Congress Gone Wild

After Napoleon’s defeat, the various former rulers of Europe convened to figure out how to piece Europe back together and how to prevent another Napoleon from happening. Hosted in Austria, most thought the Vienna meetings, full of diplomats and royalty, would take 6 weeks or so, but excitement for peace turned the Congress of Vienna into a near-party for the participants, and it took 9 months for them to finalize everything. In class, we studied what people in power, like Prince Klemens von Metternich of Austria, did when their power was threatened by an outside force, like Napoleon. In groups, we were given some problems that needed to be addressed at the Congress of Vienna. We were also given a set of choices, and had to pick the one that Prince Metternich, a strong conservative, would have suggested. We then put our answers on this Padlet and compared with our classmates, also discussing what the Congress of Vienna really chose to do.

The diplomats from each of the five major powers of Europe. From left to right: Prince Metternich (Austria),
Prince Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand (France), King Frederick William III (Prussia), Viscount Castlereagh (England), and Czar Alexander I (Russia). All images from wikipedia.org.

One aspect of the Congress of Vienna’s decisions that we discussed was the Principle of Intervention. All but one (England) of the representatives at the Congress of Vienna decided that if any one of them was having difficulties putting down a revolution, the others could send in military to squash it themselves and restore the original monarchy. This came into play in the 1820s, when Austria crushed an Italian nationalist uprising, and when Louis XVIII of France sent his army to crush a rebellion in Spain. This principle, which supported conservatism, made sure to prevent any liberalism or nationalism taking hold in Europe (though it did not protect against revolutions taking place in the New World).

I think this was a poor decision by the Congress of Vienna. Squashing all movement for change does not stop it, only postponing change to come later and much angrier. In 1848, Austrian revolutions forced Metternich to flee Vienna and lose power. Instead, the rulers should have applied some liberal ideas, which would have caused them to lose some power, but would have prevented the rebellions against them in the first place.

The One Minute Showdown: Italy's Unification

Recently in class, we had a bit of a showdown against each other about 19^th century political ideologies. An ideology is a system of ideas and ideals, mostly referring to systems that act as foundations for economic or political policies. The main three ideologies during the time period were liberalism, conservatism, and nationalism, although the terms meant different things than they do today. We split into 6 groups (2 per ideology) and read about our assigned topic. Then each group made a one minute presentation to explain their ideology to the rest of the class, facing off against the other group’s presentation, and the class decided whose was more engaging and helpful.

Our group’s topic was nationalism, and we did a live skit to illustrate our ideology. At the beginning, three different states on the Italian peninsula all fought against each other, but when a foreign ruler came in to take over, they banded together to get rid of him. Seeing their similarities and how well they worked as a group, the states joined together as a single country to progress as a whole.

The separate states, in accordance with nationalist ideas, join together to form the single country of Italy! Background music from youtube.com.

Nationalism is the ideology that people of similar cultures, languages, and traditions should join together to prevent foreign rule and to further their own causes. This mostly affected places like Germany and Italy, where everything was split up into regions, rather than a whole country. After the defeat of Napoleon, Italians and Germans saw that their unification was a strength, and aimed for that, though they did not unify until much later.

The other two ideologies were at odds with each other, though nationalism allied itself with liberalism. Liberalism is a system based on merit that gives more freedom and rights for the middle class, rather than the royalty and aristocracy. Liberalism was a basis for philosophers such as John Locke and Adam Smith, who argued for individual liberties, and eventually gave rise to utilitarianism, which is the idea that laws should be judged on overall usefulness to the most amount of people. On the other hand, conservatism places value on traditional constructs, like the monarchy, aristocracy, and the church. Conservatives often criticized the French Revolution, for the bloodshed that reform caused.

I enjoyed the competitive nature of this activity, and I would’ve liked to try a more technological presentation instead of a live skit if we do this again, especially Chatterpix, which a lot of the other groups used. 

Napoleon Dynamite, er, Bonaparte

"All You Need To Know About Napoleon Bonaparte,"
a documentary we watched in class for a brief
review of Napoleon's life.

