Revolutions exam

James Madison

• 29 May 1787- Virginia plan (3 branches of gov and a bicameral legislature)

• ‘father of the constitution’

• 29/85 federalist papers ‘you must first enable the government to control the governed’

• ‘personal prestige and dogged persistence that saw the amendements through congress’ - Historian Gordan wood (argued for a bill of rights to push for the ratification)

Loyalists

• estimated 20,00-30,000 loyalists soliders fighting in the revolutionary war

• second continental congress made use of ‘english common law’

• september 1778 Massachusetts Banishment act, casting over 300 loyalists into exile

• treaty of paris ‘restitution of all estates, rights and properties’

• ‘taught to keep a low profile’ historian Alan Taylor

War of independence

•   Early December 1776, washingtons men have dropped from 19,000 to low thousands

quartered in the towns of Trenton (24 December 1776) and Princeton (3

January 1777)

• winter 1777- valley forge, 2500 died from conditions, lacked 5000 pounds of meat and 25 barrels of flour per day ‘grow sickly from the growing fatigue they have suffered’

• June 1778- battle of monmouth, showed american proffesionalsim

• 7 october 1777- Battle of bemis heights ‘" won for Americans the foreign assistance which was the last element needed for victory.” Edmund Morgan (historian

october 19- cornwallis surrenders in battle of yorktown ‘it would have been wanton

and inhuman to the last degree to sacrifice the lives of this small

body of gallant soldiers’

creating and maintaining a political system under the articles of confederation

• Decemerb 1782- Major General Henry Knox sent delegation of officers to congress further experiments” on the patience of the soldiers “may

  have fatal effects”

• may 1783- congress announced it could no longer pay officers, 400-500 trapped members of congress in state house mid - june

• George Washington, letter to John Jay  ‘I do not conceive we can exist long as a nation without having lodged somewhere a power which will pervade the whole union’

Philadelphia convention 1787 and ratification of the constitution

• 11-14 september 1786, annapolis convention, concluded they needed to meet ‘for the sole purpose of revising the articles of confederation’

• ‘on the verge of dissolution’ - luther martin ‘

• 13 September 1788 (after New York’s vote), the Congress announced that

  the Constitution had been ratified

ratification of the constitution

• massachussetts, new hampshire, virginia ect all refused to ratify without a bill of rights

• historian John Vile asserts that the ratification process “divided the

  country almost as strongly as had the earlier fight for independence”

Shays’ rebellion

• On 29 Aug 1786, Shays and his followers forced the Northampton

  courthouse to close.

  • On 26 September 1786, they forced the Springfield courthouse to close

• ‘strengthened the resole of the nationalists and shocked some reluctant localists into accepting a stronger national government’ - David Szatmary

post - war recession

• -          Congress issued $2 million worth of paper money in June 1775

  “immense heaps of paper trash” – Mercy Otis Warren

• peace brought an end to the war, but marked only the beginning of America’s economic difficulties’ – Brooke Hunter 2005

•    Trade deficit : 1 million in 1768 to £2.7 million in 1784

The Philadelphia convention 1787 and framing of the constitution

• July 1787- Connecticut delegates put forward ‘great compromise’

• Philadephia convention- May 1787

• house of reps - members elected every 2 years, proportional representation

• senate- 2 senates per state

debates between federalists and anti-federalists

•     Gary B Nash, ‘where government was not sufficiently ‘energetic’ and ‘efficient’ disorganizers and demagogues would do their nefarious work (federalist view)

• ‘such a government is incompatible with the genius of republicanism’ - Patrick Henry

Bill of Rights

• ‘nothing will preserve it but downright force’- Patrick Henry at Virginia Ratifying convention (about liberty)

• ‘here is a better recognition of popular rights than volumes of those sayings’- Alexander Hamilton federalist papers no. 84

slavery

• November 1775- lord Dunmore released a proclamation that called for enslaved americans involvement in his majestys troops in exchange for freedom

• 300 joined in a month while 30,000 joined overtime

• ‘liberty to slaves’

