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?

 

         Unit XV Reading Quiz #2

 

         PEOPLE:

                                      

         Charles Townshend                  Lord North                             King George III

 

                                             

Thomas Paine                          Thomas Jefferson                     Christopher Wyvil

 

John Wilkes

 

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 AbbŽ SiŽys

*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 dolŽances?  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:

                                 

RenŽ Maupeou                        King Louis XVI                       Jacques Necker

 

                                  

Charles Alexandre de Calonne                     ƒtienne Charles LomŽnie de Brienne

 

                                  

AbbŽ SiŽys                                              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)

ŽmigrŽs,   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 dŽpartements?

 

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)

LevŽe 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

   enragŽs 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?

 

         Unit XV Reading Quiz #4

 

PEOPLE:

                  

Gracchus Babeuf                     Napoleon Bonaparte