France AOS 2: Creating a new society Preparing your students for SAC 2

1. France AOS 2: Creating a new societyPreparing your students for SAC 2 Luke Cashman Penleigh & Essendon Grammar School Luke.Cashman@pegs.vic.edu.au

2. Purpose of today’s talk • What tasks can you set for the SAC? • Which task should you set? • Writing the SAC and conditions to set • Approaching certain types of questions. • Engaging with the historiography • Practice topics. • Sample responses. • Criteria sheets and grading SACs. • General hints & tips for teachers & students.

3. Options for Revs SACs • Analysis of visual and written primary source documents • Argumentative Essay • Research Report • Historiographical exercises Teachers may choose the order of the assessment tasks Source: VCE History Study Design (October, 2009), p135

4. Points to consider when choosing the task • The VCAA examination: • Section A – Short answer questions (x2); document analysis • Section B – Document analysis; Argumentative essay • Advice for students - Two options: • Decide during reading time based on questions and documents • Decide at some stage during the year (the earlier the better) • The key to the exam: France AOS 2 -- document or essay? [see past exams] • The nature of the task dictates (to an extent) how students prepare • Reduces students’ preparation load prior to the exam • If students prepare diligently, questions and unseen documents should not worry them • Decide early in the year so preparation time can be used more efficiently

5. General tips for setting the Argumentative essay* • The question: • A relevant quote or statement • The question itself • Tag: Use evidence to support your answer. • The conditions: • Time: 55 minutes • Reading time? • Number of questions (1, 2 or 3 choices?) • Seen or unseen? • Cheat sheet or not? • Word length: 600 ~ 800 words

6. Types of questions • Aims and goals • Crisis and response • Change and continuity Can focus on any or all of: • Politics • Society • Economics

7. Aims and goals I • Who were the revolutionaries (social group; political club; branch of government?) • What did the revolutionaries want to achieve? Hampsonemphasises the ‘limited aspirations and achievements of the revolutionaries’ (p250). • What documents, laws or acts do we have as evidence? • How and why did the revolutionaries fall short of these goals? • Response to a desperate situation? (Soboul; Doyle; McPhee; Furet & Richet)? • The essence of revolution? (Schama; Furet) • Were the original aims & goals re-established within the timeframe of the Study Design?

8. Aims and goals II • Possible essay structure: • Moderate phase (1789 – 1792) • Radical phase (1792 – 1794) • Return to moderate phase (1794 – 1795) • Alternatively: • Political aims and goals • Social aims and goals (including the Terror) • Economic aims and goals

9. Crisis and response I General considerations: • Who were the revolutionaries? • What challenges did the revolutionaries face? • How did the revolutionaries respond to those challenges? • Were those responses in proportion to the challenges? • Was the use of revolutionary violence and the establishment of a dictatorship justified? (Marxists vs Revisionists) • Soboul: ‘The Terror had struck a devastating blow at the old society, destroying it and clearing the ground for the emergence of new social relationships.’ (p124)

10. Crisis and response II • Who instigated the Terror: the sans culottes, the Jacobins or Robespierre (dictateursanguinaire)? • Furet & Richet: “The bourgeoisie… was now compelled by the mobs to adopt terrorist policies.” (p184) • Was Terror and dictatorship the essence of Revolution or a response to circumstances? • ‘Violence was the motor of the revolution.’ (Schama, p859) • ‘The force of circumstances may lead us to things we had not expected.’ Saint-Just, quoted in Furet and Richet, p185.

11. Counter-Revolution and the Terror: Time & Place Source: Michael Adcock, Analysing the French Revolution 2nd ed., Melbourne: CUP, 2009, p172.

12. Crisis and response III Structure: Military, political, social/economic Crises/challenges/obstacles: a. Political crises (Louis XVI; army generals; the Girondin deputies; the Jacobin deputies) b. Military crises (foreign – Austrians; the Prussians; the War of the First Coalition; civil – the Federalist Revolt and the Vendée) c. Social crises (the sans culottes; the peasantry; the aristocracy) d. Economic crises (the assignant; inflation; bread prices)

13. Crisis and response IV Responses/reactions: a. Political responses:Laws of Suspects and Prairial; The execution of Louis XVI and other political opponents; the Great Terror b. Military responses: The CPS; Revolutionary Tribunals; surveillance committees; representatives on mission; atrocities in the provinces; the levée en masse c. Social responses: Centralisation – the Law of Frimaire d. Economic responses: Laws of Maximum; laws against hoarding; the arméerevolutionnaire

14. Change and continuity I • Did France undergo significant and positive change as a result of the revolution? If so, in what areas and to what degree? [maximalists] • McPhee: “Life could never be the same again”. (p202) • Did the Revolution bring no change other than disruption and disaster? [minimalists] • Doyle: “The French Revolution is… in every sense a tragedy.” (p425) • Schama: “[the] obvious rupture [of the Revolution] disguises a continuity of some importance.” (p854)