• ‘inconsistent with the principles of the revolution’ - Lutin Marther (Maryland delegate)

• ‘shall not be prohibited by congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight’ - article 1, section 9 of the constitution

• ‘lawfully reclaimed’- northwest ordinance

• ‘did not need the explosion of pamphlet, literature and petitions to discover their natural rights were violated’ - Gary B Nash

John Hancock

• june 1768: liberty affairs, smuggled lots of molasses avoiding 30k pounds worth of duty a year

• 9 may 1768- jgon hancocks ship the liberty affair arrived in boston, ship was seized prompting an angry mob

• targeted by gage in concord

• served as presidence of 2nd continetal congress

john adams

• ‘adams always chose to act in ways that he though was right and just, regardless of reward or punishment - Bradely thomson

• drafted the declaration of rights and grievances ‘entitled to life, liberty and property’

• charied in committe htat drafted dec of independence

• one man departmen to fwar and ordinance and worked on some thirty committes ‘achnockledged him nto be the first man of this house’

• 1 july 1776- countered anti-independence seats that ‘moved us from our seats’ (thomas jefferson)

• negotiated treaty of paris

George Washington (tbd)

• ‘‘became the personification of those virtues which the young republic wished its citizens to have’- Ernst Breisach

• ‘open the floodgates of civil discord’ - Newburgh conspiracy response

• 30 Aril 1789- became president

• july 1776- rejected Admiral Howes peace negotiation

• ‘continue to struggle under the same difficulties they have hithero endured’

Alexander Hamilton

• wrote 51/85 federalist papers

• ‘the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty’- federalist paper no. 1

Patriots

•   In 1784-6, in Worcester County, Massachusetts, there were 4789 legal actions, affecting almost one-third of all adult males

•   Between 1784-6 in Massachusetts 80% of people in prison were there because of debt.

• hose higher on the social scale had failed to match their

  contribution to the triumph of revolutionary objectives.” - Mary gallagher

Native Americans

• ‘had not merely forgotten them in the negotiations; he had given away their land to his enemies, the Americans’ – Celia Barnes (war of independence, treaty of Paris

• -          ‘the white Americans were fighting against British imperial control in the east, and for their own imperialism in the west’- Howard Zinn

• ‘acknowledged the cherokees under the protection of the united states’

   

African Americans + slaves

• 90% of African Americans were enslaved

• ‘the revolutionary era offered slavery the new oppurtunity to challenge the institution of chattel bondage’ - Ira Berlin

women in the american revolution

• ‘some of the most tragic consequences of the war were the assault on women’

• ‘brutal lust’

• didn’t have the right to vote until 1918

• ‘republican motherhood’- Historian Gordan s Wood

land owning elitists

• artistocracy → meritocracy

• one third of children recieved education in 1770s… two thirds in 1787

• from 1791-1795, 114 charters were granted allowing businesses to become legally recognised corporations

French and Indian War

• 28 May 1755 - Battle of Jumonville glen

• upon General Edward Braddocks arrival he noted ‘the neccessity of laying tax’

• 10 February 1763- Treaty of Paris signed

• British war debt of 133 pounds

• -          Historian Francis Jennings- ‘the colonists still professed loyalty but had lost respect’

British management of the colonies

-          colonies were to be administered for the economic and military benefit of the mother country – Historian Alvin Rabushka

• 1770- 2000 soliders placed in boston w just 15,000

The proclamation act 1763

• ‘such men couldn’t not believe the boundary line would be permanent, protested against it, and made plans to go beyond it’ – Historian Merrill Jensen

• ‘making any purchases or settlements whatever, or taking possession of any of the lands above reserved’ - Proclamation act

British tax revenue acts and colonial responses to these acts 1765 (grenville program)

• april 1764- sugar act ‘the civil rights of the colonies are affected by it’- Massachusetts government

• april 1764- currency act

• march 1765- stamp act ‘ the only security against a burdensome taxation’ - Patrick Henry (representative government)

