Tutorial participation means not only doing all the readings beforehand but contributing to discussion with your fellow students. Your grade is assessed on the basis of your generosity with your knowledge to other students and your willingness to ask relevant questions and to have a go at trying to answer others’ questions. Tutorial participation for external students is worth 20% of your final grade: all external students must post (at least 250 words) to at least 9 of the 11 online weekly discussions.

Choose any 2 of the 6 documents listed in the Appendix of the Reader. Write an essay about how each of your chosen documents relates to the history of the French Revolution and to each other. Construct an argument about the nature of at least one period or aspect of the French Revolution on the basis of your chosen documents.

In your essay, consider the following questions: Who wrote these documents and to whom? In what contexts were they written? What was each intended to do? What did each end up doing? Don’t forget to compare and contrast the documents as well – how are they connected, and in what ways do they differ?

You should quote from each document and refer to at least 4 secondary sources. You may cite other primary sources as well, but it is not necessary to do so. Refer to the history essay writing guides at the back of the Reader for information about argumentation, formatting, and citation style. You must present your essay with a title, wide margins, page numbers, and double-spaced. You must cite your references correctly and provide a bibliography at the end, starting on a new page.

Answer one of the thirteen questions listed below, in 2500 words. Your essay should include analyses of at least two primary sources and at least six secondary sources. The ‘further reading’ lists in the Unit Guide will be the best place to start your research — you will, however, also be expected to locate some sources on your own.

Refer to the history essay writing guides at the back of the Reader for information about argumentation, formatting, and citation style. You must build a strong argument through every paragraph. You must present your essay with a title, wide margins, page numbers, and double-spaced. You must cite your references correctly and provide a bibliography at the end, starting on a new page.

Please complete and attach to your essay a self-assessment form (found in the Reader and also on the iLearn website). This form will act as a good checklist and also give you a clear idea about what markers look for in a 200-level history essay.

1.    “Revolution is an idea that has found its bayonets.” Napoleon Bonaparte. Did Napoleon complete the French Revolution or was he responsible for twisting it away from its original goals?

2.    The English historian, E. P. Thompson, once wrote that “By 1840 most people were ‘better off’ than their forebears had been fifty years before, but they suffered and continued to suffer this slight improvement as a catastrophic experience.” [The Making of the English Working Class (1963), p. 231.] How should we evaluate the Industrial Revolution in history? Was it more an improvement in people’s lives or more a catastrophe?

3.    “In liberalism, the middle class found an economic and political theory that echoed the way they viewed the world.” [John Merriman, A History of Modern Europe, p. 532.] How did middle-class liberals view their world after 1815? Specifically, what role did they want governments to take in Europe in the future? Discuss with reference to at least two European regions.

4.    “The bourgeoisie is not a class, it is a position … Work, thrift, and ability confer it; vice, dissipation, and idleness mean it is lost.” Journal des Débats, 1847. Was the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie defined by hard work, thriftiness, and merit, or by some other attributes? Was it as straightforward as the Journal suggests to become bourgeois in the nineteenth century? Discuss with reference to at least two European regions.

5.    “Of what does a revolt consist?” asked Victor Hugo after 1848; he answered: “outraged convictions, embittered enthusiasms, hot indignation … the vanity that believes that fate is against us.” Of what did the revolts of 1848 primarily consist? Who were the key protagonists and why did they behave in the way that they did? Discuss with reference to at least two European regions.

6.    In 1852 Karl Marx wrote that “all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice … the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” [The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), p. 1]. Was the failure of the 1848 uprisings a farcical rerun of the end of the French Revolution? Was it instead more or less comparable to the rise of the Napoleonic dictatorship?

7.    “The decline of religious practice in Europe was neither linear nor did it occur everywhere.” [John Merriman, A History of Modern Europe, p. 777.] Where and in what ways did religion survive in the nineteenth century? Discuss with reference to at least two European regions.

8.    “Nothing is more remarkable than the spread of scepticism or rationalism during the latter half of my life.” Charles Darwin, 1876. Was the spread of scepticism in Europe since mid-century unlikely or should Darwin have been less surprised? Discuss with reference to at least two European regions.

9.    Choose and read the complete text of either Murger’s Scenes or Mayhew’s 1851. What does your chosen text reveal about the mid-century society that it portrays? To what extent can fiction serve as a useful historical source?

10.The famous novelist Honore de Balzac wrote in 1829 that a woman “is a slave whom we must know how to place on a pedestal.” [The Physiology of Marriage, 1829]. Does this statement represent the position of middle-class women in the nineteenth century? How does it relate to the position of working-class women?

11.Before World War One, was socialism or feminism the more successful movement? How so and why? Discuss with reference to at least two European regions.

12.“A nation does not normally come to complete self-consciousness except under pressure of the foreigner … Thus did France create Germany.” Ernest Renan, philosopher, 1870. To what extent were new nations in the nineteenth century forged through conflict with others? To what extent were they forged by other factors? Discuss with reference to at least two European regions.

13.   Was the new imperialism of the late nineteenth century a logical outcome of developing nationalist sentiments in Europe, or a perversion of nationalist ideas about self-determination? Discuss with reference to at least two European empires.

Students choose between sitting a two-hour exam or submitting a 1500-word take-home exam during the exam period (exact date to be announced).