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July 14 and September 11: Historical Method and Pedagogical Method
Jeffrey Merrick
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
| MY FAVORITE COURSE THESE DAYS is the one I used to think I never wanted to teach, a Seminar on Historical Method for potential and declared majors. When I went and where I went to graduate school, no one talked about teaching, as if there was nothing to talk about or at least nothing worth talking about. With my Ph.D. under my belt, I assumed that it was my job to teach my students the material I had learned in years of studying eighteenth-century France specifically and early modern Europe more generally. It took me longer than it should have to realize that the material matters less than the process of reading, thinking, talking, and writing about it. During fifteen years in my current job, I have never taught a course on eighteenth-century France, which does not bother me in the least. The methods seminar I have come to enjoy teaching has no prescribed geographical, chronological, or even thematic content. In offering it twelve times in nine years, I have explored many options and learned a great deal. In this essay I review my unsuccessful and successful strategies for teaching research and analytical skills, which illustrate changes in my assumptions about and attitude toward teaching. Older and perhaps wiser as well, I no longer assume that our students already know how to do what we expect them to be able to do by the time they enter or at least by the time they exit the University, whether how to use the library efficiently or how to read a document critically. In all my courses, but especially in the methods seminar, I now spend less time on what to know and more time on how to think than I did thirty, twenty, or even ten years ago. |
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Research Skills | |
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My methods seminar always addressed both practical and conceptual issues with the intention of making students more careful, critical, and creative consumers and producers of history. As producers of history, they are required to select individual research topics and learn how to use the Library of Congress classification system and subject headings (as opposed to keywords). For more productive browsing and searching, they must also become familiar with general and specialized reference works in and outside LC sections C through F, printed bibliographies and electronic databases, websites, microforms, and special collections. They complete a series of seven hands-on exercises focused on various types of more and less familiar library resources. One requires them to locate and evaluate different types of primary sources, discuss the information in and interpretation of one of the texts with classmates, and return to the library to find the answers to some follow-up questions. |
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Another exercise involves them in a collective investigation of suicide in West Allis, a suburb of Milwaukee, from the late 1930s to the early 1960s, using the local police registers located in the Archives in the library. These amusing and revealing volumes include reports about thefts (carefully subdivided into cars, bikes, clothes, food, tools, and so forth), disorderly and lascivious conduct (peeping toms and cheating moms), and many other categories of offenses. Each student works on records from one year and transcribes the details about actual, questionable, attempted, and threatened suicides from the list of deaths. The student fills out a questionnaire about multiple variables (sex, age, marital status, day and month, and method), notes any explanatory comments and extenuating factors, calculates the percentages, and tracks down at least one article or obituary in the Milwaukee newspapers. Toward the end of the semester, we assemble the yearly figures, identify patterns and trends, discuss what the numbers do or do not tell us, and analyze differences between police and public versions of these private tragedies. The engaging "suicide project" allows undergraduates to use original and indeed unpublished historical sources about flesh and blood people from their own back yards and involves them in the process of extracting reasonable conclusions from accumulated information. |
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Analytical Skills | |
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The library exercises and reading assignments, generally scheduled in alternate weeks, make students quickly more confident as producers and slowly more aggressive as consumers of history. Over the years I have assigned a number of books and articles that did not work well because most of my students regard history as a set of facts to be memorized and regurgitated rather than a series of problems to be examined and debated, and because I had not yet decided to concentrate on teaching them how to read not only for what the text tells us but also for what is going on in the text. With no knowledge of or interest in historiography, they were baffled by Telling the Truth about History and even more so by the forum on "The Old History and the New" in the American Historical Review.1 Even after we dissected one article in class, and I provided a set of leading questions for them to consider, they had trouble writing a 250-word summary of the content and a 500-word analysis of the method of another article of their choice taken from topical volumes of selections from the influential French journal Annales.2 Attempts to involve my classes in our annual Scholar-in-Residence Program by having them read books (that explicitly address methodological issues) by, formulate questions for, and attend seminars with Robert Darnton, John Demos, and Jan Vansina had very mixed results.3 Assignments about the controversies surrounding the National History Standards and several Smithsonian exhibitions did not provoke as much discussion as I expected.4 |
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In time I realized that the readings lacked sequence and coherence. I found clues for the solution in the syllabus itself and restructured the assignments around three historical "falls." From the beginning (Spring 1996), I included one week on the fall of the (Roman) Empire and another on the fall of the Bastille to show students that history involves not only collection but also selection and interpretation (or even outright manipulation) of information. For these weeks I assigned excerpts from Augustine and Gibbon expounding and indicting Christianity, and from Michelet and Taine applauding and condemning the French Revolution.5 How could, and why did, these authors construct such different versions of the same episodes in Western history? Students found Augustine and Gibbon especially difficult to read, so I wrote some instructions and suggestions into the syllabus:
Your objective in reading these texts is not to acquire factual knowledge about the fall of Rome bur rather to analyze two classic accounts of a classic problem. Compare the sources used and objectives stated (or not stated) by Augustine and Gibbon. How do they describe the causes and consequences of the spread of Christianity? How do they relate this episode in Roman history to the course of human history as a whole? What assumptions do they make about human nature and human destiny? What lessons do they want readers to learn from history?