• no taxes be imposed on them, but with their own

  consent, given personally, or by their representatives

  – Resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress (October 1765)

• march 1766- Stamp act repealed

• march 1766-declatory act- assert its rights over colonies ‘in all cases whatsoever’

• -          ‘such a naked assertion of parliamentary power aroused American fears of legislative tyranny’ – Historian Randall Miller on the Declaratory Act

(townshend acts)

• June 1767- Townshend acts

• March + April 1768- Boston and New York merchants met to agree on non - importation

• John Dickinsons Letters from a farmer (1767-1768)

• ‘the parliament have a right...to levy a tax of one penny upon us,

  they have a right to levy a million upon us:’

• Samuel Adams Massachusetts circular letter ‘, infringements of their natural and constitutional rights’

Boston massacre

• early 1762, more than 10,000 British troops were still garrisoned in the colonies.

• beginning of 1770, o 2,000 British troops in Boston,

  which had a population of 15,000.

• 5 march 1770

Tea

may 1773- Tea act passed

meeting in New York in October 1773- “ a violent attack upon the liberties of America’

16 december 1773 - 10,000 pounds worth of tea was dumped in harbour

samuel adams declared he can do ‘no more to save the country’

The coercive acts 1774

march 1774- Boston Port act

may 74- Massachusetts government act

may 74- administration of Justice act

19 May 1774- Boston port act was public burnt in Farmington Connecticut

1 June 1774- Virginia house of burgesses dissolved their assembly = Lord Dunmore dissolved the assembly

-          The Quebec act… ‘gave colonial propagandists their juiciest plum since the Stamp Act’. – Historian John c. Miller

rayleigh tavern- meet in ‘general congress’ to discuss ‘united interests of america

Samuel Adams

• ‘“personal security, personal liberty and private property” - A state of the rights of the colonists

• Samuel Adams inspired a town meeting to create

a committee of correspondence on 3 November 1772:

The powder Alarms

-          ‘to avoid any bloody crisis.. unless forced into it.. which my happen’ – Thomas Gage, when writing to Lonodon

-          1 September 1774 Thomas Gage ordered 250 half- barrels of gunpowder and 2 artillery pieces to be secretly removed from an old power house just outside of boston

• provoked meeting at Rayleigh tavern where the suffolk resolves were presented, urged locals to ‘aqaint themselves with the art of war’ taken to continental congress

Battle of Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill

• “seize Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who were known at be at Lexington, and burn the stores at Concord”

• On 18 April 1775 Gage sent out 800-900 troops on the 30km march from

• Boston to Concord.

• 19 april - lexington (8 colonial, 1 british)

• concord- (2 colonial, 3 dead 9 wounded )

• 130 men dead due to guerilla attacks on march back to boston

• bunker hill- British took control of peninsula, 228 dead and 826 wounded

The first and second continental congress

• first: september 5 - october 26 1774

• produced declaration of resolves - ‘entitled to life, liberty and property’ (john Adams)

• the articles of association- non importation of british goods

• most important single step in the transformation of

the American movement from one of resistance to one of

revolution.”- Edward Countryman

• 10 may 1775 - second continental congress

• olive branch petition was rejected by king george 3 ‘open and avowed rebellion’

10 january 1776- thomas paine common sense was published ‘ crystallized what events had been teaching Americans about themselves and their world since 1765’ - Edward countrymen

Declaration of independence

• 10 June 1776: Jefferson led a committee to draft a Declaration of

Independence.

• ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of propery’

Initial problems faced by Sovnarkom

• ‘I shall issue a few revolutionary decrees to the people, then shut up shop’- Leon Trotsky

• They were revolutionaries, not politicians" - James D White

• industrial production was 60% of 1914 levels

• couldn’t access state bank until Nov 1917

• national debt of 50 billion roubles

The role of the Cheka

• august 1918- attempted assassinations on Lenins

• deal with ‘counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs’ - Lenin dec 1917

• ‘they saw a way out in the organization of a powerful punitive institution’- Alter Litvin

• 'the machine gun became for them, the principal instrument of political persuasion’- Historian Richard Pipes

• ‘iron felix’

• up to 300,000 victims, white between 50,000-500,000 executions, red

• sep 1918- decree ‘on red terror’

• anyone involved in White Guard organisations, conspiracies and rebellions’

The issuing of new decrees

• 116 new decrees in the first few months

• ‘designed to inspire, excite and instigate’ - Historian Robert Service

• 27 oct 1917- decree passed giving peasantry the right to seize land

State Capitalism

• ‘inevitably and unavoidably implies a step, or several steps, towards socialism!’- Lenin

• April 1918 ‘Mixed economy’

• opposed by ideologues such as Nikolai Bukharin

• ‘exploit capitalists and then get rid of capitalism’- Lenin

• 
  

The constituent assembly and it’s dissolution

• ‘bourgeois parliamentarianism’- Lenin

• ‘town cannot be equal to country’- Lenin

• Bolsheviks had 24 percent of seats

•     ‘the machine gun became for them, the principal instrument of political persuasion’ – Richard Pipes

• ‘trust in the mood, but don’t forget your rifles’ - Lenin

• 5 January 1918

Treaty of Brest Litovsk

• ‘a socialist republic which we may kill if we begin a war’- Lenin

• New treaty accepted on 3 march

• 3 billion war reparations, 34% of Russias population taken out of sovet control

• signed 3 march 1918

• ‘consolidation of Socialism in One

  Country’ - Orlando Figes

• 19 march 1918- left SR’s resigned from Sovnarkom

• lost 1/3 of european terrioty

• 
  

the civil war

•      8 June 1918- The Czech legion helped establish a new SR- led gov in the town of Samara called the committee of members of the constituent assembly

• ‘-   Peasants are ‘far more dangerous than all the Denikins, Yudeniches and Kolchaks put together’- Lenin

• ‘-          ‘strange Bolshevism at birth’ – Winston Churchill (war minister of northwestern army’

• British troops entered Russia in March 1918, apanese troops entered Vladivostok in April 1918,

  followed by British and American troops in August 1918.

• 14 June 1918, the Bolsheviks banned the Rights SRs

  from the government

Factors of Red Army Success

• ‘-          Red Army soldiers had to fill an oath ‘strictly and undeviating to observe revolutionary discipline’

• ‘they could claim to be defending the ‘revolution’- Orlando Figes

• trotsky built a red army of 5 million by end of war

• ‘Soviet Russia found herself in a ring of fire’ - Boris Ponomarev.

• Forming the Soviet Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in January of 1918

red and white terror

• measure designed to nip in the bud any thoughts of resistance to the dictatorship - Richard pipes

•     In the Ukraine 50,000-200,000 Jews were murdered, thousands were being beaten and raped

• somewhere between 50,000 and

  500,000 executions

• ‘the greater the terror, the greater the victories’- Kornilov

• -          to solve problems- no matter whether real or imaginary – was to kill off the people who caused them’ – Richard Pipes

   

War communism

• ’labor armies’

• june 1918

• ‘communist Saturdays'

• 21 November 1918- decree passed declaring all private businesses illegal,

•     11 June 1918- Government announced the Committees of poor (kombed)

• ‘crusade for bread’

• saddled by the imperative conditions of war-time.”

  – Vladimir Leni

• ‘replacement of one form of state-authoritarianism with another”.

  - Michael Lynch

• 28 June 1918- decree on nationalism

Krondadt Revolt

• 1 March 1921- 15,000 people, mostly soldiers gathered at Kronstadt’s Anchor Square

•   7- 16 march  March 1921- Trotsky ordered 50,000 Red Army + Cheka soldiers to attack the 16,000 Kronstadt sailors

• “a symbolic parting of the ways between the working class and the Bolshevik Party.” - Sheila Fitzpatrick

• ‘forced labour prisons of the tsarist times

• the flash that lit of reality better

  than anything else- Lenin

1921 Famine

•       Prices of everyday goods had risen to 6920 times their 1914 levels

• by 1920 number of workers had dropped 1.7 million workers past their 1917 levels

