History 114 The French Revolution and Napoleon

Transcription

1 History 114 The French Revolution and Napoleon Professor Hugh Dubrulle Spring 2019 Class Time: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays 11:30 AM-12:20 AM (Section A) and 1:30 PM-2:20 PM (Section B) Classroom: LL3 Alumni Hall (Section A), LL4 Alumni Hall (Section B) Office: 304 Joseph Hall Office Hours: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays 12:30 PM-1:30 PM; Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10:00 AM-11:00 AM; and by appointment Telephone: (603) Website: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way. Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859) What We Will Do in This Class Our topic is the French Revolution, but more specifically, we will study a number of questions that have bedeviled historians for over 200 years. What were the long term forces and short term triggers that set off the French Revolution? Why did the revolution refuse to end in 1792? Why did it continue to move forward and become more radical? 1

2 What brought the radical phase of the revolution to an end? Why did the revolution ultimately lead to dictatorship? When exactly did the revolution end? What were the lasting legacies of the French Revolution? Why study the French Revolution and these particular questions? What s the point? There are three reasons. First, most historians agree that the French Revolution was one of those key events (like, say, the Industrial Revolution) that brought forth the modern age. In other words, if you want to understand why the developed world is the way it is today, you ought to know something about the events that took place in France 230 years ago. Second, the study of the French Revolution provides an incredibly important political education. This period in French history witnessed a turbulent voyage from an absolute monarchy, to a mixed constitution, to a democratic republic, to an oligarchic republic, and finally to a dictatorship all in just a few short years. By studying how each of these regimes operated and how one morphed into the next, we can further our understanding of politics. Third, like any other series of great events, the French Revolution is dramatic, colorful, and innately interesting. A survey of the revolution yields a large stock of fascinating anecdotes. Once you have completed this course, you will understand the difficult challenges that faced the French people during this period. In many cases, these challenges remain our challenges, and we will not be able to charge the French with foolishness, shortsightedness, or naiveté without indicting ourselves. Learning Outcomes: Historical Reasoning This course fulfills the College s Historical Reasoning outcome. By the end of this course, students should be able to complete the following tasks: explain how the French Revolution was characterized by change and continuity recall key dates, names, events, and dominant themes associated with the French Revolution evaluate, analyze, and comprehend primary source evidence about the French Revolution within its historical context recognize the complex process of constructing the French Revolution s history from a fragmentary historical record and how the interpretation of this event has changed over time understand the distinct perspectives and values of different groups that emerged during the French Revolution and their connections to the present as well as the difference between them and present-day societies We will achieve these outcomes in a number of ways: classroom discussion, class presentations, readings with their corresponding quizzes, essays, and examinations. Learning Outcomes: Citizenship This course fulfills the College s Citizenship learning outcome. By the end of this course, students should be able to complete the following tasks: demonstrate a basic knowledge of different definitions of citizenship recognize how context shapes, enables, and constrains citizenship articulate clearly a personal understanding of citizenship and the assumptions on which it is based recognize and reflect upon the ramifications of lived citizenship for themselves, other individuals and communities We will achieve these outcomes in a number of ways: classroom discussion, class presentations, readings with their corresponding quizzes, essays, and examinations. Required Readings Lynn Hunt and Jack R. Censer, The French Revolution and Napoleon: Crucible of the Modern World (2017) Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight (2004) Various Primary and Secondary Sources on Canvas (under the Files section of the Canvas site for this course) 2

3 Student Requirements and Assignments Class Participation (20%) I expect everybody to participate in class discussions. Discussions are not merely some kind of arbitrary hoop through which to jump. They allow me to judge how well you understand the material and what topics might require clarification. They give you the opportunity to practice the expression of ideas. Finally, they facilitate an exchange of thoughts that allows all of us to perceive the readings in ways that we might not have seen them before. I will base your class participation grade on the frequency and quality of your contributions to classroom discussion. I expect you to come to class prepared to learn. Come to class having completed the readings assigned for that day If we are scheduled to discuss a book or another reading, bring the reading to class so that you can refer to it. Also, please arrive on time if not a little early. If you must leave class early, let me know in advance. In this class, I may also ask small groups of students to make short presentations about the textbook readings. You should look for more details about these assignments in the food for thought. Remember, if you are not attending class, you are not participating. For more information concerning my rubric for grading class participation, please go to the Grading Criteria section under Grading & Assignments on the web site. Food for Thought: Quizzes and Other Exercises (20%) You will notice on the class web site that there is a page associated with each class meeting. These pages provide context for the readings. They also display what are referred to as "Food for Thought Questions." These questions are about the reading. At the beginning of any given class meeting, I may or may not give you a five-minute, opennote, open-book quiz on one of these posted questions. I highly recommend that you print out the questions before you start the reading so you know what to look for. I also recommend that as you read, you jot down notes so that you have an answer (or a way to locate an answer) ready at hand when you take the quiz. If you wish to write down answers for all the potential quiz questions so you can copy the appropriate response on the quiz itself, please feel free to do so. On other days, I may ask you to produce a short, informal piece of writing having to do with the day s reading. These kinds of assignments will have more to do with your opinion but your opinion must be informed by the reading. Don t worry, I ll be gentle. These short paragraphs will serve as prompts for discussion. These quizzes and exercises will be graded on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being the best) and will constitute part of your Quizzes/Exercises grade. If you arrive late, you will only have what remains of the five minutes to complete your quiz. If you miss the quiz completely, you will not be able to make it up unless you have a good excuse. I will be the final judge of whether your excuse is sufficient. Paper Assignments (30%) Over the course of the semester, you will have three essay assignments in this class. More information will follow on the web site. Essay 1 (5%): This paper will be a very short diagnostic assignment analyzing Montesquieu s Spirit of the Laws. It is due in my office on Thursday, January 31. Please see the web site for more details. Essay 2 (10%): This essay, due on Tuesday, February 26, will address a question associated with Timothy Tackett s book When the King Took Flight. Please see the web site for more details. 3