As we worked our way through these questions in class, I filled two blackboards with parallel diagrams highlighting areas of disagreement and locating the exemplary history of Rome within the larger history of the cyclical contest between God and Satan, on the one hand, and the linear struggle between barbarism and civilization, on the other. After two and a half hours of pushing and prodding, students acknowledged that they had not taken the exhortations in the syllabus seriously. They admitted they had read Augustine and Gibbon for information rather than interpretation, and that they needed to approach the next assignment with different questions in mind. |
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I subsequently added a preliminary week devoted to more accessible sections on the so-called fall of the Empire from five popular Western Civilization textbooks. Students were surprised by the extent of the differences (in structure, content, and message) and pleased that they had identified many of them on their own, which gave their confidence a boost at the beginning of the course. At the other end of the course, I added a week on the fall of the (Berlin) Wall, which today's students do not remember. I assigned an eyewitness account by Robert Darnton, who shows that East and West Berliners understood the meanings of the Wall (which protected whom against what?) in different ways. I also assigned a retrospective article (originally published in The New Yorker) by Jane Kramer, who shows how Germans incorporated its fall into an exculpatory national narrative of victimization by Nazis and Communists.6 The point, of course, is that history does not come preordained or prepackaged. Humans make history not only as they live it but also when they write it and rewrite it, in light of later events and present concerns. I also added a week on controversies about memory and politics focused on the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, the Vietnam War and World War II memorials in Washington, and, eventually, the World Trade Center Memorial Competition. More about September 11 later, but now back to July 14. |
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Less is More: Versions of July 14 | |
By Spring 2005, I had not only discarded the last of the historiographical readings but also eliminated two of the three "falls." By structuring the entire "consumption" part of the course around the Bastille, and by recycling exercises involving the Empire and the Wall, I finally resolved the problems regarding sequence and coherence that had bothered me over the years. In the current syllabus (see Appendix I for a course outline), there are six weeks of reading and writing about the fall of the Bastille, which are designed to help students develop analytical and expository skills without having to worry about mastering more and more material at the same time. For the first of these six weeks, they read an article on July 14 from a subject encyclopedia on the Revolution, which provides a summary of events and an overview of causes and consequences. In class I invite them to ask questions about anything and everything they do not understand and to speculate about issues that have provoked disagreements among historians. For the second week, they read two textbook accounts, compile a list of significant differences, and submit a 250-word writing sample explaining what difference these differences make. Which textbook would work better in an introductory course and why? For the third week, they read, in reverse chronological order (from the most to the least accessible), a twentieth, a nineteenth, and an eighteenth-century account of July 14, along with reference articles about the authors of the accounts.7 In the syllabus, I ask them,
Do these accounts include/exclude the same topics and details? How are they packaged and organized? Identify several specific matters of fact and compare coverage and treatment. Do these accounts assess the causes and consequences of July 14 in the same way? What kind of language do they use? How objective are they? What do the authors want readers to learn about and from July 14? What do their biographies have to do with their accounts?
In class we examine the range and mix of (economic, social, and political) issues addressed by the authors, the structure and content of their narratives, and the connotations of specific words in their work. We end up discussing what makes accounts sound liberal or conservative in different historical and historiographical circumstances. |
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By the fourth week, today's students are more prepared than my previous students could have been for Michelet and Taine and for the first essay. I have them read reference articles about the historians to contextualize the histories, and I have them complete questionnaires about coverage, metaphors, and messages to outline the comparison. To make them read closely, study language and imagery, and use a limited number of carefully selected quotations (none of which comes naturally to most of them), I instruct them to write about the ways in which the ends (from the surrender of the Bastille on) illustrate the differences between the accounts as a whole and the attitudes of the authors. Some of them disregard my instructions because they do not yet understand how they could write 1500 words about just a few pages, and some of them fail to make the obvious contrast between the liberal and conservative histories of July 14. The most successful papers analyze the conflicting versions of the identity, motives, and conduct of the respectable and responsible "crowd" or unthinking and unrestrained "mob" and scrutinize one critical incident, such as the death of the Governor of the Bastille, in depth. Michelet portrays him as a villain, makes his death sound like an accident, and downplays popular violence. Taine portrays him as a victim, describes his death in gruesome detail, and emphasizes popular violence. In class we compare these passages as well as the striking final tableaux: selflessness, humanity, order, and progress in Michelet's exhortation to his contemporaries before the revolution of 1848 vs. selfishness, animality, disorder, and regression in Taine's admonition to his contemporaries after the Commune of 1871. After two and a half hours of discussion, students understand that when they write papers, they cannot simply state what they read in the texts and that they must use relevant evidence from the texts to make a point about what is going on in the texts. |
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For the fifth week, students read a set of primary sources that includes images of places and events, information about prices and wages, a map of districts shaded by income and a chart of insurgents sorted by trade, and a variety of texts written shortly before and after the 14th. They also read one of the very first histories of the day, written by the patriotic journalist Beffroy de Reigny. In class we discuss the uses and limits of these different types of sources. Do the engravings tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, or do they present a didactic version of events? Where did the numbers come from, and what do they really tell us about the composition and motivation of the crowd? Why did Arthur Young, the English agronomist, and the Duke of Dorset, the English ambassador, portray the feelings and conduct of the people differently? How did a workingman's wife attempt to persuade the authorities to grant her wounded husband a pension? How did Beffroy de Reigny define the significance of July 14, after the event, in ways that participants could not have anticipated, and why did he include a mawkish paragraph addressed to the king in his pamphlet? This text shows students that historians have constructed and debated the meaning of the fall of the Bastille from the beginning.8 |
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For the sixth week, finally, students read and write an analysis of one theme (usually representations of the people) in excerpts about July 14 from five surveys of the Revolution published around the time of the bicentennial. They always find this second paper more difficult to write than the first one because the differences among the twentieth-century accounts are less obvious than those between (Michelet + Taine = two) the nineteenth-century ones. As we work our way through the texts in class, they quickly locate John Bosher and George Rudé, who echo Taine and Michelet, on the right and on the left (terminology from the 1790s) sides of the political spectrum. Bosher dismisses the notion that the "sovereign people led by valiant revolutionaries" cowed the army as "romantic nonsense" and attributes "characteristic angry violence" to the "mob." The word "characteristic" suggests that "the people" were violent by nature? Rudé dismisses "royalist historians" who scoffed at Parisians for attacking the Bastille to liberate seven prisoners. After mentioning the deaths of seven defenders, he adds, "a small number of victims, it must be said, when compared with the far heavier losses suffered by the besiegers." The phrase "it must be said" evokes sympathy for "the people"? |
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Students frequently disagree about William Doyle, Donald Sutherland, and Simon Schama. Having learned to read more closely, they note Doyle's questionable use of words like "everyone," "at once," and "the whole city," and they underline Sutherland's contextual comment about lynchings: "The Old Regime had sometimes displayed the remains of executed criminals; the crowds were now exacting justice for themselves." Some students take such lines out of context or confuse explanation and justification. Most do not know what to make of Schama, who relates the events of July 14 like a story and concludes with ominous remarks about "the modern compact through which power could be secured through violence." I tell them about negative professorial and positive popular reactions to Schama's book and about his luncheon address at the memorable joint meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies and Western Society for French History in Spring 1989. He spoke about representations of children during the Revolution and took his title, "Enfants de la patrie," from the French national anthem (also from the 1790s). After he concluded, half the audience stood and sang the Marseillaise, as a gesture of defiance, to reclaim the legacy of the Revolution. To reinforce the point about ongoing conversations and controversies about the past in the present, I have the class read the front-page story from the New York Times about the bicentennial festivities in Paris on July 14, 1989. The article includes Socialist President François Mitterand's remarks about the "great men" (excluding Robespierre) of the 1790s and mentions Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's dismissive comment about the significance of the French Revolution (contrasted with the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89). |
