Absolutism & Enlightenment
This type of ruler holds unlimited, centralized power over a nation, completely unchecked by a constitution or legislative body.
What is an absolute monarch?
Wealthy and educated but excluded from high-level government jobs, this specific Spanish colonial social class spearheaded most Latin American revolutions.
Who were the Creoles?
This historical transition marked a massive shift from hand-making goods at home to manufacturing them with heavy machinery in centralized factories.
What was the Industrial Revolution?
This term describes the massive movement of populations from rural farming villages into densely packed urban factory towns.
What is urbanization?
This political ideology emphasizes intense loyalty, pride, and devotion to a shared cultural identity or nation over individual interests.
What is nationalism?
To gain and maintain absolute control, monarchs heavily raised taxes, expanded standing militaries, and restricted the power of this rival social class.
Who are the nobles (or aristocracy)?
Known as "The Liberator," this Creole general led the military campaigns that won independence for Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador.
Who was Simón Bolívar?
This intellectual shift introduced systematic observation, experimentation, and the mathematical testing of natural laws to European thought.
What was the Scientific Revolution?
For early industrial workers, urban quality of life plummeted due to overcrowded tenements, polluted air, contaminated drinking water, and this major health hazard.
What is the rapid spread of disease?
The dramatic unifications of these two major European nations completely destroyed the continent's established balance of power, sparking intense regional rivalries.
What are Italy and Germany?
John Locke argued that all human beings possess these inherent entitlements to life, liberty, and property, which governments are strictly obligated to protect.
What are natural rights?
The French Revolution directly triggered the Haitian Revolution by aggressively spreading these radical new political ideals to France's Caribbean colonies.
What are liberty, equality, and the rights of man?
Copernicus and Galileo deeply angered traditional European religious authorities by proving this controversial, sun-centered cosmic model.
What is the heliocentric theory?
In this specific economic theory, the government practices a strict "hands-off" policy, letting private market competition determine prices and production without regulation.
What is laissez-faire capitalism?
This deeply biased cultural belief holds that one's own ethnic group is naturally superior to all others, leading Western powers to look down on foreign cultures.
What is ethnocentrism?
American revolutionaries relied directly on Enlightenment philosophy to justify doing this to their political system when the British king violated their rights.
What is rebelling (or declaring independence/changing the system)?
Haiti was France's most valuable colonial asset because its brutal plantation system generated immense global wealth through these two raw cash crops.
What are sugar and coffee?
The Scientific Revolution proved natural laws governed the universe, which directly inspired Enlightenment thinkers to look for natural laws governing this entity.
What is human society (or government and economy)?
Unlike capitalism, this alternative economic theory argues that the government must always BUT SOMETIMES actively own and operate major industries to ensure social and economic equality.
What is socialism?
This heavily distorted theory twisted evolutionary biology to falsely argue that white Europeans were naturally superior and destined to dominate weaker races.
What is Social Darwinism?
This intellectual movement challenged traditional authority by using reason and individualism to solve societal and political problems.
What was the Enlightenment?
Toussaint Louverture emerged as the primary military commander of this historic conflict, which remains the only highly successful slave revolt in human history.
What was the Haitian Revolution?
The Enlightenment's emphasis on progress and secular problem-solving provided the exact intellectual foundation needed to foster this subsequent technical explosion.
What was the Industrial Revolution?
This radical economic philosophy, outlined by Karl Marx, calls for a violent worker revolution to completely overthrow capitalism and eliminate private property entirely.
What is communism?
Driven by intense nationalism, ethnocentrism, and Social Darwinism, European powers aggressively raced to conquer vast territories across these two massive continents.
What are Africa and Asia?