Bonaparte's Government

In the current history unit, we are studying the extensive conquest of a famous French leader by the name of  Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon was an influential leader during the early nineteenth century, whose reign involved redrawing the entire map of Europe to show his conquered regions. Although eventually he was pinned the blame by many of creating a universal monarchy, Napoleon was seen as a hero to another great deal of citizens within France.  A key part in his influences included having a significant impact several of the social and economic troubles in France.

Madame de Staël, a writer who bitterly opposed Napoleon during the time of his reign and had been exiled from France, tells of how he managed to change France within her writing The Ten Years of Exile. In this, she tells of how "Bonaparte's government is his profound contempt for all the intellectual riches of human nature" and that "His system was to encroach daily upon France's liberty and Europe's independence...". In this she expresses her negative views of Napoleon and how although she doesn't believe that Napoleon started a universal monarchy that through force and devotions he has essentially conquered Europe. This goes along with the views of Conservatism within France, in which Madame de Staël was clearly not in favor of.

Napoleon's soldiers, however, admired him as a political figure and were surely in favor of whatever he had in mind. Marshal Michael Nay, one of Napoleon's officers during his reign in France, created a speech upon the return of Napoleon in Paris 1815. In his speech he says that "To the emperor Napoleon, our sovereign, belongs alone the right to rule over our beautiful country" and that "Liberty triumphs in the end, and Napoleon, or august emperor, comes to confirm it". Although non conservative citizens viewed Napoleon as a tyrant, his own soldiers were clearly in complete devotion to all of the movements he has started.

A third source titled The Lost Voices of Napoleonic Historians by Thomas J. Vance shows the two previous points of view combined into one. Throughout the article, Thomas quotes several historians and proceeds to show how although Napoleon may have not been the perfect leader in terms of morality and influences, he still holds his niche in history and deserves to be remembered for the amount of change he caused within France and the amount of time he dedicated to being a master in the art of war. Overall, Napoleon as a whole influenced the way the economic and social structures of Europe  and France operated for the rest of history which created opportunities for eras to come.

Capitalism and Socialism

       Throughout this history unit we've explored several economic systems including both capitalism and socialism. Capitalism is the economic system in which there are unequal economic classes with private ownership of industry. Socialism, on the other hand, is a system by which the government has so troll over industries and aims for economic equality in terms of classes.
       In class this past week, we took part in an activity that demonstrated the flaws and positives in both of the previously mentioned economic systems. Each student was given a varying amount of of starburst candy at the beginning of class which was meant to represent everyone's individual wealth. Once everyone had been gifted their unique amount of starburst, we all played a game in which everyone had the opportunity to essentially gamble their candy in an effort to hopefully gain more "wealth". The game once essentially one round of rock-paper-scissors per person and we were given about twenty minutes for this portion of the activity. For the people initially gifted with a lot of starburst, the game I'm sure was quite fun since they had better odds and opportunities due to being apart of an upper class. But for the poor citizens, the game was short lived and some even resorted to vile deeds such as stealing. Once the twenty minutes had passed our administrator (who served as the government) collected the starburst and then proceeded to distribute an equal amount to eliminate all social classes. Then we played again, this time everyone had the same opportunities though. This shows the contrasting differences between socialism's flaws and capitalism's flaws.
       Two men during the time of the Industrial Revolution would both strive to help the poor through very dissimilar economic system approaches. A man by the last name of Marc would create the base or foundation for what would become socialism.it would benefit the poor because it would create a uniform middle class where citizens could help themselves through industries. Smith ,the other important figure, later created a system that entitled the government essentially power over all the industries. This form of government control would be dubbed the name "The Invisible Hand". This system would benefit the poor because it not only created a classless society but made it so that the hardworking citizens could still move up in the world.
       In my opinion, the best solution as far as an efficient economic system goes is a combination of both socialism and capitalism. Although this system may not be perfect, it would prove to be quite effective in that the hard-working can be awarded for their efforts and a uniform middle class is what everyone would be born into initially.

In Ludd we Trust

       Along with the events that occurred throughout the entirety of the Industrial Revolution in regards to factories, there had been a certain group of people that had been known for the attacks on the machinery within the factories. This unorganized group of people were dubbed the name "Luddites", and had been rioting against economic hardship through demolishing equipment used within industries. Most of them were skilled weavers or mechanics and often had been blamed for acts of violence unjustly. The letter that is included below is a mock primary source letter from the perspective of a young female factory worker who has heard of the events caused by the Luddites.



