revolutions, empire and war

We are till living with the revolutions from two hundred years ago:

Simon Schama's The Romantic Revolution | Trailer | BBC Select - YouTube

How is connected to now?

London today - with William Blake:

Rapper Recites William Blake's London Poem l Simon Schama's The Romantic Revolution | BBC Select - YouTube

Paris then - with Mary Wollstonecraft:

Simon Schama's The Romantic Revolution | BBC Select - YouTube

How can we compare the American and French Revolutions?

Two Revolutions for Freedom: 1776 vs. 1789 - YouTube

What ideas of freedom came out of them?

"The impulse to damn with indifference the wisdom of an earlier generation"

Two Revolutions for Freedom | The Heritage Foundation

With the death of Napoleon remembered two hundred years ago, here's a good question:

Was the defeat of Napoleon a good or bad thing? - Quora

The autocratic rulers of Russia, Prussia and Austria wanted to crush the revolutionary ideas for which Napoleon stood, including meritocracy, equality before the law, anti-feudalism and religious toleration. Essentially, they wanted to turn the clock back to a time when Europe was safe for aristocracy. At this they succeeded—until the outbreak of the Great War a century later.
The British had long enjoyed most of the key Enlightenment values, having beheaded King Charles I 140 years before the French guillotined Louis XVI, but they had other reasons for wanting to destroy Napoleon... With the French threat removed, the British were able to sign a peace treaty securing strategically important points around the globe, such as Cape Town, Jamaica and Sri Lanka, from which they could project their maritime power into a new empire to replace the one they’d lost in America. 

If Napoleon had remained emperor of France for the six years remaining in his natural life, European civilization would have benefited inestimably. The reactionary Holy Alliance of Russia, Prussia and Austria would not have been able to crush liberal constitutionalist movements in Spain, Greece, Eastern Europe and elsewhere; pressure to join France in abolishing slavery in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean would have grown; the benefits of meritocracy over feudalism would have had time to become more widely appreciated; Jews would not have been forced back into their ghettos in the Papal States and made to wear the yellow star again; encouragement of the arts and sciences would have been better understood and copied; and the plans to rebuild Paris would have been implemented, making it the most gorgeous city in the world.

Why We'd Be Better Off if Napoleon Never Lost at Waterloo | History| Smithsonian Magazine

Another question:

Was The American Revolution A Good Thing? « The Junto

And what if it was a mistake from the start? The Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution, the creation of the United States of America—what if all this was a terrible idea, and what if the injustices and madness of American life since then have occurred not in spite of the virtues of the Founding Fathers but because of them? The Revolution, this argument might run, was a needless and brutal bit of slaveholders’ panic mixed with Enlightenment argle-bargle, producing a country that was always marked for violence and disruption and demagogy. Look north to Canada, or south to Australia, and you will see different possibilities of peaceful evolution away from Britain, toward sane and whole, more equitable and less sanguinary countries. No revolution, and slavery might have ended, as it did elsewhere in the British Empire, more peacefully and sooner. No “peculiar institution,” no hideous Civil War and appalling aftermath. Instead, an orderly development of the interior—less violent, and less inclined to celebrate the desperado over the peaceful peasant. We could have ended with a social-democratic commonwealth that stretched from north to south, a near-continent-wide Canada.

We Could Have Been Canada | The New Yorker

What if you look to what happened some decades later?

8 Ways the Civil War Affects Us Today

Meanwhile, in Britain, more questions:

Social Effects of the Industrial Revolution.pdf

The Rise of the Machines: Pros and Cons of the Industrial Revolution | Britannica

12 Industrial Revolution Pros and Cons – Vittana.org

And more questions still:

Niall Ferguson: What the British Empire did for the world | The Independent | The Independent

Jay Doubleyou: is the west better than the rest?

On video:

Civilization Part 1 BBC Series by Niall Ferguson - YouTube

But how do we really see Empire in Britain today?

Jay Doubleyou: inglorious empire - what the british did to india

Jay Doubleyou: what we think about the british empire - 70 years after the partition of india

Jay Doubleyou: in britain we use our history in order to comfort us: this sort of handling of history is dangerous as well as regrettable.

Jay Doubleyou: teaching empire in british schools

This leads to more questions about Britain:

The First World War of 1914-1918 was the first mechanised war and the slaughter that was on an industrial scale touched every village, town and city in Britain and beyond. The sheer size of the British Empire meant it was able to meet the demands of this new type of warfare with an almost inexhaustible supply of troops and material, and after four years of carnage, the empire, along with its allies, emerged victoriously. By the end of the war, the British Empire was battered but still standing, whereas the Ottoman, Russian, German and Austro-Hungarian Empires had all collapsed.

Was the British Empire a force for good? | Sky HISTORY TV Channel

How should we see the First World War?

Jay Doubleyou: the first world war: triumph and pride ... or ... tragedy and sorrow?

To what extent was WWI a transition from 'Victorian Britain' to a 'modern Britain':

What was life for children in Victorian London.doc

The National Archives | Exhibitions & Learning online | First World War | Britain and the war

To finish in the US, how did women fare after WWI?

Torches of Freedom - Wikipedia

Torches of Freedom: How the world’s first PR campaign came to be

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