French Revolution

Debate: Why France needs the Fifth Republic

Retrieved on: 
Monday, September 25, 2023

Established in 1958 after the government collapsed in the throes of the Algerian War, the new constitution featured a president with considerable powers.

Key Points: 
  • Established in 1958 after the government collapsed in the throes of the Algerian War, the new constitution featured a president with considerable powers.
  • In 2022, both the far right (Rassemblement National) and the far left (La France Insoumise) successfully sent a staggering number of representatives to the assembly.
  • However unprecedented, this result only confirmed that any political party needs local anchorage and time to climb the constitutional ladder.

Taming executive power, ensuring political stablity

    • The Third Republic (1870–1940) modernised the country and implemented state laws that schooled multiple generations into becoming citizens.
    • It was not without flaws: between 1876 and 1940, 101 cabinets came and went, essentially due to parliamentary instability and a total absence of authority within the executive power.
    • France’s defeat in 1940 finished off the Third Republic and eventually led to the Vichy Régime.

Looking to Germany and the UK

    • Today, when finding fault with France’s institutions, the systems of neighbouring countries such as Germany and Britain are often brought up.
    • The comparison is not apt, however, for British and German parliamentary systems do not meet France’s standards for process and governance.
    • And while such systems succeed in Britain and Germany, France’s history has shown that it is a nation that regards political compromise as a sign of institutional weakness.
    • Nothing today, save for unpopular reforms presented to parliament and Emmanuel Macron’s general unpopularity can justify overthrowing France’s constitution.

The flip side of power

    • While the Fifth Republic certainly confers great power to its presidents, and so draws political hatred and violence against them (rather than against the assembly), this system guarantees political stability.
    • Calling for the establishment of new institutions at a time of social crisis and spreading populism is not productive.
    • Citizens across France certainly distrust Emmanuel Macron, but this need not entail an automatic rejection of the nation’s institutions.
    • While it certainly places significant power into the hands of a single person, the constitution ensures that it is still up to the people to decide who shall govern their lives.

One year to go: Will the Paris 2024 Olympics see a return to normalcy?

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, August 8, 2023

The 2020 Tokyo Summer Games and the 2022 Beijing Winter Games were both affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in significant changes and schedule disruptions.

Key Points: 
  • The 2020 Tokyo Summer Games and the 2022 Beijing Winter Games were both affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in significant changes and schedule disruptions.
  • But there is hope for a return to a more traditional and enjoyable Games with the upcoming 2024 Paris Olympics.

Athletes and sports

    • Since pandemic restrictions are no longer in place, competing at the Olympics and living in the Athlete’s Village will be a much better experience for athletes, who will be able to freely mix and mingle again.
    • There will be 32 sports and 329 events at the Paris Games.
    • In the continuing push for gender equity, there will be equal numbers of male and female athletes for the first time.

Russian and Belarusian athletes

    • Athletes from both countries have been effectively banned from international competition in the aftermath of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
    • The International Olympic Committee (IOC) strongly recommended banning athletes from both countries from the Beijing 2022 Winter Games, with the International Paralympic Committee following suit days later.
    • The International Olympic Committee has attempted to strike a balance between continued support for Ukrainian athletes without “punishing athletes for the acts of their governments,” as IOC President Thomas Bach stated.

Olympic culture

    • As the host city, Paris will be buzzing with excitement, offering a variety of Olympic activities.
    • These include special fan zones, free viewings of the Olympic Torch Relay and opening ceremonies, access to hospitality houses and opportunities to visit sponsor sites like Samsung, Visa and Pride House.

Record-breaking media coverage

    • While the Tokyo and Beijing Games still had extensive media coverage, the upcoming Paris Games are expected to have the most coverage out of any Olympics.
    • By May, Paris organizers had sold 6.8 million tickets — about 70 per cent of the total inventory.
    • The return of corporate sponsorships will also include extensive corporate hospitality and packages from major sponsors, including Visa, Coke, Samsung and others.

Security at the Games

    • Recent events have raised the question of whether this propensity will play out during the Paris 2024 Games.
    • Whether or not they are to be expected, a heavy anti-terrorism security presence can be expected, as has become the norm in recent decades at mega sport events.

