scholarly journals ‘What did it achieve?’ – Students’ conceptions about the significance of the French Revolution

Panta Rei ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 51-67
Author(s):  
Christian Mathis
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Historical Thinking ◽  
Ninth Graders ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Different Types ◽  
History Of ◽  
The French Revolution

Este estudio presenta las percepciones de los estudiantes sobre las consecuencias y la relevancia histórica de la Revolución Francesa. Se recogieron datos de alumnos suizos-alemanes de noveno grado (de 15 a 16 años; N=22) mediante discusiones de grupo y entrevistas centradas en problemas. Los datos se analizaron mediante un método cualitativo reconstructivo. El pensamiento histórico de los alumnos está dominado por la creencia en el progreso y el presentismo. Los jóvenes se ven envueltos en la historia de la Revolución Francesa, que tiene una relevancia y significado simbólico y presente-futuro (Cercadillo). Así, construyen la relevancia histórica de forma ejemplar (Rüsen). Estos patrones explicativos están anclados en las ideas cotidianas y no en una comprensión científica. Una consecuencia de esto es que los profesores deben modelar cognitivamente el pensamiento mostrando cómo los historiadores narran la relevancia histórica de la Revolución Francesa, haciendo explícito este concepto de segundo orden y ofreciéndoles la oportunidad de conocer y analizar diferentes tipos de narrativa (Rüsen). This study presents students’ conceptions about the consequences and significance of the French Revolution. The data were collected from Swiss ninth graders (15 to 16 years old; N=22) by means of group discussions and problem-centred interviews. The data were evaluated using a reconstructive qualitative method. The students’ historical thinking is dominated by a belief in progress and paramount presentism. The adolescents feel entangled in the history of the French Revolution, it has a symbolic and present-future significance (Cercadillo). Thus, they construct historical significance in an exemplary way (Rüsen). These explanatory patterns are anchored in the everyday conceptions of the students and not in an academic understanding of history. Therefore, teachers should cognitively model learners’ thinking by showing how historians narrate and construct the historical significance of the French Revolution, by making this second-order concept explicit and by giving them the opportunity to explore different types of narrative (Rüsen).

Conscription and the Politics of Military Recruitment

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan W. Toronto ◽  
Lindsay P. Cohn
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Military Recruitment ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Military Manpower ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The French Revolution

There is more to conscription than the presence or absence of conscripts in a military force. A brief survey of the history of military recruitment suggests that economics, threat, and political heritage go a long way toward explaining why and how states recruit manpower and prepare that manpower for war. Understanding the sources and implications of different types of military recruitment, and how trends in military recruitment change over time, is essential for understanding conscription now and in the future. The French Revolution is often regarded as a turning point in conscription, with the famed levée en masse, which coincided with dramatic changes in warfare and how states mobilized their polities for war. Less well known is how rarely conscripts were actually used in the wars that followed the French Revolution. Rather than being a turning point in the history of military recruitment, the levée en masse was just another moment in the ebb and flow of how states recruit military manpower in response to economics, threat, and political heritage. A number of dimensions describe the extraordinary variety of compulsory recruitment systems. The two most important of these dimensions are whether conscription is institutionalized or opportunistic, and whether it is core or supplementary. The typology of compulsory recruitment systems that results describes a great deal of the varieties of conscription and, along with other dimensions, might give clues as to how states will recruit military manpower in the future.

Ancient Revolutions in the Literature of Polish Romanticism

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-226
Author(s):  
Maciej Junkiert
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Classical Tradition ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
European Context ◽  
History Of ◽  
Classical Traditions ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
Literary Reception

This article aims to examine the Polish literary reception of the French Revolution during the period of Romanticism. Its main focus is on how Polish writers displaced their more immediate experiences of revolutionary events onto a backdrop of ‘ancient revolutions’, in which revolution was described indirectly by drawing on classical traditions, particularly the history of ancient Greeks and Romans. As this classical tradition was mediated by key works of German and French thinkers, this European context is crucial for understanding the literary strategies adopted by Polish authors. Three main approaches are visible in the Polish reception, and I will illustrate them using the works of Zygmunt Krasiński (1812–1859), Juliusz Słowacki (1809–1849) and Cyprian Norwid (1821–1883). My comparative study will be restricted to four works: Krasiński's Irydion and Przedświt (Predawn), Słowacki's Agezylausz (Agesilaus) and Norwid's Quidam.

‘The greatest irregular’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Scurr
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Thomas Carlyle ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dramatic Narrative ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

Thomas Carlyle claimed that his history of the French Revolution was ‘a wild savage book, itself a kind of French Revolution …’. This chapter considers his stylistic approaches to creating the illusion of immediacy: his presentation of seemingly unmediated fact through the transformation of memoir and other kinds of historical record into a compelling dramatic narrative. Closely examining the ways in which he worked biographical anecdote into the fabric of his text raises questions about Carlyle’s wider historical purposes. Pressing the question of what it means to think through style, or to distinguish expressive emotive writing from abstract understanding, is an opportunity to reconsider Carlyle’s relation to his predecessors and contemporaries writing on the Revolution in English.

The Glut of Doctors in Mid-Nineteenth-Century France

1977 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
George D. Sussman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Professional Services ◽  
Success Story ◽  
The West ◽  
Professional Careers ◽  
Nineteenth Century France ◽  
History Of ◽  
Great Attraction ◽  
The French Revolution

The history of the professions in the West since the French Revolution is a success story, a triumph, but not always an easy one. From the beginning of the nineteenth century in continental Europe the professions had a great attraction as careers presumably open to talent, but the demand for professional services developed more slowly than interest in professional careers and more slowly than the schools that supplied the market. Lenore O'Boyle has drawn attention to this discrepancy and the revolutionary potential of the frustrated careerists produced by it.

A Cultural History of the French Revolution

1990 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 669
Author(s):  
Eugen Weber ◽  
Emmet Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
History Of ◽  
The French Revolution
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