A Letter to King Louis XIV

This blog post is set in 17th century France from the perspective of a French peasant who has just been allowed to tour Versailles. This letter is to King Louis XIV on my thoughts on his well being compared to us the peasants.

Dearest King Louis XIV,

I have toured your palace Your Highness and it is gorgeous. So much attention to detail and decoration. It is truly amazing. But all the money spent to make your palace so amazing had me thinking about how little us people in the countryside have.

Bread costs so much none of us can afford it. When times get really tough though we have to grind up animal bones to substitute as flour. Our harvests have been bad because of the lack of good weather to farm in so no ones making enough money to afford food causing people to die.

The little that we make from our few salvageable crops gets paid in taxes.

While these taxes do go pay for our military that is helping expand Frances borders, we feel that there’s too much worry about new land and not what happens to your already loyal citizens. I know a great King like you wouldn't want his subjects suffering so much so I am writing this letter.

We want to be able to help make France as great as it possibly can be but we can’t do this if all of us are starving and dying from lack of food and poverty. We need the taxes and the cost of food lowered your Majesty if we are expected to survive. With the amazing work you’ve done for the rest of France we know you’ll be able to help us.

From,

Your Faithful Subjects

"French Peasants" Vincentians. http://vincentians.com/blog/the-poor-in-the-17th-century-in-france-ii/

Common Life

London, 12 February 1667
This is a post about what my life would be like if I were a commonfolk in 17th century England.


When I woke up I had the difficult job of getting dressed with lots of long skirts and corsets its a hardly enviable outfit. I apply ceruse to make my face white and then put on the fake beauty mark made of mouse skin. I leave with out breakfast. Walking through the streets he smell is awful because of all the feces and rotting dead cats and dogs.

I am going to the theater to see the new play except this time there will be females acting not just men! It was a good play by Shakespeare. Since it is midday I am going to have my one large meal. It will begin in one room of my house and end in another. The man came with the water this morning that will be used to boil the food.

At dinner we had lots of different meats like chicken, cow and sheep. We have weak beer along with all of his food. This is all we will eat until much later when we have a light supper. That is all I do in the average day here in England.


Picard,Lisa. "Sex,Lice and Chamber Pots in Pepys' London." 17 February 2011. British Broadcasting Company. http://tinyurl.com/LondonDayintheLife
"17th Century English Theatre" Wikimedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Theatre-versailles.jpg

More About Mayflower

In class for a literature circle we read a few chapters of the book Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick. These chapters told us about the Pilgrims and their reasons to leave England, what their housing was like, their relationship with Natives and much more. He gives a very good insight into how much they had to overcome to survive in the New England weather.

The key topics were the relationship between the Pilgrims and the Natives, the diseases they suffered from and the weather in New England and how it affected their ability to settle. I think it was very interesting to hear about because its what the weathers like here in Massachusetts only we have better protection from it. It was very clear what the main topics were cause everything worked its way back to them.

I liked his writing style because it was less of a textbook and more of a very detailed story. It did get confusing at parts because it would seem like he'd go off on a tangent about some small detail which I thought made it unclear sometimes.

I would recommend this to anyone who wants to know more about where we live or just enjoys history. It isn't a book that would be painfully boring to read so I think even other high schoolers might enjoy it but it seems to be aimed at slightly older people.

 http://www.nathanielphilbrick.com/wp-content/themes/philbrick/images/books/mayflower.jpg

All Around the World

The map my group created shows the Transatlantic trade. The Transatlantic trade is the trade that took place across the Atlantic ocean linking Europe, Africa and the Americas for about 4 centuries. Lots of slaves, food and raw materials were sent using this trade route.
This is the map we created

 

In North America, there were three main colonies responsible for trading. Boston, Philadelphia and New York. They probably had the most people and goods to export. Food items were the main export for most places meaning that people were most likely interested in new food from North America. There were raw materials being traded from America to England and then finished items such as furniture and. This is an example of mercantilism where England is the mother country and America is the colony.

The Truth About the Things You Buy

In my groups public service announcement we made it about industries involved with slavery. We created it to show that even though people don't think they are involved with slavery the clothes they are wearing or the toys they are playing with could be related to slavery. If people know just how much slavery is affecting them they'd be able to stop it by not buying the products made by slave labor and just being more aware that it is still out there in the world and not just something that got abolished more than a thousand years ago.
Here you can watch the project made by my group about slaveries involved with slavery. http://youtu.be/LXs-SKUI0N8
With this link you can check out all the public service announcements about slavery made by our class http://endingmoderndayslaveryatrmhs.wikispaces.com/Home

My story was called “Name Unknown”

The personal story being told is of an unnamed man who was captured by slave traders on the Gold Coast. His entire family was convicted of witchcraft and all brought onto the slave ship Brooks. He was a trader, possibly trading slaves himself. He had an argument with the village chief who got revenge by accusing him and his family of witchcraft. Once he and his family were captured he refused to eat. Soon after he attempted to rip out his own throat. After it was sewed up he then ripped his throat open again with his hands. Ten days later he died of starvation.

The evidence of resistance is when the man tried cutting his throat open after refusing to eat. They sewed his throat back up but he did it again with his own fingernails. They sewed his throat up a final time. He later died of lack of food. He stated “he would never go with the white men” So to stop them from taking him he killed himself.

I learned from the story that it was not uncommon for slaves to refuse to eat anything. I found it surprising that they have a doctor when so many slaves end up injured or just ill and the traders do nothing to help them. I think its odd that they just want the slaves alive not healthy or taken care of.