4 Essay 3 (15%): Tuesday, April 18 will be the due date for your paper on David A. Bell s The First Total War. Please see the web site for more details. Criteria: For more information concerning my rubric for grading written assignments, please go to the Grading Criteria section under Grading & Assignments in the web site. Below B- Paper Policy: Having taught here for around fifteen years, I sincerely believe that around 90% of students could earn at least a B- on any paper assignment in this class if they put their mind to it. For that reason, after handing back a graded assignment, I will contact all students who have obtained less than a B- and ask them to set up an appointment with me so we can discuss your mistakes and find ways for you to improve your performance in the future. These meetings are mandatory. Extensions: I will grant NO extensions after the due date. Turning in Papers: I will not accept papers submitted to me via . You must either give the paper to me in person or drop it off at my office before it falls due. Late Papers: Late papers will suffer a penalty of 10% for each day they are late. Thus, a B- paper turned in a day late will become a C- paper. The meter runs on weekends just as on weekdays. If a paper is due on a Friday, it will be one day late on Saturday (10% off), two days late on Sunday (20% off), and three days late on Monday (30% off). The meter also keeps running during holidays and breaks. It is your responsibility to get the paper to me in such a manner that I can verify you completed it by a certain time. I will give priority to papers turned in on time. If your paper arrives late, I will grade it when I have the time to get to it whenever that may be. In other words, if you turn in your paper late, I will return it late. Examinations (30%) There will be two examinations in this class a take-home midterm and a take-home final at the end of the semester. Midterm Examination (10%: This take-home exam will be due in my office on Tuesday, March 19. For more details, please consult the web site. Final Examination (20%): If you are enrolled in Section A (MWF at 11:30 AM), your take-home final will be due Wednesday, May 8 at 1 PM. For those enrolled in Section B (MWF at 1:30 PM), your final will be due on Thursday, May 9 at 1 PM. For more details, please consult the web site. Student Policies Attendance According to the Student Handbook, since this course meets three times per week, students enjoy three allowed absences over the course of the entire semester to deal with a brief illness, a personal obligation that conflicts with class, or participation in College-sponsored events. Accumulating more than a couple of absences will affect your class participation grade. Please see the class participation rubric on the class web site. Of course, if the Dean s Office informs me that additional absences are the result of some sort of personal crisis (e.g. severe illness, death in the family, etc.), I will make accommodations. Disabilities Students with appropriately documented disabilities are eligible for reasonable accommodations. It is the student s responsibility to contact and submit documentation of a disability to the Office of Disability Services in the Academic Resource Center (see Kenn Walker). For more information, please consult the ARC s statement regarding disability services. 4