One year to go

    • The 2024 Paris Olympics should see a return to normalcy compared to the last two games.
    • The legacy of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the French founder of the modern Olympic Games, and the Olympic Movement should continue unabated.

French botanist Théodore Leschenault travelled to Australia in 1800-1803. His recently recovered journal contains a wealth of intriguing information

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, July 12, 2023

In the storeroom of a square-towered château in Burgundy, my genial hosts gestured towards a large, wooden chest of drawers.

Key Points: 
  • In the storeroom of a square-towered château in Burgundy, my genial hosts gestured towards a large, wooden chest of drawers.
  • I pulled open a compartment and began sorting through bundles of old papers – house records from the 18th and 19th centuries.
  • I was there, in 2015, on the trail of Théodore Leschenault, a botanist who had travelled to Australia in the years 1800 to 1803 with the expedition of discovery led by Nicolas Baudin.
  • There was a register detailing his divorce from his young wife Marguerite due to their “incompatible temperaments”.

A collecting frenzy

    • Sociable by nature, with a head of blond curls, he came from a wealthy legal family and had been imprisoned during the French Revolution.
    • A child of the Enlightenment, with an anti-religious and empirical cast of mind, he hoped to forge a career as a botanist.
    • When Leschenault went ashore for the first time on the Australian coastline in June 1801, at Geographe Bay in the south-west, he immediately went into a collecting frenzy, picking up so many shells, pebbles and plants he couldn’t carry them all back to the boat.
    • Over the next two years, Leschenault collected thousands of plant and animal specimens as the expedition explored three sides of the continent.

Colonisation and slavery

    • Some of the most unexpected passages in the new chapters relate to slavery and the effects of colonisation.
    • While on Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands, he learnt about the fate of the island’s original Guanche inhabitants – which gave him reason for concern.
    • Later, on Mauritius, Leschenault directly addresses moral questions around slavery.
    • Perhaps they linger in some storeroom, awaiting their moment to re-emerge into the light …

The French Revolution executed royals and nobles, yes – but most people killed were commoners

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, July 12, 2023

For a lot of people, mention of the French Revolution conjures up images of wealthy nobles being led to the guillotine.

Key Points: 
  • For a lot of people, mention of the French Revolution conjures up images of wealthy nobles being led to the guillotine.
  • In fact, most people executed during the French Revolution – and particularly in its perceived bloodiest era, the nine-month “Reign of Terror” between autumn 1793 and summer 1794 – were commoners.
  • […] more carters than princes were executed, more day labourers than dukes and marquises, three or four times as many servants than parliamentarians.

The ‘national razor’

    • The guillotine was first put to use on April 15 1792 when a common thief called Pelletier was executed.
    • Initially seen as an instrument of equality, however, the guillotine soon acquired a grim reputation for its list of famous victims.
    • Scientist Antoine Lavoisier, pre-romantic poet André Chénier, feminist Olympe de Gouges and legendary lovers Camille and Lucie Desmoulins were among its victims.

The guillotine wasn’t the only method

    • Historians estimate around 20,000 men and women were summarily killed – either shot, stabbed or drowned – during the Terror across France.
    • They also estimate that in just under five days, 1,500 people died at the hands of Parisian mobs during the 1792 September massacres.
    • The vast majority of these people killed were ordinary French men and women, not members of the elite.

Why was so much blood shed during the Reign of Terror?

    • France fought at its borders against a coalition led by Europe’s monarchs to nip the revolution in the bud before it could threaten their thrones.
    • Meanwhile, civil war ravaged the west and south of France, conspiracy rumours circulated across the country, and political infighting intensified in Paris between opposing factions.

How the focus came to be on beheaded nobility

    • This is largely influenced by the fate of Queen Marie-Antoinette and its many depictions in pop culture.
    • British counter-revolutionary propaganda in the 1790s and 1800s also helped popularise the idea that aristocrats were martyrs and the main victims of revolution executioners.

