Napoleon's Impact on Europe

Napoleon Bonaparte was a colossus of a combatant that conquered almost all of Europe under the new French flag, and a man who is known across the world as both a ruthless conqueror and a brilliant leader.  Napoleon, who brought an end to the monarchical traditions of the western powers, influenced  not only Europe, but the entire world.

Napoleon was a product of revolution.  His rise to power began as he commanded highly successful artillery units during the rebellion of the people against the French government.  After the reign of terror, the French wanted someone powerful, but also someone who wouldn't kill everyone who spoke out against him.  Napoleon was perfect for the job.

The original plan was that Napoleon would be used to expand French borders, but as shrewd as he was, Napoleon was able to declare himself emperor and dispose of the directory that planned to use him for their own advantage.  Napoleon strengthened the French economy by encouraging business and growth, building canals, roads, and schools.  This allowed for the lower classes to have more access to education as well as a better chance to advance in the world.

Napoleon established a meritocracy, rewarding skills and talents rather than status and social class, which allowed people of all groups and sects to become who they wanted to be as long as they were good at it, and began a new way of thinking that focused more on what someone did than what family they came from.

Napoleon's impact on Europe and the American system flourishing, countries all over the world began to embrace new ways of thinking.  Some were violent, disposing of the old government and placing a new one in its place, and others were peaceful, and advocated for change without necessarily destroying the government.  Their successes and failures are why the world looks the way it does today, and why Napoleon's impact on Europe affected the whole world.

The Candy Experiment

Capitalism, Communism, and Socialism are three very tricky things.  They spark many political debates, create arguments, and can even start wars.  The terms themselves can be very difficult to explain without an accurate demonstration.  Fortunately, there are many ways to perform such an experiment, one of the easiest being a simple game involving candy.  The authoritative figure known as "The Government" begins the game by handing out candies to each participant, but the amounts of each must be different to demonstrate economic disparity.  The players will then proceed as they see fit.  If they choose, they may play a short decision game like rock-paper-scissors to decide whether or not they gain or lose a candy.  In this way, they are demonstrating trade and economic competition.  Players may also steal, provided they are not caught by the government, and if candies are won they cannot be returned unless their current owner deems it necessary.  This system of competition, trade, and advancement/loss demonstrates capitalism.  Capitalism is generally described as people being born into a certain amount of money, and then through hard work (or lack thereof) they may either advance or retreat on the fields of success.  Capitalism however, requires a lower class to profit from, and if there is no lower class and everyone makes the same no matter what, then there is no competition and Socialism becomes the dominant system.  To demonstrate socialism, the government collects all the candy from all who have it regardless of the amount the currently possess. The government then redistributes the candy in equal amounts to everybody in the room, and because the government is in control, no trading takes place.  From here the game may diverge into one of two paths: it may revert back to Capitalism and participants may try to take candy again and build themselves up, or a non-government form of Socialism will take hold, known as Communism.  If the players decide to stay where they are and be content with the equal amount of candy that they have, then they themselves forbid competition, and as such they regulate their own government of a classless society.  There is one flaw in the game however, and that is that there is no analog for progress, and in a society where everything is guaranteed, there is no incentive to work.  Therefore Communism/Socialism are unreliable long term systems because progress would not take place.

For a better understanding, please consider the following:  In a communist society, three farmers are working in a shared field.  At the end of the harvest, each farmer gets 33% of the crops grown for themselves regardless of work output.  One day after receiving his crops, one of the farmers decides to take a nap in the barn while the other farmers work.  He continues this behavior everyday until harvest time, and then proceeds to take his third of the crops.  After seeing this, one of the other farmers decides that the first farmer is not playing fair, and decides that if he isn't going to work, then neither is she.  The final farmer realizes that he must work to benefit the masses and does all the work while still taking only his 33% share.  Finally, a terrible winter comes and kills the stalwart farmer in the field, and then decimates the crops.  The two farmers in the barn then starve because they do not have the capacity to work in the farm without a third because they are not as hard-working as their deceased comrade, and in the end all the farmers die.  Perhaps the answer does not lie in a purely capitalist ideology either, but rather in a combination of many that will reach a common consensus that will benefit us all.  That is, until a new revolutionary system comes along.

Letter from a Farmer: Taking Sides in the War on Technology

"Ned Ludd" in women's clothing.

