. What were
the "broader political implications" of the American troubles for the
British
political
system? In what ways did the
American colonists demonstrate how a politically
restive
people in the Old Regime could fight tyranny and protect political liberty?
10. What were
the goals of the Yorkshire Association Movement? Even though the movement
ultimately failed, how did it continue to influence British
politics years after its end?
11. Through
their state constitutions, the Articles of Confederation, and the federal
Constitution adopted
in 1788, what did the independent Americans demonstrate to
Europe?
12. What
factors account for the American Revolution being considered a genuinely radical
movement?
PEOPLE:
Charles Townshend Lord North King George III
Thomas Paine Thomas Jefferson Christopher
Wyvil
Crisis and Revolution in France (1789) (594-603)
the
French Revolution, the
National (Constituent) Assembly, the Tennis Court Oath
LITERATURE
(* Not in Flash-Cards)
*What is the Third Estate? by Abb Siys
*The
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen by the National
Constituent Assembly
GUIDED READING QUESTIONS:
1. Why was the
French royal government in significant debt on the eve of the French
Revolution? Of what was this debt symptomatic?
2. Compare the
treatment of the French parlements during the reigns of France's kings Louis
XV and Louis XVI?
3. How did
Louis XVI's director-general of finance, the Swiss banker Jacques Necker, make it
more
difficult for government officials to claim a real need to raise new taxes?
4. Why did the
new policies and tax proposals of France's minister of finance, Calonne, make a
new
clash between the French monarchy and the nobility unavoidable?
5. What was the Assembly
of Notables? How did it react
to Calonne's policies? What did it
call
for? Why?
6. What factors accounted for Louis XVI's decision to
convoke the Estates
General?
7. Describe the
two varied historical interpretations of the meaning of the calling of the
Estates
General by
Louis XVI and the turmoil that followed over the next decade?
8. List the
immediate causes which Kagan identifies as having
contributed to the outbreak of
revolution
in France in 1789.
9. Describe the
debate which emerged in the Estates General over
voting procedures.
10. What were
cahiers de dolances? Describe
what they recorded and what they called for
from the meeting of the Estates General?
11. What
actions by Louis XVI prompted the citizens of Paris to march on the Bastille? What
did
the fall of the Bastille signal for the progress of the revolution as a whole?
12. What was
the Great Fear, and why
did it sweep across much of the French countryside in
the summer of 1789?
What impact would the Great Fear have on the revolution?
13. In what
ways were the initial disturbances of the Revolution in 1789 reminiscent of the
rural
and urban riots that had occurred often in eighteenth-century France?
14. What
inspired the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen? What
rights
were proclaimed in it? For whom? Who
was left out, and why?
15. What
convinced the French royal family to leave Versailles and settle in the palace
of the
Tuileries in Paris?
PEOPLE:
Ren Maupeou King Louis XVI Jacques Necker
Charles
Alexandre de Calonne tienne
Charles Lomnie de Brienne
Abb Siys the Marquis de
Lafayette
IMAGES:
Louis XVI and
the Three Estates of the Old Regime
The
Fleur-de-Lis banner of the French Monarchy The
Flag of Revolutionary France
The Tennis Court Oath by Jacques-Louis David
The Reconstruction of France (603-609)
migrs, the Declaration of
Pillnitz, Legislative
Assembly
LITERATURE
(* Not in Flash-Cards)
*Declaration
of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen by Olympe de Gouges
GUIDED READING QUESTIONS:
1. In its effort to reorganize France, what types of
policies did the National Constituent
Assembly pursue with regards to
government, administration, economics, and religion?
2. How did the Constitution of 1791
reorganize the political structure of France? What
differentiated
an "active" from a "passive" citizen? How was political power transferred
from
aristocratic wealth to all forms of propertied wealth by the Constitution?
3. Why did the
National Constituent Assembly redraw the map of France, replacing the ancient
provinces
with a larger number of new, smaller dpartements?
4. Why did the
National Constituent Assembly choose not to repudiate the royal debt, and how,
ultimately,
did the assembly decide to finance the debt? What were assignats?
5. In what ways
did the Civil
Constitution of the Clergy transform the Roman Catholic Church
in
France? Why is it considered to
have been a major blunder of the National Constituent
Assembly? How did the papacy react?
6. Why did the
royal family's "flight
to Varennes" end any realistic hope for the continuation of
the
constitutional monarchy in France?