A broader legacy


    Beyond the guillotine and the Reign of Terror, the legacies of the revolution run far deeper. The revolution abolished entrenched privileges based on birth, imposed equality before the law and opened the door to emerging forms of democratic involvement for everyday citizens. The Revolution ushered in a time of reforms in France, across Europe and indeed across the world.

Transport Through Time and Experience the Essence of Bastille Day at La Boulangerie Boul'Mich™

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Any specialty coffee purchased on Bastille Day comes with a freshly baked everyday croissant as a complimentary gift.

Key Points: 
  • Any specialty coffee purchased on Bastille Day comes with a freshly baked everyday croissant as a complimentary gift.
  • Bastille Day holds great significance in French history, commemorating the momentous event of July 14, 1789.
  • Corinne Farkash Mizrahi, the Chief Marketing Officer of La Boulangerie Boul'Mich, expresses enthusiasm, saying, "Bastille Day is a celebration meant to unite all communities together.
  • It is an opportunity to showcase the true essence of La Boulangerie Boul'Mich and transport our guests to the heart of France for a day.

On its 75th birthday, Israel still can't agree on what it means to be a Jewish state and a democracy

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, May 10, 2023

Such strength and economic viability would be unfamiliar to the Jews whose identity was forged in the European diaspora.

Key Points: 
  • Such strength and economic viability would be unfamiliar to the Jews whose identity was forged in the European diaspora.
  • As many other groups had begun to do in Europe, they saw themselves as belonging to a national community.
  • There they could assume control of their historical destiny, not to be at the mercy of non-Jewish nations and rulers.
  • That is the central question that, more than a century later, has yet to be answered clearly and affirmatively.

Reconciling universal and particular

    • Herzl’s choice: the pluralist candidate prevailed.
    • But throughout the history of the Zionist movement and the state of Israel, what Herzl described has been a core source of tension.
    • This duality was on full display in Israel’s declaration of independence, in many ways the quintessential manifestation of political Zionism.
    • The nation, as a Jewish state with laws that protect minorities, would resolve the contradictions inherent in Zionist ideology.

After 1967, a transformation

    • For these upwardly mobile Israelis, known as the post-Zionists, the founding myths of a vulnerable young state no longer seemed relevant.
    • And they wanted to participate in the global economic market as the country transitioned from a state-run economy to the free market.
    • To this group, known as neo-Zionists, the ideal was a Jewish state as protection from the rapid changes engulfing the country.

Palestinian question disappears

    • Post-Zionists wanted peace, seeking a two-state solution that would see a Palestinian state next to Israel.
    • In the 21st century, in the aftermath of the peace process collapse and the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, the Palestinian issue has virtually disappeared from Israel’s political landscape.
    • To the ruling coalition, the court has been a hindrance in pursuing policies advancing the country’s Jewish nature.

How the sculpture and 'knitted paintings' of Renee So explore colonial legacies, male authority and women’s bodies

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, May 4, 2023

Her commanding busts and figurines and large textile wall hangings are telling stories about ancient civilisations or adventurers who sailed the seas in search of new lands.

Key Points: 
  • Her commanding busts and figurines and large textile wall hangings are telling stories about ancient civilisations or adventurers who sailed the seas in search of new lands.
  • So’s ceramic objects and “knitted paintings” not only look contemporary, they also challenge orthodoxies about our colonial histories, male authority, gender representation and women’s bodies.
  • Provenance, now at the Monash University Museum of Art, brings together more than a decade of So’s artworks.

Long beards, boots and booze

    • Repeating motifs of beards and boots are used to explore outward symbols of masculinity, entitlement and military power.
    • However, a series of large, knitted motifs of male dominance are humorously undercut by the introduction of booze.
    • In Nightfall, the initial threats of the goose-stepping boots embellished with caricatures of bearded faces are neutralised by repeating, reversing and upending a mirrored set of legs.

Internal symbols and female bodies

    • So combines a visual language developed from figurative representations from the past with new visualisations of female anatomy drawn from Australian urologist Helen O’Connell’s work mapping the hidden shape of the clitoris using MRI technology.
    • So links this knowledge of the clitoris with ancient depictions of Venus, often equated with fertility.
    • While similar in bulk and form to her masculine objects, her female archetypes have greater agency.

Old with the new

    • So’s survey exhibition tracks the development of her complex visual language and illustrates how she draws on the origins of new and old cultural objects to communicate her messages.
    • Figurative ceramics, one of the oldest forms of art making, are contrasted with the creative outputs from the new technology of a knitting machine.

The politics of the castaway story

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, April 19, 2023

Triangle of Sadness follows the familiar plot of a castaway story.

Key Points: 
  • Triangle of Sadness follows the familiar plot of a castaway story.
  • The castaway story has helped promulgate a view about human nature as eternal and unchanging.
  • However, the castaway story reflects on the relationship between individuals and society.
  • Triangle of Sadness and other modern castaway stories, reach back to one of the first English-language novels, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719).
  • More than a survival tale of a man shipwrecked on a desert island, Robinson Crusoe is also a fascinating moral fable of individualism.

Work and enslavement

    • Robinson remains true to this spirit once he is shipwrecked, claiming the island to have “no society” and declaring the land as his personal kingdom.
    • Robinson becomes a farmer (using seeds from the shipwreck), raises cattle in accordance with European agriculture, hunts with muskets and hoards gold.
    • In one of the most shocking parts of the novel, he captures and enslaves a man, who he calls “Friday”, converting him to Christianity.
    • Much of the novel is about work.
    • Defoe was highly influenced by Hobbes and Locke, who provide the model individual for Robinson’s colonial adventure story.

Beyond individualism

    • Rousseau envisaged a kind of democracy which allows for individuals to be free in their collective decision-making.
    • In Rousseau’s educational treatise, Émile (1762), initially Robinson Crusoe is the only book the young boy is allowed to read.
    • Hierarchies of birth and privilege were overthrown and liberty was proclaimed for all based on the equality of human beings.
    • (Although as many critics, including Mary Wollstonecraft, pointed out this idea of equality was limited, and excluded women.)
    • The depiction of slavery in Robinson Crusoe and the politics of individualism were called into question by G.W.F.
    • In Hegel’s philosophy, individuals were always part of social relationships and needed to be thought of in relation to communities.

First Apple Computer Trade Sign, Wozniak Tool Box to Be Auctioned

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, January 5, 2023

The sign, almost nine feet long, is made of opaque white plexiglas with applied lettering and the now-famous multi-colored "apple" logo.

Key Points: 
  • The sign, almost nine feet long, is made of opaque white plexiglas with applied lettering and the now-famous multi-colored "apple" logo.
  • In the same sale is another historic Apple relic, the battered toolbox used by co-founder Steve Wozniak in his earliest days with the company.
  • Wozniak created the Apple I and Apple II computers in the mid-1970s, and also designed an inexpensive floppy-disk drive controller.
  • This toolbox too was on display with the Apple Computer trade sign, and at the Cupertino Historical Society.

Poptential™ Free World History Content Tackles Latin American Independence

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, September 29, 2022

INDIANAPOLIS, Sept. 29, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Poptential , a family of award-winning social studies course packages that infuse lessons with digital storytelling using pop culture references, offers an array of engaging content to help World History instructors address National Hispanic Heritage Month and Latin American Independence.

Key Points: 
  • INDIANAPOLIS, Sept. 29, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Poptential , a family of award-winning social studies course packages that infuse lessons with digital storytelling using pop culture references, offers an array of engaging content to help World History instructors address National Hispanic Heritage Month and Latin American Independence.
  • The Poptential World History curriculum and digital media examples bring to life the ideas and revolutionaries that influenced Latin American independence, including:
    American and French Revolutions spark a passion for freedom Module 21 of Poptential American History volume 2 shows how American and French Revolution ideas influenced Latin American freedom fighters, and features an animated comedy short from the Mr. Peabody & Sherman movie when they visit Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution in 1789.
  • Latin Americas Liberators Module 23.1 focuses on the history of Latin Americas war for Independence.
  • Poptential course packages in American History, World History, U.S. Government/Civics, and Economics are available free at www.poptential.org.