The term "Luddite" is used throughout the modern world, used when the target of the name-calling is ignorant or against technology. This use of the name is incorrect, because the Luddites themselves were not technology-hating neanderthals (another illogical slur) but rather playful cross-dressers who wanted better treatment of the working man.  The Luddite movement appeared in Nottinghamshire, England around 1811 of the Industrial Revolution, and the group received their name from a fictional character named Ned Ludd who supposedly worked at a factory in which he was reprimanded for doing an unsatisfactory job.  Ned rose up against his superiors and vowed to fight for the workers.  The Luddites gained their image as machine-haters when they attacked a factory that had fired hundreds of weavers and replaced them with mechanized looms, and the Luddites smashed the new machinery to make a point about how the factories were taking jobs away from people who needed them.  Fearing the sweetest plum of their economy would collapse, the English sent in regiments of troops to break up the movement, and after the British started killing off the activists the Luddites slowly began to fall back into line.  But as the embodiment of British governance Winston Churchill once said, "History is written by the victors"  and all that remained of the crushed Luddite movement was the English propaganda, which has forever branded the Luddites as technology-hating hypocrites.  Below is the theoretical interpretation of the Luddite actions through the eyes of an English farmer living in the area.  By writing in this style, we will attempt to see the common man's perspective of the Luddite movement and how it functioned.

Dear Cousin Abigail,

I hope this letter finds you well.  The last I wrote to you I had just sent Elizabeth off to one of the new mills appearing all over our two countries.  She writes often, but I get the feeling that your father was right all along, and that she should never have gone to work in one of those houses of lies.  She does send money home, and I can't complain about that, what with the plantations in America selling their crops to the markets.  It doesn't help me much that those crazed weavers have been stirring up trouble again, thank god the King finally sent in the regiments.  I feel as if they are in right, although I can't say I agree with their methods.  They actually smashed a line of machines at the mill in Yorkshire, and my new wife Emily does not necessarily approve of the men dressed in gowns and ladies skirts; perhaps she fears they'll come for her clothes next.  I believe i'll ask Eliza to come home.  She misses her brothers and her horse, and I could use an extra hand now that John is married off.  I don't feel comfortable with her around those odd men with clothes, and I don't think I want her around with the guns going off.  What do you think?

                                                                                                                    -William

England vs. America: Industrial Superpowers

          The Industrial Revolution brought the world into a new age.  Specifically, it brought the two most progressive nations at the time (England and the USA) to the forefront of a global movement to completely satisfy peoples needs through mass production.  This increase in demand led to overpopulation, low wages, and terrible working  and health violations.  But were the conditions in one nation worse than the other?  Or were the conditions equally appalling?

          The English had the easiest time with the new boom in technology.  The isles were packed with people, and there was no space for farming or sustenance living, so the British had to rely on city jobs to bring home food.  The industrial revolution saw factories and mills appear throughout the cities and the receding countryside, and the massive workforce could be given strict rules and low wages without complaint, because they were made to fear that they would lose their jobs.

          The American business owners were not so lucky.  With western expansion extending the territory and most of the population living in small farm communities or frontier towns, the workers for the factory would have to be persuaded to work in the city, and the wages and conditions would have had to been reliable.  In this sense, the American factory workers were better off at first, but when word of the high wages spread around, many people couldn't resist the temptation to go to Lowell  and get a factory job.  In time, American cities were just as crowded as British ones.

         Workers in the factories were constantly beaten by overseers, and one account from Cressbrook Mill shows exactly how awful the conditions were.  John Birley told the Ashton Chronical in 1849 that "Mr. Needham, the master, had five sons: Frank, Charles, Samuel, Robert and John. The sons and a man named Swann, the overlooker, used to go up and down the mill with hazzle sticks. Frank once beat me till he frightened himself. He thought he had killed me. He had struck me on the temples and knocked me dateless. He once knocked me down and threatened me with a stick. To save my head I raised my arm, which he then hit with all his might. My elbow was broken. I bear the marks, and suffer pain from it to this day, and always shall as long as I live."  This retelling shows us just how bad the overseers were, and that many workers rarely recovered from these atrocities.

         In America, the workers were not beaten, because the workers had to adhere to a strict more moral code that prohibited the overseers from becoming to violent.  However, the girls that violated the rules were often "blacklisted" which essentially caused every factory around to shun them and refuse to hire them.  The English workers were often beaten, but they still kept their jobs afterwards.

         Accidents in both countries were common, and as Michael Ward, a doctor in Manchester gave his story to show the world just how often they happened.  "When I was a surgeon in the infirmary, accidents were very often admitted to the infirmary, through the children's hands and arms having being caught in the machinery; in many instances the muscles, and the skin is stripped down to the bone, and in some instances a finger or two might be lost. Last summer I visited Lever Street School. The number of children at that time in the school, who were employed in factories, was 106. The number of children who had received injuries from the machinery amounted to very nearly one half. There were forty-seven injured in this way."  The amount of workers injured-almost half-is frightening to thing about.  The fact that there was almost a 50% chance for an accident is enough to cause anyone to quit and take their chances on the street, but sadly very few workers knew this.

       Although English mills were physically brutal and were essentially child abuse warehouses, American factories always had the looming threat of endless poverty and a poor reputation.  Each country had roughly the same accident rate, and in the end, what really matters is that we remember how bad they both were, and remember that we must insure that they are never this way again.