Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Congresses Tend to Make Bad Decisions

Recently in History, we learned about the Congress of Vienna.  The essential question for this activity was: what should people in power do when their power is threatened? In class, we read different scenarios and read the three options that were given as to how the people in power could have solved the problem. We posted our choice along with a brief explanation. Then we found out what the people in power actually did, and how we overestimated how much they would be thinking of their people.

The Congress of Vienna was the gathering of all of the influential powers in Europe following the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte. It was hosted by Klemens von Metternich in Austria (Vienna to be exact). A lot of things changed, such as the reconstruction of the European map, after the Congress met, but one major thing they did was establish the Principle of Intervention. This principle made it so that if there were any rebellions, foreign powers could step in to quell them. England was the only one to not be a part of this. This principle kept many rebellions from happening and made it easier to stop or put an end to the ones that did happen. For instance, in the 1820's Austria crushed an Italian rebellion.

I think that the people at the Congress should have considered their people more. If they could have sacrificed some of their power, then they wouldn't have had to establish a lot of the principles they did. They also would have had fewer rebellions on their hands.  I know that they didn't want to give up their power and that was the whole point of the principles, but they could have given up just some of it and saved themselves a lot of trouble in the long run.

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