in fact, Marie-Antoinette was a generous patron of charity and other members of the royal family were often embarrassed or irritated by her habit of bursting into tears when she heard of the plight of the suffering poor. There's also a problem with dates. During Louis the Sixteenth's time as king, there was only one case of bread shortages in Paris and that was shortly after his coronation. Marie-Antoinette was eighteen at the time and when she heard about the people's unhappiness at the food situation, she wrote a letter about it back to her mother in Austria, in which she said, "We are more obliged than ever to work for the people's happiness. The King seems to understand this truth; as for myself, I know that in my whole life (even if I live for a hundred years) I shall never forget". Marie-Antoinette's personality therefore seems to have been the exact opposite of someone who would joke about the starving poor.
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Popular: Did Marie-Antoinette really say "Let them eat cake"? - 10 views
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The story of a princess joking "let them eat cake" had actually been told many years before Marie-Antoinette ever arrived in France, as a young princess of fourteen in 1770. Her brother-in-law, the Count of Provence, who hated her, later said that he heard the story as a child, long before his brother ever married Marie-Antoinette. The count claimed that the version he heard was that the woman who made the comment had been his great-great-great grandmother, Maria-Teresa of Spain, who advised peasants to eat pie crust (or brioche) during bread shortages. A French socialite, the Countess of Boigne, said she'd heard that it had been Louis the Sixteenth's bitter aunt, Princess Victoria, and the great philosopher, Rousseau, wrote that he had heard the "let them eat cake" story about an anonymous great princess. Rousseau wrote this story in 1737 - eighteen years before Marie-Antoinette was even born!
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This is quite interesting. Many of my AP Euro students enjoy thinking it was the queen. This will give them something to "chew" on, and allow for a teachable moment. As another great Philosophe suggested we should accept nothing as truth except our own existance.
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Others think that because the French Revolution was able to dress itself up as the force that brought freedom and equality to Europe, it had to justify its many acts of violence and terror. Executing Marie-Antoinette at the age of thirty-seven and leaving her two children as shivering, heart-broken orphans in the terrifying Temple prison, suggested that the Revolution was a lot more complicated than its supporters like to claim. However, if Marie-Antoinette is painted as stupid, deluded, out-of-touch, spoiled and selfish, then we're likely to feel a lot less pity when it comes to studying her death. If that was the republicans' intention, then they did a very good job. Two hundred years later and the poor woman is still stuck with a terrible reputation, and a catchphrase, that she certainly doesn't deserve.
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As a student and teacher of, among other things, propaganda and censorship, I think this is a great example for students to play with in thinking about how 'truth' gets established, politically and historically. In discussing nationalism I often talk about the importance of political myth in establishing identities, and here is a powerful example of a myth that became hegemonic.
New Oxford band show will remove hammers and sickles - Evening Sun - 2 views
Cached
Kansas Memory - 1 views
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Primary sources from the Kansas Historical Society
Florida Memory Project - from the State Library and Archives of Florida - 0 views
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Heaps on Florida.
Votes for Women: Selections from the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, 1848-1921 - 1 views
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"The NAWSA Collection consists of 167 books, pamphlets and other artifacts documenting the suffrage campaign." Run by the Library of Congress.
Lincoln Papers: Mr. Lincoln's Virtual Library - 1 views
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"Mr. Lincoln's Virtual Library highlights two collections at the Library of Congress that illuminate the life of Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), the sixteenth president of the United States. The Abraham Lincoln Papers housed in the Manuscript Division contain approximately 20,000 items including correspondence and papers accumulated primarily during Lincoln's presidency." Awesome.
American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 - 1940 - 0 views
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Excellent source for American culture in the late 30's.
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These life histories were compiled and transcribed by the staff of the Folklore Project of the Federal Writers' Project for the U.S. Works Progress (later Work Projects) Administration (WPA) from 1936-1940. The Library of Congress collection includes 2,900 documents representing the work of over 300 writers from 24 states. Typically 2,000-15,000 words in length, the documents consist of drafts and revisions, varying in form from narrative to dialogue to report to case history.
After the Day of Infamy: 'Man-on-the-Street' Interviews Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor: Home Page - 0 views
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Might be interesting as a compare/contrast activity with interviews/media accounts from September 12, 2001?
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After the Day of Infamy: "Man-on-the-Street" Interviews Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor presents approximately twelve hours of opinions recorded in the days and months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor from more than two hundred individuals in cities and towns across the United States. On December 8, 1941 (the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor)
Documenting America - 0 views
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Over 160 000 images from 1935 to 1945.
Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers: Home - 0 views
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The online version of the Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers at the Library of Congress comprises a selection of 4,695 items (totaling about 51,500 images). This presentation contains correspondence, scientific notebooks, journals, blueprints, articles, and photographs documenting Bell's invention of the telephone and his involvement in the first telephone company, his family life, his interest in the education of the deaf, and his aeronautical and other scientific research. Dates span from 1862 to 1939, but the bulk of the materials are from 1865 to 1920
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A very large collection covering all aspects of Graham Bell's work.
California, First Person Narratives: General Collections - 0 views
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A valuable resource for studies into everyday life in C19th American West.
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"California as I Saw It:" First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years, 1849-1900 consists of the full texts and illustrations of 190 works documenting the formative era of California's history through eyewitness accounts. The collection covers the dramatic decades between the Gold Rush and the turn of the twentieth century.
By Popular Demand: "Votes for Women" Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920 - 0 views
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"The Library of Congress has extensive and varied resources related to the campaign for woman suffrage in the United States." There you go.
Australian War Memorial - 0 views
Around the World in the 1890s: Photographs from the World's Transportation Commission, 1894-1896 - 0 views
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Nearly nine hundred images taken from 1894 to 1896 by the World's Transportation Commission during that last great experimentation with globalisation. And look how that ended...
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