SS9: French Revolution Primary Sources
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​Primary Sources are items that were created or used in the period under study. They are direct sources of information that tell us about people, places, and events. Primary sources can include eyewitness accounts, speeches, diaries, letters, photographs, official documents, clothing, tools, furniture, artwork, buildings, and contents of museums and historic sites. They reveal the true story, and interpreting the information you get from them is up to you.

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For this assignment, you will select two primary sources to study:

 PART 1: Firsthand accounts of events, including letters, diary entries, speeches, and official documents.

Your Task: Select one firsthand account from the print sources provided, and analyze the primary source by answering the following questions in your notes:

1. What is the primary source?
2. Who created it? 
3. When was it created? How can you tell?
4. Where was it created?
5. Why was it created? What was the creator's purpose?
6. So what? What conclusions about the past can you draw from this primary source?

PART 2:  LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY: EXPLORING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION is a digital archive of some of the most important documentary evidence from the Revolution. The archive is authored and edited by Lynn Hunt of UCLA and Jack Censer of George Mason University, both internationally renowned scholars of the Revolution.

Primary Sources included in this archive:

• 338 texts: personal memoirs, official reports, newspaper articles, treatises, eyewitness accounts 
• 245 images: political cartoons, paintings, photographs of artifacts
• 13 maps
• 13 songs

YOUR TASK: Choose ONE primary sources from the digital archive, and evaluate the source by answering the following questions in your notes:

1. What is the primary source?
2. Who created it? 
3. When was it created? How can you tell?
4. Where was it created?
5. Why was it created? What was the creator's purpose?
6. So what? What conclusions about the past can you draw from this primary source?

Sample Answer:

1. What? An engraving entitled " The Emperor and the Imperial Guard in Elba"
2. Who? Rose (engraver)and Hippolyte Bellangé (designer)
3. When? Unidentified. Probably between 1810-1866 (Hippolyte Bellange lived from 1800-1866)
4. Where? Most likely in France, as Bellange was a French engraver
5. Why? To record to events of the life of Napoleon.
6. So what?  This engraving shows Napoleon on the island of Elba, where he had freedom and was treated with respect. When Napoleon was first defeated in 1814, France's opponents did not want to antagonize the nation so much that it would seek revenge. Napoleon had his own imperial guard, and was able to follow French news.