As promised, I am providing you with adequate "advance notice" of writing assignments for the rest of the semester. The questions are in the form of "rough drafts" which I will refine one by one, adding images and links to (perhaps) make them them more appealing, and more fun too. All responses should be posted in your "virtual classroom" at Nicenet (with "backups" emailed to hcourse@hotmail.com).
When you post your efforts, the subject line should be "Essay #3" (and upwards for the remaining essays), which will make it much easier for me to administer.
In my view, the best thing you could do for yourselves would be to make your own home pages and learn how to post your papers there as well. It is not difficult, and home pages are available for free from Tripod. Moreover, having a home page is required for those who might want to undertake the "extra credit" bonus question. If you give yourself the time (and not wait until just days before 15 April), you would be able to accomplish something worthwhile.
As I mentioned in class, for your third contribution to the world's history I thought it might be interesting to have you assess the career of one single person: Napoleon Bonaparte. He was a short French guy (Corsican, actually) who lived a long time ago and apparently did some memorable things. So memorable that an entire chapter of your book of primary sources (the one called "Roots etc.") is devoted to him and his doings, and suggests on page 33 that one question which might be appropriate would be for you to ... "Compare his contemporaries' opinions of him with his own evaluations. Was he a 'son of the Revolution' or its antithesis? Hero or villain?"
[Hint to Soap Opera Fans: Those who are inclined to condemn Napoleon for divorcing Josephine might want to consider what might happen were we to condemn all Americans who have sought, and gotten, divorces.]
This third essay is due before the Ides of March (look it up!).
Essay #4
As I explained in class, for this assignment you can choose to answer just question #1, and I'll extend the deadline until midnight on 17 March in honor of Saint Patrick . But responses to assignment #4 posted after that day will not count for anything.
For those with a sense of curiousity and sufficient interest to do a bit of their own detective work, I have included the little "bonus" question here ... the one marked as #2. Clue: the picture in question shows "Liberty" as a female, and the smaller one is a Greek goddess.
1. On Nationalism. Chapter 25 of your source book ("Roots") is entitled in the form of a question "Nineteenth Century Nationalism Humane or Intolerant?" Your job is to read all of the source in that chapter and then to 1) define Nationalism and, 2) answer the question posed by the chapter's title. Keep in mind that a very common error in history, even common among professional historians, is called "anachronism." It occurs when a writer takes the morals, or values, or ethics from one time and imposes them upon another time. You might also want to pay particular attention to the two quotes which are cited at the very beginning of the chapter, to wit:
If I knew something that would benefit my country but would harm mankind, I would never reveal it, for I am a citizen of humanity first, and a citizen of my country second and only by accident.
Eighteenthcentury philosopher.
Alsace and Lorraine ... are ours by right of the sword, and we shall dispose of them in virtue of a higher right the right of the German nation, which will not permit its lost children to remain strangers to the German Reich. We Germans know better than these unfortunates themselves what is good fir the people of Alsace .... Against their will we shall restore them to their true selves.
Heinrich von Treitschke, 1870.
[Incidentally, Treitschke was a well known and very popular historian whose university students often applauded remarks like that one.]
[Your due date for assignment #5 will be midnight on Monday, 16 March, and papers posted after that deadline will not count.]
Bonus Essay
2. On political cartoons and symbols: as an alternative to the question on nationalism, those who like challenges might choose to explain the meaning of the French Revolution "cartoon" which appears in your textbook on page 652. What could it possibly mean? [If you choose to answer the "bonus question," it's required that you get your own page at Tripod and "publish" it there sometime before Income Tax Day.]
Essay #5
For your fifth effort here, the Industrial Revolution and its impact will be the focus.
The impact of industrialization seriously affected the status of the agrarian classes, the bourgeoisie, and the proletariat. Think about the forces that changed the structure and balance of society, and show how (and whether) each of the three groups was adversely or beneficially affected by the industrial process.
There were many writers who early recognized that the "progress" brought by the Industrial Revolution did not mean progress for everyone. Not only Malthus, but Ricardo, Mill, and Owen were concerned with the impact of the ever increasing population (which seemed to accompany the Industrial Revolution). Describe the Malthusian theory on population and his conception of the possible checks to its increase. Show wherein Ricardo, Mill, and Owen espoused a similar or different theory both about the problem and the remedy.
[Your due date for assignment #5 will be midnight on Monday, 23 March, and papers posted after that deadline will not count.]
Essay #6
When the Industrial Revolution is discussed, the great technological strides are often emphasized but the immediate effects of these improvements are sometimes ignored. Like all revolutions, this industrial revolution had and has its victims. Even those who ultimately benefited from it had substantial prices to pay (child laborers, for example).
Many contemporary writers were early on aware that their world was in the midst of major change, and you have been assigned to read excerpts from five of these. Three early economists (Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo) had at one time shared the Enlightenment belief in the rationality of man and the perfectibility of society. In time, for each of them, the unfolding Industrial Revolution made it increasingly apparent that society was changing and not necessarily for the better.
Then, later the nineteenth century, other authors (Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer) provided related ideas on how (if at all) those for whom the Industrial Revolution was not progress ought to be accommodated.
Your task is to have a close look at these five selections, and then to identify what if any theme or themes their writings share. They all saw that in any environment, resources might not meet needs. Given that observation, what did they think ought to be done in the face of that shortage? What if anything should be done for those for whom the new and emerging industrial world was no improvement at all? Does that question have any relevance for the world you live in today? Is it still true (in the words of a Supreme Court Justice) that "...in order to treat some persons equally, we must first treat them differently?"
[Your due date for assignment #6 will be midnight on Monday, 30 March, and papers posted after that deadline will not count.]