15. Change and continuity II • “For years it has been customary to regard the French Revolution as the decisive turning-point of modern European history… Recently, however, there has been a tendency to deny it any such paramount significance.” (Hampson, p249). • The Revolution “constituted no more than a modification of the previous distribution [of land and power] and perhaps an acceleration of trends already present under the ancien régime.” (Hampson, p254)

16. Change and continuity III • Did Revolutionary France get worse than the regime it replaced before before it got better? • Possible structure: • Political: “[T]he October Days of 1789 signified the end of divine right absolutism.” (Hampson, p256) • Social • Economic • OR: Moderate Phase; Radical Phase; Return to moderation

17. Change and continuity IV • Was life better for the French by 1795? • “The transfer of property brought about by the Revolution was also far less radical…” (Hampson, p251) • Who gained and who lost as a result of the French Revolution? • Aristocracy • Bourgeoisie: ‘The Revolution was their triumph.’ (McPhee, p196) • Urban workers/sans culottes:Doyle: ‘They had no gains to show… for all the upheaval and disruption.’ (p407) • Peasants • The poor and needy

18. Change and continuity V Adapted from Fenwick & Anderson, Liberating France, Collingwood: HTAV, 2010, pp20 & 206.

19. Change and continuity VI McPhee: ‘[While] every noble family was directly affected by emigration, imprisonment or death… the Revolution was hardly a holocaust of nobles.’ (p184) Schama: ‘The Revolution had been but a brutal through mercifully ephemeral interruption of their [the aristocracy]social institutional power.’ (p856) Furet& Richet: ‘The sans culottes were to suffer just as much as the aristocrats from the Convention’s repressive measures.’ (p184) Norman Hampson: “The sans-culottes has been reduced to impotence…” (p245)

20. VCAA Criteria for Outcome 2* • Knowledge of the contribution of ideologies, individuals and groups in the creation of the new society. • Knowledge and analysis of the challenges faced by revolutionary individuals, groups, governments or parties and their responses. • Evaluation of the nature of society created by the revolution and the changes and continuities that it brought about. • Analysis and evaluation of evidence that synthesises a range of written and visual sources to draw conclusions. • Analysis and evaluation of historians’ interpretations. Source: VCE History: Revolutions Assessment Handbook 2005 – 2014.

21. Assessing SAC 2 • Sample responses in the Assessor’s Report are a good way to gauge the relative performance of your students • Against the criteria in a rubric or a “general sense”? • Ask students for permission to copy & distribute good samples* • Best samples are those done under exam conditions • Avoid using current students’ work if possible; anonymous • Type up if possible; warts and all • Have students “grade” samples and justify their decision (good empathy exercise)

22. Useful resources The following are good sources for exam questions: • Past VCAA exams and sample exams • HTAV exams • Insight exams • QATs

23. General hints and tips I • Think about what you want your students to write: how can they best demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the Revolution? • Attempt the task yourself first (in full or point form) • For students: • Neat hand-writing (legible) • Be succinct and fluent (to the point, understandable and enjoyable!!!) • Answer the question – focus on key words (RUUP) • Use signposting (eg firstly, secondly, thirdly, however, on the other hand etc)* • Use reading time well (if given); also thinking time

24. General hints and tips II For students: • Be time-aware and time-disciplined in the SAC • Get used to the layout and format of the SAC • Genuine practice tasks completed under examination conditions (e.g. time) • For practice: Encourage students to write their own, swap & answer in full, point form or just an intro • Use specific facts and information • Avoid vague remarks like: “met the needs of the people” or “made the French happy” or “everybody hated the Terror”. • Make grids of the three question types and complete with the relevant information (group task)

25. General hints and tips III For students: • If you use extra writing space, indicate this and the question being continued CLEARLY • Know the chronology of key events and dates • Understand the chain of cause and effect • Be able to work backwards from an event so you can discuss causes • Use all the lines given but know when to stop • Speak to your teacher as often as possible • Read, read, read & write, write, write

26. Writing essays in the exam* • Only 30 minutes available • Approximately 500 words • Very short intro and conclusion – one to two sentences each • Clear statement of contention • Strong topic sentences • Plenty of evidence (facts, events, dates, names, laws etc) • Precise, relevant and succinct • Historians’ views not required

27. Bibliography • William Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution, Oxford: OUP, 2002. • Jill Fenwick & Judy Anderson, Liberating France, Collingwood: HTAV, 2010. • François Furet and Denis Richet, The French Revolution, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970. • François Furet, The French Revolution 1770 – 1814, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996 [1988]. • Norman Hampson, A Social History of the French Revolution, London: Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1963 [1982]. • Peter McPhee, The French Revolution 1789 – 1799, Oxford: OUP, 2002. • Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, New York: Random House, 1990. • Albert Soboul, A Short History of the French Revolution 1789 – 1799, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965.