Ah, Napoleon. A name famous for two things: the 2004 comedy film Napoleon Dynamite, and the early 19^th century French military leader Napoleon Bonaparte, who nearly turned the whole of Europe into his own personal empire. As much as I’d like to cover Napoleon Dynamite in history class, Napoleon Bonaparte is probably much more important to world history. Born in 1769, Bonaparte found his fame as a general during the French Revolution. After a coup d’état in France, he became ruler and started to conquer Europe bit by bit: Italy, Austria, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Portugal, and so on. A brilliant strategist and charismatic leader, Napoleon brought radical (and controversial) change to Europe in all forms.

"Portrait of Madame de Stael."
Image from wikipedia.org.

Politically, he rebalanced power in the economic classes by establishing a meritocracy, which elevates people on personal merit, rather than the former aristocracy, which only accounted for a family tree’s social prestige and wealth. This improved life for the lower and middle classes, but enraged the higher class, such as Madame de Staël, a former noble. Unable to enjoy the former perks she had as a noble, her thoughts on Napoleon are fairly negative: “What particularly characterizes Bonaparte’s government is his profound contempt for all the intellectual riches of human nature: virtue, dignity, religion, enthusiasm…” (source: lesson notes) This also applied to the Church and royalty, who lost political power due to Napoleon’s rebalancing.

Economically, he encouraged the growth of industry, rebudgeted France, and controlled prices on goods to make them accessible to the poor, all of which were influential in advancing the world economy. He also sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States, which was an important part in American westward expansion. On the other hand, he stole large amounts of money and art from Italy, causing a negative impact on the Italian economy.

"Portrait of Marshal Michel Ney."
Image from wikipedia.org.

Socially, it was a time of human rights. Norwood Young, a British author, wrote: “Of his civil reforms the most to be said is that they may be on the whole, be described as making for progress.” (source: The Lost Voices of Napoleonic Historians) Bonaparte made education far more accessible than it had been before his reign. He removed the feudal system, which allowed former serfs to move up in life. One of Napoleon’s generals, Marshal Michel Ney, claimed that “Liberty triumphs in the end, and Napoleon, our august emperor, comes to confirm it.” (source: lesson notes)

Napoleon Bonaparte was a controversial character in his time and he remains a controversial character today, but his impact on the world is unquestionably widespread, from France all the way to the New World, and from the French Revolution to the present.

Chocolate + Communism = Chocunism! Or is it Choconism?

As a start to the activity, everyone in the class was handed 2 Hershey kisses, with the exception of two random people, who received 8 each. The initial reaction was calling favorites, that this was unfair and that everyone in the class should’ve received the same amount. However, rock, paper, scissors was then brought into play. Between two people, each would bet one of their chocolates and play rock, paper, scissors to determine who won them both. Once people ran out, they went to go sit back down.

Different tactics were deployed during the course of the activity. Some of the chocolate-poor asked the rich to “invest” in them in exchange for half of their chocolate when the activity was over. Of course, this didn’t always work out, and the investors were furious when their investments ran out of chocolate and sat down. I found myself having good runs and bad runs, bringing my chocolate up to 8, and then coming back down to 1, up to 6, until I ran out. Additionally, there were a few “Robin Hoods” that gave away chocolates to get people back in the game, which is how I got back in. I made it back up to 5 chocolates before the game ended.

When it was over, all the chocolates were collected and then redistributed so that each person once again had two, including the favorites. Those who had built up large stocks of chocolate, especially having started with two, were disappointed that their chocolate had been given away, but those who had run out were glad that they once again had some. The class was given the choice to either continue with the game, or to stop. Some of the ambitious and gambling ones decided to take another chance, regardless of whether or not they had run out before. However, most of the class decided not to take the chance, as two chocolates was better than none. Because of the majority vote, it was decided that the class could no longer play the game and everyone had two chocolates each. This is a great model of Karl Marx’s theory of economics, known as Marxism.

"The Invisible Hand," the first in a six-part series on economics
from ouLearn. It explains the system of capitalism as
imagined by Adam Smith.

There are two prevalent theories of economics from the time of the Industrial Revolution. The first was what Adam Smith called "the invisible hand," which is known today as capitalism. It is a system in which government takes a hands-off approach to the economy. The Invisible Hand is what moves people to buy goods in their own self-interest: the highest quality goods for the lowest possible price. Under this system, businesses compete with each other to get low price, high quality goods to their consumers. Honest businesses win, while businesses that cheat their customers go out of business. All classes can take part in trade and commerce, because even the poor have enough money to buy the low priced goods. The main problem with this system is that the economy takes time to stabilize, which means that there will be hard times before the invisible hand has fully done its job.