Essay #7
Taken directly from your textbook (p. 951): "What was the character of late nineteenth century racism? How did it become associated with antiSemitism? What personal and contemporary political experiences led Herzl to develop the idea of Zionism."
To answer this question, you will need 1) to review carefully the material available in chapter 25 of your textbook "Western Heritage," and 2) read too chapters 24 and 26 of your sourcebook "Roots of Western Civilization."
The deadline for this assignment will be 11:59 P.M. on Monday, 6 April 1997.
Essay #8
Amidst discussion of the vast impersonal forces that mold history, one sometimes forgets that history is made by men and women. The difficult question is not whether or not men and women are the actors in history; of course they are. The problem is whether these actors, like those in a play, are carrying out a plot whose outcome they will not affect, or whether, like actors in an improvisation, they can or do decisively change the outcome. With that in mind, I invite you to have a look at the career of Adolf Hitler.
In very basic terms, there are two historical views of what happened to Germany in the 1930s, when Hitler and his Nazi party came to control that country and won the support of an overwhelming majority of the German people. The first view asserts that "vast impersonal forces," like the punitive terms of the Versailles Treaty, the German hyperinflation during the 1920s, and the onset of the Depression in the early 1930s, together provided the "background play" in which Hitler acted, that had there been no Hitler some other actor would have played the same part with the same results. The other view stresses Adolf Hitler's genius evil genius to be sure, but genius nonetheless and maintains that without Hitler's charisma and extraordinary ability to exploit it, the whole history of Europe (and the world) might have been vastly different.
Simply put, the task is to examine the evidence and then to argue one way or the other. Was Hitler just an able actor playing a role doled out to him by circumstances, or did he write his own part and then play it?
To cope with this question, you will need to read very carefully the primary sources in "Roots" written by contemporaries, the assigned excerpts from "Mein Kampf," and the two essays in "Social History" contributed by historians of that era, namely, "Inflation in Weimar Germany" and "Hitler in a Social Context." Your textbook's account DOES NOT provide you with adequate material for this question.
And this time get your facts straight, your spelling right, and your grammar correct. You've got the resources, so use them or live with the consequences.
The due date and time is 11:59 P.M. on Monday, 13 April 1997.
Late efforts will count for nothing.
"Brevity is the soul of wit." (Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, ii, 90).
Essay #9
... we were two sisters of two brothers robbed killed on one day each by the other's hand.
Sophocles, Antigone
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Sophocles' Antigone is the heroine of what is certainly one of his most famous plays, written more than four centuries before the birth of Christ. For those who are unfamiliar with the play: Antigone was the daughter of Oedipus, king of Thebes in Greek legend.
According to legend, when Oedipus blinded himself after his marriage to his mother was revealed to him, Antigone shared her father's exile near Athens. After his death, she returned to Thebes and attempted, with her sister Ismene, to reconcile her quarreling brothers Eteocles and Polynices. Both brothers were killed, but her uncle Creon, now king, forbade the burial of Polynices because he had betrayed Thebes. When Antigone secretly buried her brother against the edict of her uncle, she herself was buried alive. Antigone's act has carried its message of the sanctity of the individual conscience down through the centuries, proclaiming the superiority of what is eternally right and decent to any mere dictator's brutal whim no matter what the cost might be.
Nuremberg Trials
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At the end of World War II the victorious Allies (the United States, Great Britain, France, and the USSR) established an international military tribunal to try the surviving Axis leaders for "war crimes." The trials took place in the German city of Nuremberg from November 1945 to October 1946.
In the main trial 22 German Nazi leaders were tried. Of these, 12 were sentenced to death, including Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Alfred Rosenberg, Martin Bormann (who was tried in absentia), and Hermann Goering (who committed suicide); three, including Rudolf Hess, were given life sentences; four, including Karl Doenitz and Albert Speer, were sentenced to up to 20 years' imprisonment; and three, including Franz von Papen and Hjalmar Schacht, were acquitted. Lesser criminals were tried in 12 subsequent trials. The conviction of individuals for acts that were sanctioned by the government of the country they served raised legal issues that have made the Nuremberg Trials the subject of controversy.
[Quoted from "Grolier's Encyclopedia," on CompuServe]
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Your Assignment: Have another look at the final sentence taken from the quoted encyclopedia article on the trials at Nuremberg, where it says that the trials are (note the present tense) a "subject of controversy." How can it be "controversial" to try war leaders for "war crimes" or, more broadly, "crimes against humanity"? Reread the testimony offered by some of the defendants at Nuremberg and quoted in your collection of primary sources.
They were "following orders," they said, and they were telling the truth. So how could they be held responsible? How could anyone argue that they should have done otherwise? According to Rudolf Hess, " ... [w]omen would often hide their children under their clothes, but of course when we found them we sent the children in to be exterminated. We were required to carry out these exterminations secretly, but ... the stench from the continuous burning of the bodies permeated the entire area and everybody in the surrounding communities knew that the exterminations were going on at Auschwitz" ["Roots," page 234.] Should the "everybody" who knew what was happening also been tried for doing nothing?
How do you think Antigone might have answered this question?
[On August 17, 1987 Rudolf Hess committed suicide in Spandau prison. He was ninetythree years old, the last survivor of those found guilty at Nuremberg. Only the USSR had refused to commute his sentence.]
This assignment must be posted before 11:59 P.M. on Monday, 20 April 1997.
Essay #10
For your final writing assignment, it might be interesting to write of student life in your parents' generation (i.e., the 1960s) and contrast it with your own experience.
Specifically, you can reread carefully pp. 11361137 of your textbook where you will find reference to "the student experience." What do the authors of your textbook mean by this phrase? How do you relate to "the student experience" of which they write?
Compare and contrast your own "student experiences" with those of the 1960s.
This ssignment must be posted before 11:59 P.M. on Monday, 27 April 1997.