Articles Of Confederation Dbq
DBQ: Articles of Confederation
Forward: The opinions in the essay are my own personal theories, and there is no way to prove these theories without having to travel back to the 1700's and change history. Although these ideals are theoretical, they are not, by any means, mere guesses. Many examples throughout history prove that these theories would have been very close to what would have actually happened if the Articles were kept as the major body of laws.
~Jason Ludmir
Throughout history, there have been countless nations with weak central governments. During the feudal era, most nations in Europe and Japan had systems where lords ruled provinces, but had to answer to a king. After many centuries, one of two things happened: One, where the kings eventually took away all powers of the lords and gave themselves tyrannical power, or another, where the regions disbanded the king and split up into numerous city-states. In every occasion, the unified nations under a monarch or centralized government had far more power economically, politically, and socially. A good comparison is Germany and England. Although Germany had a far vaster amount of land, people, and resources, England, a small island nation, had a much larger military, a stronger economy, and a unified people. This is because Germany, which wasn’t Germany, but a confederation of dozens of city-states, had many quarrels between the lords of each region, and sometimes they would invade each other, or cut off trade routes, leading them to attack each other rather than their true enemies. Much like this system, the Articles of Confederation would create a system where each state was basically its own nation, but had a loose alliance with the other states.
The major flaw of the Articles was that politically, the power of the government was divided into far too many branches. To start with, the people (adult white males) of the states got to vote on where to send the troops. That wouldn’t be so much of a...
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