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?

 

         Unit XV Reading Quiz #2

 

         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,

Cult of the Supreme Being

 

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

   Directory?

 

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?

 

         Unit XV Reading Quiz #4

 

PEOPLE: