Hey! It’s time for another learning portfolio post! I’m apart of a program at school called PLP and this was our most recent project. I got to learn all about the French Revolution and the American Revolution. For this project I got to work with Amy and Josh! Our main question is “How do revolutions transform society’s?”. I’ll answer that question and talk about this amazing project bellow so keep reading.

Rube Goldberg and Crane Brinton!!!

What’s a Rube Goldberg machine? The simple definition of a Rube Goldberg machine is a complicated machine that does a simple task. For example you could have a marble go through all of these crazy tunnels and in the end the machine just opens a book or switches on a light. Who’s Crane Brinton? Crane Brinton is well known for his theory’s. Crane Brinton first wrote about his theory of revolutionary process in 1938 and in its analysis it had both positives and negatives. Throughout the project we made multiple different machines. Our first one was about the Crane Brinton theory. These are the stages to a revolution. Phase 1 incubation, deficit in government, increase in taxes, political weakness. Phase 2 compromise, financial breakdown, role of France, moderates. Phase 3, crises stage, radicals take control, terror and virtue, Phase 4 recovery stage, moderates return, nationalism rises, probably starts all over again.

The American Revolution!!!

Lots of people are probably familiar with the American Revolution but here’s a quick recap. The settlers went to America to create a free country. They weren’t happy with the king at the moment and they wanted to be free. The British passed new laws that made colonists pay taxes on sugar, tea, and other things. The colonists complained. One group protested by throwing crates of British tea into the Harbor. The colonists wrote the Declaration of Independence. It declared the American colonies were free from Britain. The United States Of America. We first made a machine showing the crane brinton theory but then we took the same machine and modified it to show the American Revolution. Here is that video!

The French Revolution!!!

Here is a quick recap on the French Revolution. People of France were divided into social groups called Estates. The First Estate included the clergy, the Second Estate included the nobles, and the Third Estate included the commoners. The Third Estate paid most of the taxes, while the nobility lived lives of luxury and got all the high-ranking jobs. The Economic Crises. The government was in dept, there was a poor harvest which led to higher taxes and a food shortage. There was a destruction of feudal documents and the social structure destabilizes. The intellectual opposition, there was enlightenment and that ideas had spread from the American Revolution. There was coup d’état and the moderates were is control, Napoleon lays out nationalism for World War I. Society’s structure. there was a great divide and class antagonism. There was a civil unrest and reign of terror. The civil unrest was the people of France stormed the Bastille releasing many prisoners. Laws were passed that said anyone suspected of treason could be executed by guillotine. Thousands of people were executed including Queen Marie Antoinette, king Louis and their kids. We wrote a paragraph about the French Revolution showing the cause a consequences of each stage. We took our previous machine form the American Revolution and modified it again to show the French Revolution.

The Final Video!!!

In the end we took all of our machines and turned it into one single video. We also added a story to help with that. In the video we showed how revolutions transform society, which answered our main question. We showed transformation by creating a story. This is the final video I hope you enjoy!

Conclusion!!!

Thank you for reading/watching and visiting my blog! I hope you enjoyed this post and learned a lot about my project!