The main opposition to this theory is from Karl Marx, who created Marxism. It begins with capitalism, in which industry is privately owned and have the freedom of competition to raise their quality of life. Capitalism results in unequal economic classes, so those that end up poor revolt and progress capitalism into socialism, where the industry is government-owned and wealth is redistributed to bring economic equality. Although the former wealthy would want to switch back to capitalism to have more control over industry, the poor instead revolt, using force to keep classes equal and insure that they will never have to experience poverty ever again. This turns socialism into communism, a truly classless society in which government is not needed to redistribute wealth.

Each of these systems has strong points and weak points. I believe socialism to be the weakest because it requires some level of altruism from the people: if people know that any excess wealth they make will be redistributed, and that they will receive money from the government if they make too little, then why work at all? I find this an innate problem with socialism because there is no incentive for people to work, innovate, and succeed. Communism also has this problem, but to a lesser extent because there is no government for people to fall back on. The population knows that communism is a group goal, because any and all wealth they get is directly derived from the people. I prefer capitalism over communism because capitalism promotes ambition and innovation. In a communist system, there is no “success,” only the collective population sharing wealth. In capitalism, it takes hard work to get ahead. I think that individual success should be encouraged, to keep the world moving forward. However, the downside of capitalism is that as a consequence, it creates economic classes, meaning that someone will always be on the bottom of the economic ladder. It’s impossible to make any money in capitalism if you’re completely penniless. I think the tax system is a helpful step to solving that problem: it resembles the redistribution of wealth in socialism and communism, but doesn’t go to that extreme. The government takes taxes (not enough to drive anyone to poverty, but a reasonable amount) and invests it in the country and in the poor, so that the poor can also take part in the free market and rise in economic standing. Of course, no system is absolutely perfect in reality, but I think we can get close enough.

The Mill Girls

During the Industrial Revolution, many young women and girls in America went to work in the Lowell mills, which was precisely the aim of the Lowell Experiment. As opposed to England, where overcrowding and poverty meant there was no shortage of people willing to work in the mills, America had plenty of space for families to continue farming and were less likely to go into the mills to work.

The Lowell Experiment was the Lowell mills’ way of attracting workers to work for them, mostly seeking for young girls that were not yet of marrying age. Girls were not needed to work on the farm like boys were and normally were married to boys who could farm. At the time, married women weren’t supposed to be working and were instead meant to be doing things at home. Additionally, women didn’t need to be paid as much, and were essentially raised to be obedient. That meant that the ideal worker for the Lowell mills were girls who were old enough to be out of the house, but not yet old enough to be married.

"Print by Merrimack Company." From American Textile
History Museum. This picture, showing a peaceful and happy
lifestyle in the mills, was used to attract girls to the mill
life. The happy couples indicate a good place to settle,
and the clean environment gives a pure feel to the scene.

To make the mills enticing enough that daughters would be willing to leave and families willing to part with their daughters, the experiment set up restrictions, the first of which being that working in the mills was a temporary job. Once they came of age, girls would leave the mill and find a husband to settle down with. They also set up the mills like a home: an older woman in the boardinghouses to serve meals and behavior, and strict rules of conduct. Girls benefited by getting money for them to send back home, to spend or to save. They also got a taste of independence from their families, made friends with other mill girls, and got an education. However, this came at the cost of leaving their homes, and chances of accidents with the machinery. In addition, the idyllic mill lifestyle was not to last: overproduction in American mills led to wage cuts, which the girls protested and went on strike against.

Clip from "Daughters of Free Men", a documentary by the American Social
History Project, from the City University of New York. It tells the story of Lucy
Hall as she goes to work in the mills. This clip focuses on the wage cuts, which
get protested by the rest of the girls.

Although the Lowell Experiment ended when the Civil War broke out, the mill girls left their mark on society. They changed America’s perceptions of women by working outside the house, living away from their parents, and getting a good education. When they could no longer work in the mills, many girls found they didn’t want a simple farm life anymore. They became writers, labor reform activists, women’s rights activists, and even abolitionists. These Lowell mill girls helped to shape American society today, even all the way from the 1800’s.