• caused estimated 5 million fatalities

• 20 million affected

• ‘one of the biggest killers of all these years’ - Orlando Figes

The Tenth Party Congress

• Workers opposition – headed by Alexandra Kollontai and Aleksandr Shlyapnikov ‘the building of communism belongs to the workers’

•    16 March 1921- Lenin issued a the decree ‘On Party Unity’

• ‘immediate dissolution of all groups without exception formed on the basis of one platform or another’

• 8 March 1921

New economic Policy

• ‘‘new exploitation of the proletariat’

• Grain production went from 50 million tonnes in 1922 to 74.4 million tonnes in 1928

• -          ‘…if War Communism was a leap into socialism then the NEP was a

  leap out of socialism”- Martin McCauley

• ‘an economic breathing spell’

• coal went from 0.4 in 1922 to 4 million in 1927

Artistic experimentation

• 'socialist lifestyle’

• Yevgeny Vakhtangov ‘peoples theatres’ for revolutionary tales

• mister, madam repaced with ‘comrade’

• ‘a vision of political, economic and cultural betterment’ as described by Historian Robert service

• futurism: glorified modernity and technology and rejected autocratic or traditional modes)

Initiatives in education

• April 1918, compulsory reading lessons for soldiers were introduced

• ‘our word is our best weapon’ - Nikolai podvoisky

• ‘we are not slaves, slaves we are not’

• 16,000 reading rooms were established in provincial towns

• 30% increase in number of Russians that could red and write from 1900-1926

women’s rights

• nov 1920- first country in the world to make free, legal abortions

• womens department of the communist party

• the revolution gave women…‘the right to feel equal to any man’- Ella shistyer ( women during the revolution)

• ‘the old type of family has seen its day’ - Alexandra Kollontai

• ‘pioneered a revolutionary feminist agenda that ultimately went unfulfilled’ - Beatrice Farnsworth

Peasant + worker rebellion

• Tambov rebellion August 1920- June 1921 (crushed ruthlessly through chemical weapons, concentration camps and destruction of whole villages

• 70,000 rebels involved by early 1921

• 12 to 14 March 1919, in the city of Astrakhan, a strike of

  workers was suppressed with between 2,000 and 4,000

  workers killed.

• 6 March 1919, Cheka forces suppressed a strike at the

  Putilov factory, arresting 900 workers and executing 200.

New dictatorship

‘Stalin’s success was a “triumph not of reason, but of organisation.”

– E.H. Carr’

• expelled Trotsky, zinoviev and Kamenev

Institutional tensions and weaknesses in Tsarist Russia

‘a word from the tsar was sufficient to alter, override, or abolish any existing legislation or institution’ - Historian Alan Wood

‘ I will preserve the principle of autocracy as firmly and unflinchingly as my father’ - Tsar Nicholas II

Working conditions

• Great spurt - 1893-1903

• 12-16 hr shift, 16 ppl to 1 apartment, 6 ppl to a room

• growth pop in st petersburg + 928,000 in 1881 to 2,217,500 in 1914

• 
  

Russo Japanese War

• a little victorious war to stem the tide of revolution’

• 11- 25 Febuary 1905 Battle of Mukden, nearly 165,000 dead

• 14-15 may 1905 - battle of Tshushima

• treaty of portsmouth signed 23 august 1905

• real worth of wages dropped 25% in 12 months

• Historian Orlando Figes - ‘the autocracy had shown itself to be incapable of defending national interest’

Bloody Sunday

• January 1904- number of striking industrial workers had swelled to 120,000

• ‘justice and protection’

• Sunday 9 Jan 1905

• 200 killed, 800 injured

• ‘there is no God any longer, there is no tsar’ -father gapon

• ‘the popular myth of the good tsar that had sustained the regime through centuries had been destroyed’ - Historian Orlando Figes

