World History 2 Name: ________________________French Revolution Document Based Question Date: ________________________

Guidelines: Answer the prompt using at least FOUR of the of the documents as evidence. Use the information from the documents within your essay. Write a coherent organized essay with a minimum of FIVE paragraphs. Use proper framing and sourcing when using documents. Use HEAT!!! Please remember that this counts as a TEST GRADE—not as a DBQ-Close Reading grade.

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Document 1:  Arthur Young, Travels in France (1792)

“The poor people seem poor indeed; the children terribly ragged, - if possible, worse clad than if with no clothes at all; as to shoes and stockings, they are luxuries. A beautiful girl of six or seven years playing with a stick, and smiling under such a bundle of rags as made my heart ache to see her. They did not beg, and when I gave them anything seemed more surprised than obliged. One third of what I have seen of this province seems uncultivated, and nearly all of it in misery. What have kings, and ministers, and parliaments, and states to answer for their prejudices, seeing millions of hands that would be industrious idle and starving through the execrable maxims of despotism, or the equally detestable prejudices of a feudal nobility.”

Document 2:   Selected Statistics about the Three Estates in France (1789)

Document 3:  The Political and Social System in 18th century France

Prompt:  

What are the commonalities in the causes and events of the French and Haitian Revolutions?

Document 4: Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762

Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer.If I took into account only force, and the effects derived from it, I should say: "As long as a people is compelled to obey, and obeys, it does well; as soon as it can shake off the yoke, and shakes it off, it does still better; for, regaining its liberty by the same right as took it away, either it is justified in resuming it, or there was no justification for those who took it away."

Document 5:  Excerpts from The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789)

Article 1:  Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.  Social distinctions may be only on considerations of the common good…

Article 6:  The Law is the expression of the general will.  All citizens have the right to take part, personally or through their representatives, in its making.  It must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes…

Article 11:  The free communication of ideas and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man.  Any citizen may therefore speak, write and publish freely...

Document 6: An Indigo Plant Farm on Saint Domingue, 1789.

Document 7: An Indigo Plant Farm on Saint Domingue, 1789.

Document 8: The Mode of Training Blood Hounds on Saint Domingue, 1791.

Document 8: Toussaint Louverture, Letter to the French Directy (November 1797)

Could men who have once enjoyed the benefits of liberty look on calmly while it is taken from them! They bore their chains when they knew no condition of life better than that of slavery. But today when they have left it, if they had a thousand lives, they would sacrifice them all rather that be subjected again to slavery….But if ...this were to be done, I declare to you that this would be to attempt the impossible: We have known how to confront danger to our liberty, and we will know how to confront death to preserve it.

Document 9: Excerpt from Jean-Jacques Dessalines Declaration of Haitian Independance (January 1804)

It is not enough to have expelled the barbarians who have bloodied our land for two centuries; it is not enough to have restrained those ever-evolving factions that one after another mocked the specter of liberty that France dangled before you. We must, with one last act of national authority, forever assure the empire of liberty in the country of our birth; we must take any hope of re-enslaving us away from the inhuman government that for so long kept us in the most humiliating torpor. In the end we must live independent or die.

Independence or death... let these sacred words unite us and be the signal of battle and of our reunion.

Citizens, my countrymen, on this solemn day I have brought together those courageous soldiers who, as liberty lay dying, spilled their blood to save it; these generals who have guided your efforts against tyranny have not yet done enough for your happiness; the French name still haunts our land.

Everything revives the memories of the cruelties of this barbarous people: our laws, our habits, our towns, everything still carries the stamp of the French. Indeed! There are still French in our island, and you believe yourself free and independent of that Republic which, it is true, has fought all the nations, but which has never defeated those who wanted to be free.

The Enlightenment and Its Effects on the Haitian Revolution of 1789-1804Grace Coolidge, PhD. (2006)

Throughout history, revolutions have started because of new ideas that change thinking and disrupt the status quo. The Haitian Revolution of 1789-1804 is no exception. The Enlightenment ideas of equality for men and representative government were crucial to the insurrection. However, how did Enlightenment philosophy make its way to the Caribbean and influence the people to free themselves from their colonizer, France? One slave in particular was strongly influenced by Enlightenment ideas: Toussaint L’Ouverture, the leader of the revolution. Ultimately, the Enlightenment inspired a successful slave revolt in Haiti. While traditional scholarship has depicted the slaves in the revolt as brutes blindly following their cynical leader, in fact L’Ouverture actively used the ideas of European philosophy, which empowered them to become agents.

Toussaint L’Ouverture was an enlightened leader. His leadership enabled him to take approximately 400,000 people and have them rise up against three of the most powerful militaries at the time, France, Spain, and Britain, and win. He gave the former enslaved Africans a sense of community. This was not his only contribution, though. He also was able to unite the people of the island, regardless of skin color. He formed a coalition among the three castes. In his cabinet, he had Africans, mulattoes, and whites. In his army, he had generals of the three castes as well, who worked together. Toussaint realized that in order for the colony to maintain relatively peaceful, it was imperative to work with everyone. The Enlightenment idea of equality amongst men was at the forefront of his thinking.