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By this time, most students have had their fill of the fall of the Bastille, but they generally concede that the progressive reading and writing assignments make good pedagogical sense. By covering less and focusing more, they become sufficiently knowledgeable about one event to concentrate on the "versionness" of multiple versions of that event, and they realize that they can apply that lesson to other events and topics. They understand that their mission as apprentice historians is not simply to learn "the facts" that supposedly add up to "the truth" but, when they read or write about the past, to locate or create the most accurate, objective, insightful, engaging, persuasive, and literate account they can without assuming that they have the last word in their hands or their heads. |
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Past and Present: Versions of September 11 | |
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At the end of the course, to encourage students to reflect on what they have learned, I have them produce and "consume" accounts of a momentous event they remember well. I divide them into four groups and give them one hour to write 250 words about September 11, 2001 for a hypothetical United States history textbook. I ask them to discuss and decide what to include: narrative, causes and consequences, reactions at the time and wisdom of hindsight? After a photocopying break, as we work through and talk about the accounts (see Appendix II for some examples), we ask groups to explain why they included this or excluded that detail, why they used particular words, what they meant to imply by certain remarks. Students see that their versions of September 11, like the versions of July 14 they have examined, are different in many ways because of careful or careless choices made by the authors and that those choices influence what readers think and feel about the events in question. |
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In Fall 2003, Spring and Summer 2004, and Spring 2005, most groups began with narrative information about the four planes. Some not only mentioned the airports from which they had departed but also included the names of the airlines and the flight numbers. Do textbook readers really need that much detail? Will they have to know such things for the final? Students generally agreed on what to write about the three planes that struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon but not about the fourth one. What was its target (White House or unknown?), where did it crash (woods or field?), and why did it crash (not always explained)? Did it crash because the passengers heroically "took action to stop the hijackers" or, after the publication of the 9/11 Commission report, because they "presumably" learned "what happened with the other planes and deliberately thwarted the hijackers plans"? What difference does the word "presumably" make? Speaking of words, should we call the hijackers Middle Eastern, Islamic, or Muslim fundamentalists, extremists, or terrorists? And how many people died on September 11? Different groups cited different figures. What do we know for sure? What did people know then, as opposed to now? Some groups sorted everything out in retrospect, but others recaptured the feelings and confusion of that Tuesday: shock, disbelief, grief, anger, fear, panic, and patriotism. What are the pluses and minuses of the more engaged (you were there with them) and more distant (us looking back at them) modes of exposition? |
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Beyond the predictable differences in what they included and excluded, students did not handle the sensitive subjects of causes and consequences in the same way. Many groups left textbook readers in the dark by ignoring the motives of the terrorists. A few made vague references to anti-Americanism. Others mentioned United States support of Israel and United States troops in Saudi Arabia or larger religious, cultural, political, and economic issues such as: efforts to "destroy" the "faith and way of life" of the "international Islamic community," the "rift" between Western and Eastern cultures, United States support of "dictatorial" regimes, and "Western" capitalism. They prudently qualified many of these phrases by using the word "perceived," but what about the assumed unity of "the West" and "the East," not to mention the Islamic (or Arab?) world? When we frame the situation in this way, do we speak historically or polemically? A few groups noted the backlash against Muslim or Arab Americans after September 11. One and only one gave voice to Al-Qaeda by quoting Osama Bin Laden. Others did not think they could let the terrorists speak without sounding like they meant to justify the attacks in some way. |
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As for consequences, most groups pointed to the "war on terrorism" at home and abroad. Some mentioned the creation of the Department of Homeland Security or the passage of the Patriot Act, which grants the government (more vaguely) "broad powers in combating terrorism" or allows it (less vaguely) to "restrict the rights of any person suspected of terrorist activities or affiliation." One, impressed by current arguments about the renewal of the legislation, characterized it as "highly controversial." It is not surprising that most groups described the war in Afghanistan as a consequence of September 11, but with a lot of differences in the details. Was it a month later or "after months of investigation"? Did the United States act with support from "abroad" or in a "virtually unilateral" manner? Was it to capture Bin Laden, destroy Al-Qaeda, or to overthrow the Taliban regime? What difference do these differences make? It is more surprising that some groups connected the war in Iraq to September 11 in much the same way. One wrote in guarded language that the attacks "influenced events leading to the 2003 invasion of Iraq," but others incorporated the invasion into the "war on terrorism." Does that way of packaging it endorse the Bush administration line? Students hardly mentioned conflicts with allies, but some acknowledged domestic debates about whether the attacks could have been prevented and about the justifications for military operations in the Middle East. But did "political leaders of both parties" really question the President's motives, and did critics really charge that the government "may have had prior knowledge and possible involvement in the events that took place on September 11"? How to discuss the debates, like the causes, without sounding "unpatriotic"? What makes some accounts sound like the Right and others like the Left in our politically divided country? |
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Only one group mentioned Pearl Harbor before Spring 2005, when three groups did so. Today's students have more perspective than their predecessors and are more likely to locate the attacks in New York and Washington within a larger historical framework. One of the three groups compared the impact of the attacks to that of the assassination of President Kennedy. Three traumatic events: December 7, 1941, for my parents' generation, November 22, 1963, for my generation, and September 11, 2001, for this generation. I sometimes ask my students, after they escape from the Bastille, to list the three most significant events that have happened in their lifetimes. With the same pedagogical objectives in mind, I always ask them, during the first class of the semester, to list three things they would include in a history of yesterday. As we go around the table, I write their suggestions on the board and divide them into personal, local, national, and international categories. We talk about social vs. political history, compare the front pages of the New York Times and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and so forth. By the end of the class, some of them get the point. By the end of the semester, judging from the course evaluations, most of them do. With any luck, they have become more prudent and modest about the claims that they make as well as more skeptical and tolerant about the claims that others make about the past as well as the present. |
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Notes
1. Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth about History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994); and "The Old History and the New," American Historical Review 94 (1989): 654–99, including Theodore Hamerow, "The Bureaucratization of History"; Gertrude Himmelfarb, "Some Reflections on the New History"; Lawrence Levine, "The Unpredictable Past: Reflections of Recent American Historiography"; Joan Scott, "History in Crisis? The Others' Side of History"; and John Towes, "Perspectives on 'the Old History and the New:' A Comment."
2. Biology of Man in History (1975), Deviants and the Abandoned in French Society (1978) [including the article dissected in class: André Abbiatéci, "Arsonists in Eighteenth-Century France: An Essay on the Typology of Crime," 157–79], Family and Society (1976), Food and Drink in History (1979), Medicine and Society in France (1980), Ritual, Religion, and the Sacred (1982), and Rural Society in France (1977), all edited by Robert Forster and Orest Ranum, translated by Elborg Forster and Patricia Ranum, and published by Johns Hopkins University Press.
3. Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984); John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1994); and Jan Vansina, Living with Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994).
4. National Standards for United States History: Exploring the American Experience (Los Angeles: National Center for History in the Schools, 1994); Edward Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt, eds., History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past (New York: Metropolitan Books 1996); and Richard Jensen, "The Culture Wars, 1965–1995: A Historian's Map," Journal of Social History, 29 supplement (1995): 17–37.
5. Excerpts from Augustine's City of God and Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in Peter Gay and Gerald Cavanaugh/Victor Wexler, eds., Historians at Work, 4 vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1972–5 ), 1: 269–314 and 2: 351–406.
6. Robert Darnton, "The Meanings of the Wall: November 16, 1789," in Berlin Journal, 1989–1990 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 74–86; and Jane Kramer, "The Politics of Memory (August 1995)," in The Politics of Memory: Looking for Germany in the New Germany (New York: Random House, 1996), 257–93.
7. The eighteenth-century text, excerpted in a documentary volume, allows me (with the original French text in hand) to enlighten the class about translation and ellipses.
8. If time allows, I show slides of commemorative objects that illustrate the incorporation of the Bastille into Revolutionary mythology after the fact. See Hans Jürgen Lüsebrink and Rolf Reichardt, The Bastille: A History of a Symbol of Despotism and Freedom, transl. Norman Schürer (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), which I included in the syllabus once and only once. I had the whole class read the introduction and assigned each student one section and had him or her explain its contribution to the argument of the book. I realized, in retrospect, that I did not provide enough guidance and that students do not much like giving or hearing disconnected reports
In order to talk about objects, as well as texts, numbers, and images, I usually ask students, at some point in the semester, to bring something produced before they were born to class. They tell stories about relatives, which allows for some comments about oral history, and we discuss the use of collections of artifacts (books, clothes, music, money, jewelry, photographs) to study social and cultural trends and change.
Appendix I
Course Outline Week 1 Introductions
Week 2 14 July 1789 I: Basics
Jacques Godechot, "Bastille," in Historical Dictionary of the French Revolution, 1789–1799, ed. Samuel Scott and Barry Rothaus, 2 vols. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1985), 1: 68–71.
Week 3 14 July 1789 II: Textbook accounts
Writing sample (about what difference the differences between the accounts make) due in class.
Library resources I: Reference works
Library exercise 1 (locating reference works by browsing appropriate sections of the reference collection and using subject headings in the online catalogue) due at the end of the week.
Week 4 14 July 1789 III: Analysis of multiple versions
Georges Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution, transl. R. R. Palmer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947), 110–22.
François Pierre Guillaume Guizot, The History of France from the Earliest Times to 1848, transl. Robert Black, 8 vols. (New York: American Publishers Corporation, 1869–78), 6: 16–21.
Louis Marie Prudhomme, Les Révolutions de Paris, 12–18 July 1789, in The Press in the French Revolution: A Selection of Documents Taken from the Press of the Revolution for the Years 1789–1794, ed. J. T. Gilchrist and W. J. Murray (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1971), 54–55.
Alice Gérard, "Lefebvre, Georges," and Charles Olivier-Carbonell, "Guizot, François," in Great Historians of the Modern Age, ed. Lucien Boia (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1991), 247 and 242–43.
Jack Censer, "Prudhomme, Louis Marie," in Historical Dictionary, 2: 797.
Week 5 Library resources II: Bibliographical works
Library exercise 2 (locating articles and books in printed bibliographies and historical databases) due at the end of the week.
Week 6 14 July 1789 IV: Michelet vs. Taine
Jules Michelet, History of the French Revolution, transl. Charles Cocks, ed. Gordon Wright (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 149–80.
Hippolyte Taine, The Origins of Contemporary France, transl. John Durand, ed. Edward Gargan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 96–124.
Douglas Johnson, Jules Michelet," in The Blackwell Dictionary of Historians, ed. John Cannon (New York: Blackwell Reference, 1988), 277–78.
Thomas Kaiser, "Hippolyte Taine," in Historical Dictionary, 2: 926–28.
Essay 1 (about differences between the ends that illustrate differences between the accounts as a whole and the attitudes of the authors) due in class.
Week 7 Library resources III: Primary sources
Library exercise 3 (locating primary sources through reference works, bibliographies, articles and books) due at the end of the week.
Library exercise 4 (locating primary sources through the Internet) due at the end of the week.
Week 8 Conferences about Essay 1
Week 9 14 July 1789 V: Primary sources
"A Day in the French Revolution: July 14, 1789," in Merry Wiesner-Hanks et al., Discovering the Western Past, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1993), 2: 104–30.
"The Attackers," in The French Revolution, ed Philip Dawson (Englewood-Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1967), 34–39.
Week 10 14 July 1789 VI: Bicentennial histories
J. F. Bosher, The French Revolution (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), 147–50.
William Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 108–11.
George Rudé, The French Revolution (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1988), 53–58.
Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1989), 399–406.
D. M. G. Sutherland, France, 1789–1815: Revolution and Counterrevolution (London: Fontana, 1985), 63–68.
Essay 2 (about one theme in the five accounts) due in class.
Week 11 Discussion of primary sources for student research projects
Revised essay 1 due in class.
Library exercise 5 (follow-up questions about primary sources) due at the end of the week, for students whose primary sources were discussed in class) due at the end of the week.
Week 12 Discussion of primary sources for student research projects
Revised essay 2 in class.
Library exercise 5 (follow-up questions about primary sources) due at the end of the week, for students whose primary sources were discussed in class.
Week 13 Suicide in West Allis
Library exercise 6 (questionnaire about cases in one year).
Week 14 11 September 2003
Library exercise 7 (reflections) and revised library exercises 1–6 due in class.
Week 15 Conclusions
Appendix II
Students' 250-Word Accounts of September 11th
Written in Fall 2003 1. On the morning of September 11, 2001, four jets were hijacked by members of Islamic Al-Qaeda. An airplane hit each tower of the World Trade Center in New York. Shortly afterward, a third plane crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The final plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania. 2,948 innocent people perished in the attacks.
Debate over the reasons for the attacks have ranged from politics, economics, and religion, with blame falling on both sides: the United States and Islamic fundamentalism. Islamic fundamentalists were upset with the United States' unilateral support of the Israeli state and the continued presence of U.S. troops in the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia. Al-Qaeda saw both of these actions as aggression toward the Muslim faith and their territory. The government of the United States insisted in protecting the interests of itself and its allies in the Middle East and that no aggression was being taken against Islam.
After the collapse of the World Trade Center, the United States government and people sought justice against Osma Bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda and Mullah Mohammed Omar, the head of the Afghani Taliban government. The U.S. entered Afghanistan to find Bin Laden and oust the Taliban for harboring the terrorist organization. The war, Operation Enduring Freedom, was a short military conflict that ended in the destruction of the Taliban, the weakening of Al-Qaeda, but the escape of Bin Laden and Omar.
Two years after the event, the U.S. suffered from a bad economy and maintained higher security.
2. In the mid-morning hours of September 11, 2001, Americans were informed that an airliner had crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. Stunned Americans watched as a second plane struck the South Tower. Within two hours, both towers had collapsed. An hour after the first strike, the Pentagon was also attacked in the same manner. Shortly after the attack on the Pentagon, a plane headed toward the White House crashed in a wooded area in Pennsylvania.
The U.S. government suspected the attacks to be the work of Osama Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda terrorist network. It was quickly realized that the planes were hijacked by Al-Qaeda operatives. The attacks resulted in a virtual lock-down of the United States. The FAA immediately grounded all domestic and international flights. The borders were closed, as well as all bridges and roads leading to New York City. President Bush declared war on terrorism, vowing to bring the perpetrators of the attacks to justice. To this end, the Patriot Act was passed by Congress. This Act allows the government broad powers in combating terrorism,
Americans reacted to the attacks with grief, anger, and called for revenge. Political leaders of both parties questioned President Bush's motives as the war on terror progressed and costs mounted. It can be argued that the acts and politics instituted after the events of September 11 have done little to ensure the safety of the United States and prevent terrorist attacks from happening again.Written in Spring 2004 3. On the morning of September 11, 2001, four American planes were hijacked by Muslim extremists funded by Osama Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda terrorist organization and motivated by anti-American sentiment. Two of the four planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City, resulting in the collapse of both towers. One plane also crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., while a final plane in route to the White House was diverted to a Pennsylvania field by passengers on board. Thousands were injured and killed, including those in the towers, on the planes, and assisting as relief workers.
President George W. Bush gave a speech where he described the "axis of evil" as any country harboring terrorists. This speech marked the beginning of the American "war on terror." As part of this war effort, the Department of Homeland Security was established, airport security drastically increased, and an extensive alert system was created. Congress passed the Patriot Act, allowing the government to restrict the rights of any person suspected of terrorist activities or affiliation.
As a result of the United States' new proactive anti-terrorist policy, armed forces from America and abroad overthrew the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government. On the home front, racist backlash against Muslim Americans and foreigners have caused many to question the integrity of the American government.
4. Early in the morning on September 11, 2001, a passenger plane hijacked by Middle Eastern terrorists crashed into one of the two World Trade Center towers in New York City. The plane had left Boston approximately a half hour prior and carried several hundred innocent passengers and gallons of jet fuel. As rescue response teams assembled near the crash site, a second hijacked plane was flown into the other tower. Within the hour, both towers collapsed, killing over three thousand citizens and rescue workers. That morning, two other flights were also taken over by terrorists. Passengers deliberately crashed one flight, and the other was flown into the Pentagon Military Headquarters in Washington, D. C. Both episodes resulted in several hundred deaths.
Perceived Western encroachment on the political and social structure of Islamic countries caused the rapid growth of militant groups. In the United States, political leaders rallied behind President Bush, who was aboard Air Force One in an undisclosed location. Over the next two years, America adopted a first-strike foreign policy, the Bush Doctrine, and expanded police powers for the protection of its citizens.
In the face of mounting criticism, the United States launched a virtually unilateral attack on Afghanistan and Iraq, both countries perceived as sympathetic to terrorism. Contrary to the intentions of the 9/11 terrorists, patriotism in the United States increased in the months following the attack, and American military intervention reached an all time high in the Middle East. Nevertheless, Bush administration officials came under intense criticism for their inability to prevent the attack.Written in Summer 2004 5. On the morning of September 11, 2001, four planes were hijacked from airports in New York, Boston, and Washington, D.C. Each plane possessed a full tank of gas in preparation for cross-country flights. However, they were redirected and flown toward the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York, the White House, and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. One of the planes prematurely crashed into a field in Pennsylvania while in route to the White House. A second plane bound for our nation's Capitol crashed just short of the Pentagon, and, as a result, the building was struck. The other two hijacked planes crashed into the WTC. The first to strike hit near the top of the first tower. Shortly after that, a second plane crashed into the center of the other tower. Both towers eventually collapsed, and thousands perished.
