Hello! Welcome back to a new blog post. This is a Humanities post, and you can tell from the title, it is about revolutions. The 4 revolutions that we studied for this project were: American, Haitian, French, and Xinhai. My group was to study the French Revolution and our Driving Question was: “How can we, as legal teams, determine the effectiveness of a revolution?” I was apart of the prosecution(arguing that it was ineffective). So you’re probably wondering what the final product was. Well, it was a mock trial, performed in front of a live audience (our parents) during the PLP 9 exhibition. Which is a public showcasing of our learning.

The French Revolution, probably was of the most famous and bloody revolutions in history. It was fought from 1789 to1799, and ended when Napoleon Bonaparte returned France and took control. A crucial event signifying the start of the revolution was The Tennis Court Oath, in which the Generals of the Third Estate swore to never stop meeting until the monarchy was gone. This oath was taken on June 20th, 1789, on a tennis court somewhere in Paris. Soon after this, a key figure was Maximilian Robespierre. As one of the 3rd Estate’s most educated members, Robespierre quickly found himself becoming the leading figure in this revolution. He would lead during a time period known as the “Reign Of Terror”. The Reign Of Terror lasted about one year (1793 to 1794), in which approximately 17,000 people were executed, before Robespierre himself was executed. Fun Fact: the guillotine was invented in 1789 by Dr.Joseph Guillotin as an easy, equal and less painful way of executing people. 

Alright, it is Keystone Understanding time!

 Keystone Number 1: What events happened in the revolution that I am studying?

 There were 3 assignments for this Keystone. The first was a Crane Brinton Theory Diagram. I made mine as an animation. I feel this animation, accurately showed my understanding of revolutions at that point in the project. 

 This next part is related to something we read, Animal Farm, which is a novel about animals staging a revolution. The story is an analogy of the entire Russian Revolution. After reading the book, we did a quiz on said book, as well as on Crane Brinton definitions. I did very well on this. The 3rd and final assignment was a Graphic Organizer about our revolution. Here is mine: 

So, my Graphic Organizer met all the requirements for the assignment. But, at first, I did struggle with the visual-spatial aspect of it, as I had all of my knowledge crammed into one area. After I fixed this, it looked much better and was more visually pleasing. 

Overall, I would say I show a proficient level of knowledge with this idea as I completed the assignments to the best of my ability and revised when I had to. 

Keystone #2: Why do Revolutions Happen

To start this Keystone, we did Nation X. What is Nation X? Nation X is a mock civilization simulation, based on France before the revolution, where the King and nobility lived the high life while the rest of the population lived in poverty. I was a part of the poverty estate. At first, we tried to overthrow the king, but we ended up splitting the country in half. And we raised a wall between us and the other government. After this activity we did a written reflection about it. Next we, did another activity on Animal Farm. We had to bring in discussions questions where we talked about the most interesting things that happened. Once we finished Animal Farm, we wrote a reflection linking it to Crane Brinton. I would say that my information was a competent understanding of Animal Farm and Crane Brinton. The main thing I need to work on is my punctuation and grammar. 

Keystone #3: How do Legal Teams Prepare for a Trial  

This Keystone was preparing for the trial and learning about courts and the steps they take before going to court. At the start of this Keystone we were assigned either prosecution or defence. The first step was making a Affidavit, which for all you non-lawyer folks out there, is a written document containing important facts you want the judge to know about. You must swear it under an oath and promise that the information in the affidavit is true. Step 2 was building the case around our side and making sure we had evidence to back up our claims. The final step was making a script for the presentation. With the other side as we can’t just have the entire thing random. Here are a few images from our Affidavit:

 

 

So after all that, I would say that the answer to the Driving Question is that if you have a obvious and clear argument and look back on history to see what all these countries have become today it is, clear that most of the revolutions were effective. But if you argue your case better then you can sway the audience to your side.However, in regards to the French Revolution specifically, it was not immediately effective. While Napoleon got rid of the existing monarchy, he then appointed himself dictator.

So what you probably waiting for is the video of our group the French Revolution 

In the end the French Revolution was deemed ineffective by our jury AKA the audience. I think this is because we had more overwhelming and specific evidence the the defence.

Go check out the other prosecution group members blogs

 

 

 

Thank you for reading have a nice Day/Night/Afternoon.

Don’t Forget that çå®ter=Blög.