Rousseau, Burke, and Revolution in France, 1791

Mark C. Carnes, Jennifer J. Popiel

Description

Rousseau, Burke, and Revolution in France, 1791 plunges students into the intellectual and political currents that surged through revolutionary Paris in the summer of 1791. As members of the National Assembly gather to craft a constitution for a new France, students wrestle with the threat of foreign invasion, political and religious power struggles, and questions of liberty and citizenship.

Sujets

• Histoire
• History
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: The University of North Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781469672366
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

ROUSSEAU, BURKE, AND REVOLUTION IN FRANCE, 1791
REACTING TO THE PAST is an award-winning series of immersive role-playing games that actively engage students in their own learning. Students assume the roles of historical characters and practice critical thinking, primary source analysis, and argument, both written and spoken. Reacting games are flexible enough to be used across the curriculum, from first-year general education classes and discussion sections of lecture classes to capstone experiences, intersession courses, and honors programs.
Reacting to the Past was originally developed under the auspices of Barnard College and is sustained by the Reacting Consortium of colleges and universities. The Consortium hosts a regular series of conferences and events to support faculty and administrators.
Note to instructors: Before beginning the game you must download the Gamemaster s Materials, including an instructor s guide containing a detailed schedule of class sessions, role sheets for students, and handouts.
To download this essential resource, visit https://reactingconsortium.org/games , click on the page for this title, then click Instructors Guide.
ROUSSEAU, BURKE, AND REVOLUTION IN FRANCE, 1791
SECOND EDITION
Jennifer Popiel and Mark C. Carnes

