Renaissance & Reformation
The philosophy focusing on the unlimited potential of human beings as an end in themselves.
Humanism
The French "Sun King" who famously declared, "I am the state."
Louis XIV
The astronomical model, proposed by Copernicus, that puts the sun at the center.
Heliocentric model
The 1789 document providing freedom of speech and abolishing hereditary privileges.
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen
The invention by James Watt that used coal to power machinery.
steam engine
The inventor of the movable type printing press in the 1440s.
Johannes Gutenberg
The Russian Tsar who introduced a beard tax to force his nobles to westernize.
Peter the Great
The scientist who used a telescope to observe the moons of other planets.
Galileo Galilei
The leader of the Committee of Public Safety who was eventually executed by his own device.
Maximilien Robespierre
The process of the mass movement of people from the countryside to the city.
Urbanization
The author of The Prince, which argued rulers should maintain power at all costs.
Niccolo Machiavelli
The opulent palace used by Louis XIV to keep an eye on and control his nobility.
Versailles
The thinker who championed inductive reasoning and the empirical method.
Francis Bacon
The former slave who led the successful Haitian Revolution against France.
Toussaint Louverture
The 19th-century ideology demanding redistribution of wealth and community ownership of production.
Socialism
The 1517 document that criticized church corruption and sparked the Reformation
95 Theses
The 1688 transfer of power to William and Mary that occurred without significant bloodshed.
Glorious Revolution
The author of The Wealth of Nations who argued for "laissez-faire" economics.
Adam Smith
The code that reasserted the equity of all male citizens before the law under Napoleon.
Napoleonic Code
The 1851 event featuring the Crystal Palace that showcased British industrial dominance.
Great Exhibition
The Calvinist doctrine that God decided who would be saved before the world’s foundation.
Predestination
The Puritan leader who ruled England as "Lord Protector" after the execution of Charles I.
Oliver Cromwell
The Enlightenment belief in a creator God who does not intervene in human affairs.
Deism
The meeting held to restore legitimate conservative rulers after Napoleon's exile.
Congress of Vienna
The belief that a woman's place was strictly in the home raising children
Cult of Domesticity