5 Make-Ups If you are absent on the day of a quiz, you can only make it up if you have a legitimate reason for being absent. I will only reschedule midterms or finals under the most extraordinary circumstances (e.g. serious illness, death in the family, etc.). If your parents bought you a plane ticket that has you leaving before the midterm or final is supposed to take place, that is not an extraordinary circumstance. That s poor planning, and I will not reschedule the examination for you. Turning in Papers/Late Papers/Extensions I will not accept papers submitted to me via . You must either give the paper to me in person on the day it is due or drop it off at my office. I will grant NO extensions on or after the due date. Late papers will suffer a penalty of 10% for each day they are late. Thus, a B- paper turned in a day late will become a C- paper. The meter runs on weekends just as on weekdays. If a paper is due on a Friday, it will be one day late on Saturday (10% off), two days late on Sunday (20% off), and three days late on Monday (30% off). The meter also keeps running during holidays and breaks. It is your responsibility to get the paper to me in such a manner that I can verify you completed it by a certain time. I will give priority to papers turned in on time. If your paper arrives late, I will grade it when I have the time to get to it whenever that may be. In other words, if you turn in your paper late, I will return it late. My Policy regarding Academic Honesty According to the American Historical Association s Statement on the Standards of Professional Conduct, the expropriation of another author s text, and the presentation of it as one s own, constitutes plagiarism and is a serious violation of the ethics of scholarship. The Statement goes on to assert the following: Plagiarism includes more subtle and perhaps more pernicious abuses than simply expropriating the exact wording of another author without attribution. Plagiarism also includes the limited borrowing, without attribution, of another person s distinctive and significant research findings, hypotheses, theories, rhetorical strategies, or interpretations, or an extended borrowing even with attribution. So what exactly does plagiarism look like? The Statement continues by stating that the clearest abuse is the use of another s language without quotation marks and citation. More subtle abuses include the appropriation of concepts, data, or notes all disguised as newly crafted sentences, or reference to a borrowed work in an early note and then extensive further use without attribution. If you would like more information on this topic, please refer to the AHA s statement on plagiarism. For even more information, please consult the college s academic integrity tutorial which is located on the Geisel Library web site. All that being said, it is incumbent upon you to understand the College s official definition of plagiarism and the procedures associated with the investigation of plagiarism cases. You can find information regarding these issues on the following page: Depending on the egregiousness of the infraction and the relative weight of the assignment, you can expect anything from a zero on a particular assignment to failure in the class. I will also report you to the Dean. These penalties serve not only to punish the guilty, but even more important, to deter those who might feel tempted to engage in unethical behavior. 5

6 Electronic Devices The College has a detailed policy regarding the use of electronic devices in the classroom. To summarize: cell phones, pagers, PDAs, or similar devices shall not be used in class text messaging or the access of information on these devices is forbidden all such devices should be placed on silent (vibrate) mode and should be put away during class students are allowed to check these devices only if every single one of them activates simultaneously; such an event would indicate that the College s emergency notification system has sent out a message Laptop Policy Laptops are great for doing many things, but taking notes is not one of them. The research is unequivocal on that point. Study after study indicates that: laptops offer too great a temptation to play with social media, do online shopping, check fantasy sports scores, and engage in any number of distracting activities students with laptops tend to distract those around them students equipped with laptops tend to write more than those who use paper and pen, but the former retain less from class and take worse notes students using laptops in class tend to perform worse overall in courses than their peers who use more traditional modes of note-taking On the web site, I ve provided links to articles from The New Yorker, Scientific American, The New York Times, the Brookings Institution, and The Atlantic that provide more information about these issues. I have also posted links to studies on the topic done at Cornell University, Princeton University/UCLA, and McMaster University/York University. Having said all that, I will not stop you from using a laptop, mainly because students sometimes use them to access the readings that are located on Canvas (especially if they find printing the material prohibitively expensive). The research I ve referred to above indicates that students retain information better when they read a page instead of a screen. My official stance is that you are hurting yourself if you employ a laptop in class, and I officially discourage you from using them. Schedule NOTE: I reserve the right to change readings over the course of the semester. To stay on top of these changes, view the Food for Thought which will always have the most up-to-date information. For information concerning which specific readings you need to do on a given day, please consult the Food for Thought on the course web site. Keep in mind that on the Food for Thought pages, I very well may tell you that certain readings are mandatory while others optional. Again: the lesson is that you need to pay attention to the information presented on the Food for Thought. WEEK 1 Monday, January 14 Introduction None 6

7 Wednesday, January 16 The Significance of the French Revolution William Doyle, What It Started from The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction (2001) Friday, January 18 The Old Regime Jeremy Popkin, The Structure of Eighteenth-Century French Society and The Preindustrial Economy from A History of Modern France (2012) Charles Loyseau, A Treatise on Orders (1610) WEEK 2 Wednesday, January 23 The Enlightenment Jeremy Popkin, Culture and Thought in Eighteenth Century France from A History of Modern France (2012) Excerpts from Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (1748) Friday, January 25 The Old Regime and Its Challenges Hunt and Censer, pp WEEK 3 Monday, January 28 The Financial Crisis and Calling of the Estates General Hunt and Censer, pp Cahier de doléances of Dourdan (Province of Île-de-France) (1789) Wednesday, January 30 From Estates General to National Assembly Hunt and Censer, pp Excerpts from Abbé Sieyès, What is the Third Estate? (1789) Friday, February 1 The Popular Revolution and the End of Feudalism Hunt and Censer, pp Excerpts from the August 4, 1789 Session of the National Assembly The August 4 Decrees (1789) Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizen (1789) 7

