Asses Why Was Louis XVI Executed in 1793 essays

Asses Why Was Louis XVI Executed in 1793 essays On January, 21, 1793 King Louis XVI was guillotined, after being tried for treason and being proven guilty. During the reign of Louis XVI France suffered from constant economic troubles; the country was always in debt because of the present (Louis XVI and his family) and previous royal familys frequent spending on war and luxuries, in 1788 there was a terrible harvest leaving almost 80% percent of the population poor, starving and unemployed because of unbalanced social classes. For example; during the American Revolution Louis government gave substantial financial assistance to the Americans. When the Estates General met in May, 1789, the king insisted that it had one purpose: to solve the financial problems of the government. Although his plans did not turn out as he had hoped and the third estate left the Estate General and later became the National Assembly. The National Assembly became a powerful group that achieved many great things for France. There were three main reasons tha t help asses why King Louis XVI was executed in 1793; the Jacobins gained more power, Austria and Prussia threatened to attack France, and the Vendee revolt. The Constitution of 1791 marks the end of the first stage of the revolution, this constitution includes: the legislative assembly, this was a lawmaking group, to vote for representatives you must be a male and a taxpayer, this constitution also gave strong limits to the power of the king. The second stage of the French Revolution is called Radical Times, in these times the extreme revolutionaries, or radicals, grew stronger. The main goal of this group of people was to bring down the monarchy and establish a republic. A group of radicals made a government called; the comune, this group of people took over. One of the first actions that the comune took was to imprison the king and his family. On September, 22, 1792 the newly formed National Convention met, this was the fi...

Class Identity in Feudal Japan - Fun Facts and Examples

Class Identity in Feudal Japan s Feudal Japan had a four-tiered social structure based on the principle of military preparedness. At the top were the daimyo and their samurai retainers. Three varieties of commoners stood below the samurai: farmers, craftsmen, and merchants. Other people were excluded entirely from the hierarchy, and assigned to unpleasant or unclean duties such as leather tanning, butchering animals and executing condemned criminals.  They are politely known as burakumin, or people of the village. In its basic outline, this system seems very rigid and absolute. However, the system was both more fluid and more interesting than the short description implies. Here are some examples of how the feudal Japanese social system actually functioned in peoples daily lives. If a woman from a common family got engaged to a samurai, she could be officially adopted by a second samurai family. This circumvented the ban on commoners and samurai intermarrying. When a horse, ox or other large farm animal died, it became the property of the local outcasts. It did not matter if the animal had been the personal property of a farmer, or if its body was on a daimyos land; once it was dead, only the eta had any right to it. For more than 200 years, from 1600 to 1868, the entire Japanese social structure revolved around support of the samurai military establishment. During that time period, though, there were no major wars. Most samurai served as bureaucrats. The samurai class basically lived on a form of social security. They were paid a set stipend, in rice, and did not get raises for cost-of-living increases. As a result, some samurai families had to turn to the manufacture of small goods like umbrellas or toothpicks to make a living. They would secretly pass these items on to peddlers to sell. Although there were separate laws for the samurai class, most laws applied to all three types of commoners equally. Samurai and commoners even had different kinds of mailing addresses. The commoners were identified by which imperial province they lived in, while samurai were identified by which daimyos domain they served. Commoners who tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide because of love were considered criminals, but they could not be executed. (That would just give them their wish, right?) So, they became outcast non-persons, or hinin, instead. Being an outcast wasnt necessarily a grinding existence. One headman of the Edo (Tokyo) outcasts, named Danzaemon, wore two swords like a samurai and enjoyed the privileges normally associated with a minor daimyo. To maintain the distinction between samurai and commoners, the government conducted raids called sword hunts or katanagari. Commoners discovered with swords, daggers or firearms would be put to death. Of course, this also discouraged peasant uprisings. Commoners were not allowed to have surnames (family names) unless they had been awarded one for special service to their daimyo. Although the eta class of outcasts was associated with the disposal of animal carcasses and the execution of criminals, most actually made their living by farming. Their unclean duties were just a side-line. Still, they could not be considered in the same class as commoner farmers, because they were outcasts. People with Hansens disease (also called leprosy) lived segregated in the hinin community. However, on the Lunar New Year and Midsummers Eve, they would go out into the city to perform monoyoshi (a celebration ritual) in front of peoples homes. The townspeople then rewarded them with food or cash. As with the western Halloween tradition, if the reward was not sufficient, the lepers would play a prank or steal something. Blind Japanese remained in the class to which they were born - samurai, farmer, etc. - so long as they stayed in the family home. If they ventured out to work as story-tellers, masseurs, or beggers, then they had to join the blind persons guild, which was a self-governing social group outside of the four-tier system. Some commoners, called gomune, took on the role of wandering performers and beggers that would normally have been within the outcasts domain. As soon as the gomune stopped begging and settled down to farming or craft-work, however, they regained their status as commoners. They were not condemned to remain outcasts. Source Howell, David L. Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.