       Dear beloved cousin,

       I am currently writing to you from the factory that my job is located at in the great region of Lowell. Before I tell you much more about how my occupation is coming along, I must detail you about something I have heard about through my other co-workers. It seems as though within some of the major factories in the area that there are suspected to be several skilled workers that are sabotaging the machines found in these industries. Apparently, they are doing it to protest against the terrible economic hardship that a lot of them are currently facing. I must say that despite this being a bold move, that I too am put up against quite the force when it comes to things such as wealth. I believe that although violence may not be the answer, that making a stand will eventually make some kind of advancement in terms of the workers' salaries. If possible, I will do anything I can to possibly help this rebellion and I thought you should know what I really want to fight for. I hope all is going well back at home with the rest of our family in America.

       Best of wishes to you,

       Your Favorite Cousin

British and American Factories

       In the early to mid nineteenth century, both Britain and the United States were experiencing an overwhelming amount of change through an era later to be titled as the Industrial Revolution. Industrialization itself is a process in which a society or country shifts from a primarily agricultural society to one based on manufacturing goods. This process would bring upon the production of several factories and organizations in order to ensure that the society could be dependent upon the creation of all these goods. However, with the invention of these hard-working facilities and job oppertunities came several downsides to the Industrial Revolution.
       One of the major flaws in the Industrial Revolution was the pitiful working conditions by which the workers of factories had gotten put through. According to Charles Dickens in one of his works called American Notes, Dickens describes the factories within England as "great haunts of desperate misery" and states that many of the incredibly young laborers worked for small wages and without even shoes to protect them. Despite his specific observations being about Britain, it's safe to say that the industries in the United States weren't something to be proud of either. The working ages of the U.S. were significantly better than that of Britain though, which can be partially due to the fact that some sort of real education was required before the indivual was legally allowed to work. On the other hand, the United States were worse in that they contained adult supervision over all of their workers in the form of a cruel and oppressive overseer. In combination with all of the things previously mentioned and the pollution created in Great Britain, it would seem the overall condition of the Lowell mills found in Britain are significantly worse when put side by side with the U.S.
       Although both Great Britain and the U.S have developed a bad reputation for this time in terms of the treatment of workers, the Industrial Revolution still holds today as one of the most important time periods within history. It provided a time period of new inventions and several improvements for things such as transportation and manufacturing. These terrible conditions of laborers may of not been inevitable, but when looking at the entire era as a whole these facts are overshadowed by the greatness of the Revolution.

Tour of the Revolution

Throughout this unit, our main goal is to learn about how the industrial changed the ways people lived and worked as well as how each person was able to get goods via the industrialization. To further investigate this, we were assigned a project that entitled us to be museum curators.

As a group of museum curators, our job is to help demonstrate the significant impact that child labor had throughout the industrial revolution. The title of our exhibit is "The Devastation of Child Labor", which is meant to show the amount of misery and terrible circumstances that occurred due to the age limits of this labor. The sources we had included 2 black and white pictures that showed the harsh working conditions of children in the mines, a chart of age distribution within the factories along with  a factory act passed in 1833, as well as an accurate description of observations of bobbin girls within the era. The main theme of our exhibit is to show how although there were some positives with this industrialization, that the age limitations for working a job were far too low and caused severe suffering to many.

In addition to out exhibit, there were four other exhibits that had been produced. These included the topics of slavery, new job opportunities, the use of transportation, and the addition of pollution all thanks to this new industrialization. The exhibition on slavery was titled "The Product of a Dark Time" and made perfect sense when placed in conjunction with the invention of the cotton mills. The production of cotton mills enabled more areas, within the south especially, to force African American humans into labor so that the establishments themselves could earn more money. The second exhibit toured was about job opportunities and was called "Weaving a new world".  It proceeded to explain how before the spinning wheel had been invented that it took a great deal of time to create needed products. But it soon enabled goods to be produced more frequently and increased population growth.  The third exhibit toured explained the use of coal for transportation and was titled "From countrysides to the big city". Between the years of 1804 and 1853, railroads and canals opened up all over the country. This made coal within almost all areas a necessity. The final Exhibit was all about pollution and was rightfully called "Not-so-great Britain".  Slums were the result of industrialization and cheap housing, and they were immensely crowded with thousands of people that all suffered from these dirty locations. Industry produced heavy pollution through coal and inventions that utilized it, therefore resulting in polluting what seemed like entire rivers.