The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill
2022 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.
Cover illustration: Jean Baptist Lesueur, The Planting of a Tree of Liberty in Revolutionary France , 1790-91. Wikimedia Commons.
ISBN 978-1-4696-7074-4 (pbk.: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4696-7236-6 (e-book)
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
JENNIFER POPIEL is Associate Professor of History at Saint Louis University. She is the award-winning author of Rousseau s Daughters: Domesticity, Education, and Autonomy in Modern France as well as a Fulbright Research Scholar and past President of the Western Society for French History. She recently recorded From Spinning Wheel to Steam and Steel: Understanding the Age of Industrialization with Modern Scholar recorded books. As an intellectual historian of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, her research has explored women s history, childhood, education, and individuality in the modern world. Her current work examines French Catholics such as Rose Philippine Duchesne to investigate the intersection of vocation, spirituality, and public activism.
MARK C. CARNES is professor of history at Barnard College and creator of Reacting to the Past . He is the author of many books in American history and general editor of the 26-volume American National Biography , published by the ACLS and Oxford University Press.
CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION
Brief Overview of the Game
Paris in Revolution, 1791
Prologue: A Night at the National Assembly
How to React
Game Setup
Game Play
Game Requirements
Counterfactuals for Rousseau, Burke, and Revolution in France, 1791
2. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Chronology: 1787 to July 1, 1791
Versailles to Varennes: The French Revolution from the Ancien R gime to July 1, 1791
The Rebellion in Paris and the Fall of the Bastille
The Revolution Spreads
Drafting a Constitution
The Rebellion of the Market Women and the King s Return to Paris
The Attack on the Catholic Church
Toward the Civil Constitution of the Clergy
Representation, Authority, and Monarchial Control
France in a Global Context: July 1, 1791
3. THE GAME
Major Issues for Debate
Pertaining to the Church
Pertaining to the King and the National Assembly
Pertaining to the Rights of Man
Pertaining to Governance
Objectives and Victory Conditions
Victory Determined at End of Game
Rules and Procedures
The National Assembly
The Crowd
The Many Functions of the Gamemaster
Basic Outline of the Game
Preparatory Sessions
Game Begins
Assignments and Grading
4. ROLES AND FACTIONS
Role Assignments
List of All Possible Players
Major Roles; no Explicit Faction
Conservative Faction
Feuillant Faction
Jacobin Faction
Section Leaders of Paris/the Crowd
Indeterminates
A List of All Figures with Brief Biographies
The Two Major Figures: Louis XVI and Lafayette
Conservatives: Clergy and Nobility
Feuillants
Jacobins
Section Leaders of Paris/the Crowd
Indeterminates
5. CORE TEXTS
Charles de Secondat, the Baron de Montesquieu
Louis XIV and the Critique of Absolutism, 1721
Charles de Secondat, the Baron de Montesquieu
Montesquieu on Government and Liberty, 1748
Arthur Young
Abuses of the Ancien R gime: Hunting Rights, 1787-1789
Voltaire
Law, Religion, and the State, 1764
Voltaire
Liberty and Fundamental Laws, 1764
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Nature and Civilization, 1762
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
From First Discourse: On the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences , 1750
Emmanuel Joseph (Abb ) Siev s
What is the Third Estate?, 1789
Arthur Young
Early Revolution in Paris, June 8, 1789
Deputies of the Third Estate
Decree Creating the National Assembly, June 17, 1789
Deputies of the Third Estate
The Tennis Court Oath, June 20, 1789
King Louis XVI
Declaration of the King upon the Estates General, June 23, 1789
National Assembly
August Decrees, August 4-11, 1789
National Assembly
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, August 26, 1789
Alexandre Lameth
Origin of the Jacobin Club, 1789
National Assembly
Decrees on Church Lands and Monastic Vows, November to February, 1789
National Assembly
Decree Regarding Membership in the National Guard, June 12, 1790
National Assembly
Decree Abolishing the Nobility, June 19, 1790
National Assembly
Civil Constitution of the Clergy, July 12, 1790
National Assembly
Obligatory Oath, November 27, 1790
Pope Pius VI
Charitas: On the Civil Oath in France, April 13, 1791
National Assembly
Constitution of 1791
Edmund Burke
From Reflections on the Revolution in France , 1790
Endnotes
Acknowledgments
ROUSSEAU, BURKE, AND REVOLUTION IN FRANCE, 1791
PART 1: INTRODUCTION
BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE GAME
Paris in Revolution, 1791
It is July 1, 1791. France nears the second anniversary of the Fall of the Bastille and the end of unchecked power for the monarchy; the place is Paris, where the National Assembly debates the final draft of the constitution that will likely determine the new government of France. This game recreates the political dynamics of this pivotal moment, as contending factions within the National Assembly struggle to create a constitution that reflects their views and priorities. The Jacobins, radicals in the National Assembly, seek a republic; the conservatives want to ensure the continued influence of traditional institutions such as the king and the Catholic Church; and the Feuillants, in the middle, seek to combine elements of both in a constitutional monarchy. Leaders of the Paris crowd (each chosen by popular gatherings in each of the 48 sections of the city) articulate radical opinions from the galleries of the National Assembly-and sometimes in the streets of Paris, backed by tens of thousands of the poor of the city, the sans-culottes . Through it all, other delegates, uncommitted to any faction, try to determine what is best for France.
The main issues under discussion pertain to the contents of the new constitution: whether or not the state should nationalize the Catholic Church, grant the king the right to veto legislation, and enshrine specific rights, such as freedom of speech and the protection of private property. But while the game mobilizes political power-chiefly reflected in votes of the National Assembly-the revolution was essentially a struggle over ideas and texts. Political discourse was shaped by the ideas of the Enlightenment, the intellectual movement that celebrated reason and science and disparaged many traditional beliefs and practices. The Enlightenment in France included such diverse ideas as Descartes s celebration of reason, Voltaire s witty indictments of feudalism and superstition, and the advance of science, medicine, and the arts as synthesized in Diderot and d Alembert s Encyclopedia . The central influences on the revolutionaries political views were the dazzling ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In The Social Contract and mile , both published in 1762, Rousseau maintained that if people could be freed from social constraints and prejudices, they could enter into selfless political unions that preserved everyone s freedom. But while Rousseau s ideas helped initiate the French Revolution, the tumult of 1789 prompted Edmund Burke, a brilliant Irish political theorist and member of the British Parliament, to write his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), one of the great political tracts of the modern world. In it, Burke argued that political institutions evolve slowly, in accordance with the needs and customs of particular peoples, and that the French revolutionaries had erred in trying to found a new government on abstract Utopian concepts. Texts by Burke and Enlightenment philosophes such as Rousseau must inform all papers and speeches, just as they would have informed the debates in the French National Assembly.
While the Assembly delegates are deliberating on a constitution, they are also addressing the problems of running France at a time when the usual machinery of government-dominated by a powerful king, his ministers, and provincial administrators-has broken down. Thus the National Assembly must also decide what to do about the collapse of the tax collection system and the escalating deficit, the slave rebellion in the sugar colony of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), the opposition of the pope and many Catholic bishops and priests to the French Revolution, and the looming threat of war with Austria, Prussia, England, and other monarchies of Europe. All the while, tensions seethe as riot