1905 revolution

• end of jan 1904- over 400,000 workers on strike in st petersburg alone

• ‘you must support witte at all costs. Nikolai Romanov

• ‘the monarchys fate hung by a thread’ - Robert service

October Manifesto

17 October 1905 - manifesto was proclaimed’

The Fundamental Laws

• ‘although with a few broken ribs, tsarism came out of the experience of 1905 alive and strong enough’- Leon Trotsky

• issued on 23 April 1906

• ‘exceptional circumstances’

Limitations of the Duma

• 60 percent of the Urban Working Population were excluded from voting

• first duma - 391 critical statements of the tsar, lasted 73 days

• second duma - 103 days

• only 1/6 males were entitled to vote, 1% of population was responsible for electing 300/441 deputies

supply shortages during ww1

• 6.5 million men, only 4.6 million rifles available

• short of the recommended number of cartridges by a billion

• ‘the country has everything it needs but can’t make adequate use of it’- Mikhail Rodzianko

Human cost of ww1

• by mid 1914, about 4 million soldiers were dead, wounded or captured

• end of 1915 23 million Russians lived under German Occupation

Economic issues of ww1

• by 1916, Petrograd and Moscow recieving 1/3 of their usual food and fuel supples

• by 1916, calorie intake of unskilled workers had fallen by a quarter

• ‘it was russia’s disastrous performance in ww1 that brought about the final destruction of power’- Historian John Reed

• ‘ between sep 1815 and feb 1917- russia had 5 prime ministers

Febuary revolution

• 18 Feb - workers of Petrograds steel factory go on strike, brings 40,000 workers on the street, 400,000 by the 27th

• Rozianko to tsar:’ imperative to take immediate steps for tomorrow will be too late’

• 27 feb- petrograd garrison mutinies

• 2 march - tsar abdicates

effectiveness of prov gov

• 2 march 1917- prov committee proclaimed they were the prov gov of Russia

• ‘we were appointed by the revolution itself!’- Miliukov

• 18 April- ‘a decisive victory’ - 25,00 soliders protest ‘down with miliukov and guchkov’

Dual Authority

• 1 march- petrograd soviet release order no.1 ‘only in such cases as they do not conflict with the orders and resolutions of the soviet’

• kerenksy ‘the soviets had power without authority, the Provisional government authority without power’

Lenin Returns + april theses

• 4th April - April theses, Tauride palace

• ‘capitalist nature’ ‘predatory imperialist war’

• ‘no support for the provisional government, the utter falsivity of all it’s promises must be made clear’

• ‘A leader had returned to Petrograd who would give clarity to Bolshevik ideas and addresolve to Bolshevik practical campaigns.” (Robert Service)

July Days

• 2 July, 1st Machine Gun Regiment of petrograd garrsion held a meeting

• 3 july, soliders took to streets ‘all power to the soviets ‘

• keresnky had 800 bolsheviks arrested

Weaknesses of prov gov- the June offensive

• 22 May- General Brusilov made commander in chief

• 400,000 soldiers deserted according to Orlando figes, advance 230 km

• 20th april - 25,000 soliders ‘down with miliukov and guchkov

• 1st june - june offensive launched

Kornilov Affair

• july 19 - Kornilov made commander-in chief

• ‘The Red Guard, for example, remained permanently larger, radicalized and better armed and organized. Rex Wade

• ‘deal with these traitors as they deserve’

• ‘The Bolsheviks in particular profited and their popularity soared’ - Rex A Wade

The events of October 1917

• 10th Oct - meeting of Bolshevik central committee ‘history will not forgive us if we do not take power now’

• 24th october- alexander kerensky counter revolution advances

• 25th october- ‘the provisional government has been deposed’

• ‘hardened the revolutionary energy of the petersburg workers’

• "While the Provisional Government was losing power, the Soviets spread rapidly throughout Russia." - Christopher Lazarsk

Stolypin

• ‘repression first, and then, only then, reform’ - Stolypin

• between 1906-1908 2193 ppl executed

• ‘the last bloody defender of the tsarist order’ - Orlando Figes

• ‘not the needy and drunken, but the sturdy and strong’ - Stolypin