PEOPLE:
Olympe de Gouges Leopold II
of Austria Frederick William II
of Prussia
IMAGES:
The Great Fear
The Second French Revolution (609-612)
the Paris Commune,
the September Massacres
GUIDED READING QUESTIONS:
1. As of the
autumn of 1791, how did each of the following social groups in France view the
revolution: aristocrats, peasants, city workers,
women? How did the major foreign powers
view the
revolution?
2. Who were the
Jacobins? Who were the Girondists? Describe and compare their positions.
3. How did the
reasons expressed by the Girondists and the monarchists for supporting war
against
Austria and Prussia differ? What
impact would the war have on the revolution?
4. What action
of the revolution effectively forced Louis XVI to abandon the monarchy,
bringing
to an end any influence which he had over events in France?
5. Why was the National Convention
formed in September, 1792? What was its first act as
France's new
legislature?
6. Who were the
sans-culottes? Describe their goals for the
revolution? Why were the goals of
the
sans-culottes not wholly compatible with those of the Jacobins? Who among the
Jacobins ultimately choose to
cooperate with the leaders of the Parisian sans-culottes, and
why?
7. How did
opinions within the Jacobin club differ with regards to the fate of Louis
XVI?
What was the king convicted of
having done?
8. Why, by
mid-1793, had the Mountain
replaced the Girondists as leaders of the revolution?
Europe at War with the Revolution (612-614)
LITERATURE
Reflections
on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke
GUIDED READING QUESTIONS:
1. How did the
revolution in France affect the domestic policies of Britain? How did the
revolution
force Britain's Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, to change his views?
2. What impact
would the French Revolution have on Enlightened Absolutism in Eastern
Europe,
and on the partition of Poland?
3. What factors
motivated the nation-states of the First Coalition to ally
themselves with one
another?
PEOPLE:
Edmund Burke William Pitt the
Younger
The Reign of Terror (615-620)
Leve en Masse, the Society of
Revolutionary Republican Women,
GUIDED READING QUESTIONS:
1. What was the
function of the committees organized by the revolutionary government of the
First French Republic
on the eve of the War of the First Coalition? Why was the
Committee of
Public Safety unique among them?
Describe the political outlook of those on
this
committee.
2. Describe the
"republic of virtue" created by the Committee of Public Safety. Whose
corruption
was it intended to eliminate from France?
Why was the exclusion of women from
public
political life a necessary part of the "republic of virtue?"
3. Describe the
actions undertaken by the National Convention in their effort to dechristianize
France. How were the actions of the "deputies on mission"
received in the provinces?
4. Why did
Robespierre believe dechristianization was a "political
blunder"? What did the
concept
of a "republic of virtue" mean to Robespierre, and how would this
understanding
shape
his actions during the progress of the Reign of Terror?
5. What was the
mandate of the revolutionary tribunals established by the Convention during
the
summer of 1793? Who, during the
course of the Reign of Terror, would be considered
an
"enemy" by the tribunals?
6. Identify the
various individuals and groups who fell victim to the Reign of Terror. Why did
Robespierre ultimately turn the
Terror against his fellow revolutionaries, in particular the
enrags
and the more conservative republicans - such as Danton?
7. Why,
ultimately, did the Convention turn against Robespierre? Why did his former
supporters
- the sans-culottes and the Jacobins - abandon him in the end?
8. Why, by the
late summer of 1794, did the Reign of Terror come to an end?
PEOPLE:
Georges Jaques Danton Maximilien
Robespierre Lazare
Carnot
Marie Antoinette Jean-Paul Marat
IMAGES
The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David
The Thermidorian Reaction (620-624)
the
White Terror, the Conspiracy of
Equals
GUIDED READING QUESTIONS:
1. In what ways
was the Thermidorian
Reaction a tempering of the revolution? Why was such
a
tempering necessary by July, 1794?
2. In what ways
did the Thermidorian Reaction undo the societal and religious reforms of the
Committee of
Public Safety?
3. Describe the
government established by the Constitution
of the Year III (1795). What was
the
function of the Directory?
4. The French
Revolution is often considered a victory of the bourgeoisie, or middle class;
yet,
the
property that won the day was neither industrial nor commercial wealth. Which social
group in
France actually gained the most economically from the revolution? Why?
5. How and why
were the sans-culottes removed from French political life in the aftermath of
the
Reign of Terror?
6. How did
Napoleon Bonaparte first make a name for himself in the service of the
revolution?
7. What
problems did the Directory face in governing France? Why was it unable to succeed
in
overcoming these issues? Who did
the Directory come to depend on for governing the
country?
PEOPLE:
