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. 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?
3. Why did
George III abandon the alliance between the crown and the Whigs that had existed
since
the time of the Hanoverian succession?
4. How did the affair
of John Wilkes influence attitudes toward George III and his gov't in
pre-revolutionary
America?
5. What were
the "broader political implications" of the American troubles for the
British
political
system?
6. In what ways
did the American colonists demonstrate how a politically restive people in the
Old Regime could fight tyranny and
protect political liberty?
7. Through
their state constitutions, what did the Americans demonstrate to Europe?
8. What factors
account for the American Revolution being considered a genuinely radical
movement?
PEOPLE:
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 Abbˇ Siˇy¸s
*The
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen by the National
Constituent Assembly
GUIDED READING QUESTIONS:
1. 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?
2. 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?
3. What was the Assembly
of Notables? What did it call
for, and why?
4. 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?
5. List the
immediate causes which Kagan
identifies as having contributed to the outbreak of
revolution
in France in 1789.
6. What were cahiers de dolˇances?
Describe what they recorded and what they called for
from the meeting of the Estates General?
7. 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?
8. What impact
would the Great Fear have
on the revolution?
9. 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?
PEOPLE:
The Reconstruction of France (603-609)
ˇmigrˇs, 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 the Constitution of 1791
reorganize the political structure of France?
2. Why did the National
Constituent Assembly redraw the map of France, replacing the ancient
provinces
with a larger number of new, smaller dˇpartements?
3. What were assignats?
4. Why is the Civil
Constitution of the Clergy considered to have been a major blunder of the
National
Constituent Assembly?
PEOPLE:
IMAGES:
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. Why was the National Convention
formed in September, 1792? What was its first act as
France's new
legislature?
4. Why were the
goals of the sans-culottes
not wholly compatible with those of the Jacobins?
5. 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 domestic policies in Britain?
2. What impact
would the French Revolution have on Enlightened Absolutism?
3. What impact would the French Revolution
have on the partition of Poland?
4. What factors
motivated nation-states to join the First Coalition?
PEOPLE:
The Reign of Terror (615-620)
Levˇe
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
enragˇs 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:
The Thermidorian Reaction (620-624)
the
White Terror, the Conspiracy of
Equals
GUIDED READING QUESTIONS:
1. In what ways
was the Thermidorian Reaction a moderation of the revolution?
2. In what ways
did the Thermidorian Reaction undo the societal and
religious reforms of the
Committee of
Public Safety?
3. In the govÕt
created by the Constitution
of the Year III (1795), what was the function of the
4. Which social
group in France actually gained the most economically from the revolution? Why?
5. Why were the
sans-culottes removed from French political life in the aftermath of the
Terror?
PEOPLE: