Discussion Week 7
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1. "France's new leader, Napoleon, brought stability at home
while his military conquests exported important political and social
developments of the French Revolution across Europe."
Discuss.
[Napoleon left an indelible legacy of political principles (e.g. the
Civil Code) which found positive and negative expressions overseas and
in post-Napoleonic France. Mao Tse-Tung, the Chinese Communist leader,
was once asked what he thought the effects of the French Revolution
were. He answered: "I don't know. It's too soon to tell."]
2. "War revealed the systemic weakness in Russia's newly
industrialized autocracy, leading to the March Revolution."
Discuss.
[Russia was dragged into an imperialistic war which cannot have been
popular. She was sucked into it through her alliance with France and
Britain (The Triple Entente) and through Czar Nicholas' ties of kinship
with the British royal family. The revolution in March 1917 was a
partial and unsatisfactory one. The Bolsheviks seized power in October.
Lenin and his Bolshevik followers had challenged Kerensky's government
to fully reform and to take Russia out of the war which had cost her
millions of lives and gained her nothing, only what she lost to Germany
at the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.]
Copyright ©2008 Aidan Breen, Ph.D.
