Appendix to History Lessons

This appendix will include things that I had forgotten when I wrote my History Lessons.

I: The Ancient Era

II: The Medieval Era

III: The Pre-Modern Era

-The invention of the printing press supplied more and more people with literature. Since copying no longer had to be done by numerous monks who sometimes made mistakes or themselves could not read, it was so much easier to mass produce and distribute books, pamphlets, and newspapers. With more exposure to the written word, people began to learn how to read. Literacy shot up between 1450 and 1650, especially in Protestant countries which encouraged the self-interpretation of the bibile, the most printed book in history. When more people read more often, they began to think about what they were reading and were able to build and establish interpretive frameworks. The asked questions. They thought.

-The funny thing about the French Revolution is that it was a revolution in the old sense of the word. Like a circle, it ran around its course and ended up at the same point it started. In the modern definition of the word, it began as a model revolution and ended as a complete failure. In 1789 the need for change was obvious. By 1793 so many different factions were fighting for ownership of the spirit of the revolution. It was decided that the revolution belonged to a certain sect of white Cathlolic men and all other interpretations were barred by 1795. This sect was not quite sure what it meant to themselves and could not agree on any particular model. This opened legislation to other sects of white Cathloic men. The Terror of 1793 was a result of this indecision.

Napoleon Bonaparte was born a Corsican. Corsica was an Italian island captured earlier in the eighteenth century by France. Napoleon went to military schools in France and began his career of fame with the'whiff of grapeshot', basically firing a cannon full of musket balls at a group of food rioters. He rose through the military ranks and was appointed to run the campaign to spread the revolution to Italy, which he successfully concluded. Then, he went after Egypt to cut off Britain from India (Britain had declared war in 1793 when the French king Louis XVI was executed for trying to bring an Autrian army into France to restpre the monarchy). The Egyptian campaign was hampered by Admiral Horatio Nelson's destruction of the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile in 1798 and by Captain Sir Syndey Smith, who broke the siege of Acre. Napoleon fled back to France, leaving his army to the mercy of the Turks. Without a doubt, sea power had won the campaign for Britain.

Napoleon was not to be outdone. He continued to rise in France to the position of Dictator and in 1804 Emperor. Emperor Bonaparte quickly overturned much of the revolutionary legislation of the 1790's and returned France to a conservative regime. He was a backlash against radicalism and the answer to France's stability woes and foreign enemies (for revolution had created many). Napoleon renewed his threat against Britain in 1803 by constructing an invasion fleet. Admiral Nelson would have nothing to do with this, so on October 21, 1805 he led 28 British ships against 33 French and Spanish ships and defeated them soundly without a single loss of a ship. This was TRAFALGAR, the greatest and most important naval battle in history. Without warships, Napoleon's invasion fleet would be subject to the countless British ships patrolling the English channel. There was to be no invasion. So Napoleon's greatest adversary survived to finally defeat him in 1814 and 1815, through a superior economic system and a superior navy to protect it.

In 1815 Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo and was summarily deported to the tiny Atlantic island of St. Helena, off the coast of south west Africa. A monarch was reinstalled in France and in all the countries France had conquered. Everything went back to normal. Except, of course, Britain's increased maritime and commercial might.

In 1848 France endured a new revolution, restoring some of the idealogical victories of the late 18th century. Since 1789 France has constructed 5 republics. They called themselves a bastion of democracy. Yet France was the second last nation to enfranchise women, ahead of Switzerland, in 1945.

IV: The Modern Era

-Stalin and Hitler were mass murderers. Hitler is responsible for the death of over 6 million Jews. Stalin is believed to have engineered the death of 20 million people inside the USSR. These deaths were the result of deaths from WWII as well as millions who died from starvation and displacement due to his 5-year state resturcturing program. 3 million alone died in Ukraine when they were forced off their farming land so a consolidated state farm could be built.

-Another reason for the plight of the working class is their own prolific breeding. The Baby Boom, in its capacity to create infinite problems to throw the world out of equilibrium, has managed to glut the labour market and render their services in oversupply, thus decreasing their value. With Generation X and the children of the Baby Boomers entering the labour market, the supply of labour further increases, contributing to lower wages. After WWII, there was an acute shortage of labour, which contributed to the high wages and increadible power of unions until the early 1980's.