8 WEEK 4 Monday, February 4 The Reception of the Revolution Abroad I Hunt and Censer, pp Excerpts from Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) Wednesday, February 6 The Reception of the Revolution Abroad II Excerpts from Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791) Friday, February 8 The Limits of Liberty and Equality: The Rights of Others Olympe de Gouges, The Rights of Women (1791) May 1791 Debates in the National Assembly on Slavery in the French Colonies WEEK 5 Monday, February 11 The Revolution and the Church Hunt and Censer, pp Debate on the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790) Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790) Message from the Archbishop of Vienne (Department of Isere) to the Clergy and Laypeople of the Diocese (1790) Minutes of the Swearing of the Oath by Jean-Baptiste Petitjean, Curé of Epineuil (Department of Cher) (1791) Wednesday, February 13 Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight (2003) Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight (2003) Friday, February 15 Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight (2003) Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight (2003) WEEK 6 Monday, February 18 Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight (2003) Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight (2003) 8

9 Wednesday, February 20 War and the Radicalization of the Revolution Hunt and Censer, pp Maximilien Robespierre s Speech at the Jacobin Club against War (1792) Jacques Pierre Brissot s Speech at the Jacobin Club in Favor of War (1792) Brunswick Manifesto (1792) Friday, February 22 The Radical Revolution Hunt and Censer, pp , Speeches at the Trial of Louis XVI (1792) WEEK 7 Monday, February 25 The Terror Hunt and Censer, pp , Ronchet, Address from the Provisional Municipality [of Lyons] to the National Convention (1793) Maximilien Robespierre s Speech on the Principles of Political Morality (1794) Wednesday, February 27 The Cultural Revolution Hunt and Censer, pp Decrees Establishing the French Era and the New Calendar (1793) Report of the National Convention on Homages to Reason (1793) Report on the Festival of the Supreme Being (1794) Excerpt from Jacques René Hébert, Pere Duchesne (1793) Friday, March 1 Art under the Republic: Jacques-Louis David Paintings by Jacques-Louis David WEEK 8 Monday, March 11 Literature and the French Revolution Honoré de Balzac, An Incident in the Reign of Terror (1830) 9

10 Wednesday, March 13 Thermidor Hunt and Censer, pp Friday, March 15 The Directory Hunt and Censer, pp Boissy d Anglas on a New Constitution (1795) Proclamation of the Directory to the French People (1797) WEEK 9 Monday, March 18 French Foreign Policy and the Army Hunt and Censer, pp Second Propagandist Decrees (1792) Treaty between France and Cisapline Republic (1798) Wednesday, March 20 The Caribbean Revolution Emancipation Decree of 1793 L Overture s Labor Decree of 1800 L Overture s Public Statements about Abolitionism (1793) L Overture s Letter to the Directory (1797) The Constitution of 1801 Declaration of Independence and Dessalines Proclamation (1801) Friday, March 22 The Rise of Napoleon Hunt and Censer, pp , Proclamation to the Army of Italy (1796) Napoleon s Victory Banner (1797) WEEK 10 Monday, March 25 Building the Napoleonic Regime Hunt and Censer, pp Jean-François Curée, Speech Supporting Proclamation of an Empire (1804) Concordat with the Papacy (1801) Napoleon s Proclamation of the Religious Settlement (1801) The French (Napoleonic) Civil Code ( ) 10

11 Wednesday, March 27 War under Napoleon Hunt and Censer, pp Carl von Clausewitz, Scale of the Military Objective and of the Effort to Be Made from On War (1832) Friday, March 29 Napoleonic Military Success Carl von Clausewitz, On Military Genius from On War (1832) WEEK 11 Monday, April 1 Wednesday, April 3 Friday, April 5 WEEK 12 Monday, April 8 Wednesday, April 10 Napoleon: Blundering to Glory? Excerpts from Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1867) Friday, April 12 Art under the Empire: David, Ingres, Gros, and Gérard Paintings by David, Ingres, Gros, and Gerard 11

12 WEEK 13 Monday, April 15 The Beginning of the End Hunt and Censer, pp Excerpts from Benjamin Constant, The Spirit of Conquest (1814) Wednesday, April 17 Collaboration and Resistance in Napoleonic Europe Hunt and Censer, pp Excerpts from Johann Fichte, Address to the German Nation (1808) WEEK 14 Wednesday, April 24 The End Hunt and Censer, pp Jacob Walter, The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier (ca. 1850?) Excerpt from Marquis de Montholon, Napoleon at St. Helena (1846) Friday, April 26 The Congress of Vienna Hunt and Censer, pp The Treaty of Paris (1814) The Treaty of Paris (1815) The Holy Alliance Treaty (1815) WEEK 15 Monday, April 29 The Restoration in France The Charter of 1814 Wednesday, May 1 The Enduring Revolution in France Alexis de Toqueville, Recollections (ca. 1850) 12