While the true causes remain unknown, it was reported that the attacks were planned and executed by an anti-American terrorist unit, which was thought to be led by Afghani Osama Bin Laden. Reactions were mixed. After 9/11, the government heightened national security within many public sectors. Excessive media coverage resulted in a nationwide state of fear. Feelings of patriotism also swept the nation.
In the years following, the patriotism, as well as the panic and fear, have quieted. What has recently come to light is speculation that the United States may have had prior knowledge and possible involvement in the events that took place on September 11.
6. On the morning of September 11, 2001, the U.S. witnessed a series of coordinated terrorist attacks. The attacks involved the hijacking of four commercial airliners, which were flown into the two towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and one that crashed in a Pennsylvania field. These combined attacks were the worst suffered on American soil and witnessed the world over through continuous news coverage. Later on that morning, amid rescue attempts at the World Trade Center, both towers collapsed, killing an exceptionally high number of emergency personnel. Reaction in the U.S. followed quickly; most Americans were shocked at the occurrence of such an attack in the U.S. World reaction was also one of shock and sympathy with the victims and condemnation of the attacks. The U.S. government quickly blamed the attacks on Al-Qaeda, a fundamentalist Islamic group.
The events of September 11th prompted the War on Terror and the invasion of Afghanistan to topple the Taliban, who were providing a haven for the main leaders of Al-Qaeda. The attacks also influenced events leading to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Further pressure was put on nations suspected of harboring and supporting terrorists. Domestic security became a primary concern, prompting the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and further interaction between the FBI, CIA, and other government agencies.
Cause for the attacks on September 11th that have been offered include a distaste for American foreign policy in the Middle East and toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American military presence in Saudi Arabia.Written in Spring 2005 7. On September 11, 2001, the terrorist group Al-Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center in New York City. Not since December 7, 1941 has the United States seen such a deadly attack on its soil from foreign assailants. This attack began at 8:45 A.M. EST, when American Airlines flight 11 was hijacked and flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Initially, it was unknown whether this was an accidental or intentional act. Shortly thereafter, at 9:03 A.M. EST, a second plane, United Airlines flight 175, crashed into the South Tower. This confirmed suspicions of terrorism. Both flights took off out of Boston International Airport. There were two other planes hijacked that morning: American Airlines flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and United Airlines flight 93, which crashed in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.
The country quickly rallied around the city of New York, fearing other attacks would follow. Several thousand people were killed as a result of the attack. A rejuvenated sense of patriotism quickly swept the country. President Bush began a proactive campaign against terrorism as he addressed the nation. Like the attack on Pearl Harbor, this surprise aggression led the United States to war. However, these attacks involved a new enemy, one not confined by political borders.
8. On Tuesday 11 September 2001, at 8:46 a.m. American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City after Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked the plane following take-off. A second hijacked plane crashed into the South Tower at 9:03 a.m. At 9:45 a.m., a third plane crashed into the Pentagon. Shortly after, a fourth and final plane destined for Camp David crashed into a wooded area in Pennsylvania, following a confrontation between the passengers and hijackers. News spread rapidly as interest in the events quickly took precedent over most aspects of daily life. Ultimately, the North Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed at 10:28 a.m.
President George Bush immediately responded, "We will find those responsible and bring those to justice." Widespread attendance of religious vigils and ceremonies, a panic to locate all family members and attain certainty of their safety, and an increasingly explicit distrust of Arab-Americans followed in the ensuing weeks. News reports identifying the causes of the attacks focused on Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda's denunciation of decadent Western culture. This justification is echoed in an internet document from Bin Laden: "Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple: Because you attacked us and continue to attack us." This document enumerated United States military alliances with the nation of Israel as well as its military presence and "crimes" in Muslim nations.
Following the attack, the United States public experienced a renewed sense of vulnerability previously dormant since Pearl Harbor. Congress passed the highly controversial Patriot Act, which strengthened government surveillance and access to information. President Bush called for military action in the form of an invasion of Afghanistan and later Iraq.
People have speculated as to whether the attacks of 9/11 were preventable and claimed that clear warning signs were visible, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The issue remains a point of controversy and is yet to be resolved. The date of 11 September has achieved the notoriety comparable to that of the assassination of President Kennedy. |
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