Month: April 2015

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French Revolution:What do People Know?

Out of the three revolutions we learned about in class, I’d say the French Revolution was probably one of my favourites to learn about. Also I think I took in the most information about this topic compared to the other two Revolutions we learned about.

This weekend while I was out with my family, I asked them a question. What do you know about the French Revolution? I wanted to see how much people from Vancouver knew about the French Revolution. After hearing all of their answers, I realized how much people really do know about that.

imageAll of the things they told me about the French Revolution I had never heard of before. For example, my aunt told me that people wore white wigs because they lost their hair from syphilis. Louis the 14 started loosing his hair form this and was the first to wear these wigs. They then became a fashion rage because the king wore them. French citizens got rid of the fashion during the French Revolution.

My uncle told me that Revolutionaries came up with their own calendar during the French Revolution. It was called the Republican calendar and was used for twelve years after the revolution. The two of them knew a little bit about the French Revolution, but not a lot.

imageThen there was people like my nanny. All she said was that she could sing all the songs from les miserable. imageMy grandad on the other hand just said a joke. He said “the flag used to be blue and white until they started wrapping people’s heads in them”.

After asking everyone what they knew about the French Revolution, I realized that they really didn’t knew much at all. When they were in school they never really learned about the French Revolution and some people had just forgotten what had happened. Also all these facts may not be true.

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American Revolution: Taxes on Tea

In class we have been studying revolutions. This past week we learned about the American Revolution. The stamp act in particular interested me. I wanted to dive deeper and find out a little bit more on how those taxes worked and why some things were taxed. So I asked a question, why was tea the only thing that was still taxed after they took all the other taxes off?

Previously in class we had been learning about William Shakespeare. As I was thinking of how to put all of my research together in a entertaining way, I thought back to this. I have always loved everything to do with Shakespeare, plays, sonnets, and poetry. So I decided to record my information in a poem format.

I chose to write my poem in a Shakespearean format. A Shakespearean poem is a 14-line sonnet consisting of three quatrains of abab cdcd efef followed by a couplet, gg. Example: Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 2”.

A Revolution started like this
All because the Brits needed money
They saw it coming and did not dismiss
This was not to be taken as funny

Everything was was taxed out there
All so the Brits could get their money back
The Americans did no think this was fair
So they came up with a plan to attack

The taxes were then taken awayimage
All of them except for the tea
So the Americans dumped the tea in the bay
To show that they would no longer pay the fee

Tea was expensive and everyone bought
This is why the Americans fought

I went into writing this poem thinking that it would be fairly easy. That coming up with rhyming words would be no problem. I was wrong about that. While I was writing this I had to change the lines several times because I was unable to think of a rhyming word that fit with the lines above. I learned that writing poems can be quite challenging, but they are always so fun to write.

Finding the information to answer my question was the easy part, although it was still challenging. I learned why the tea was the only thing still taxed. Tea was a luxury that almost everyone had back then. It was popular and a good trade. Here is where I found some of my information.

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Revolution: English Civil War

In class we have been learning about the English civil war. I was asked to choose something that interested me the most to do some further research on. My question is, why was government and religion so important to people in the 17th century that it started wars like the English civil war? After doing some further research on this and looking at many different websites, I found the answer I was looking for below.image

Unlike other civil wars in England, which mostly focused on who should rule rather than how the nation should be ruled, this war was more concerned with how the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland were governed. Some people say that the English civil war was not just one war, but three.image

When King James came into power, he came into conflict with parliament. The cost of government was rising but the government’s income did not keep up. Rents from royal lands could only be raised when the lease ended. Parliament was therefore in a strong position. MPs could refuse to raise money for the king unless he bowed to their demands. So the king was forced to look for new ways to raise money.

Government and money were two key factors for having power. Every country wanted more power then the other and the only way to get this power was through government. That is why government was so important back in the 17th century. This lust for power and control over government, or even a new, better government, was what the main reason for the English civil war was.