Enlightenment Thinkers & Ideas
French Enlightenment social philosophers.
Philosophes
American Revolution
Rebellion in the colonies of British North America inspired by democratic and other Enlightenment ideals. Its success led to the establishment of the first republic in modern times and became a model for a number of revolutions that followed.
The divisions of society in prerevolutionary France.
Estates
First Industrial Revolution
Era of mechanization which began in England in the late 18th century. The initial focus of industrialization was on textiles and understanding and using different energy sources. With the advent of the steam engine agrarian societies gave way to urbanization and saw the increased use of railroads and steamships.
Nationalism
Ideology based on the premise that an individual’s loyalty and devotion to the nation-state surpass other individual or group interests. The rise of nationalism in Europe in the 19th century and then Asia and Africa in the 20th century witnessed the rise and struggle of powerful national movements.
Abolitionists
Men and women who agitated for a complete end to slavery. Their pressure helped end the British transatlantic slave trade (1808), slavery in British colonies (1834), and was a factor that led to the American Civil War (1861-1865).
A statement of political and private property rights adopted by the French National Assembly during the French Revolution
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
Natural Rights
Rights that belong to every person and that no government may take away.
Haitian Revolution
Series of conflicts between 1791 and 1804 between Haitian slaves, colonists, the armies of the British and French colonizers, and a number of other parties. Haiti ultimately won independence from France and thereby became the first country to be founded by former slaves.
Bourgeoisie
In France, the class of merchants and artisans who were members of the Third Estate and initiators of the French Revolution; in Marxist theory, a term referring to factory owners.
A machine that turns the energy released by burning fuel into motion. Steam power was later applied to moving machinery in factories and to powering ships and locomotives
Steam engine
Nation-state
A form of political organization under which a relatively homogeneous people inhabit a sovereign state.
-A belief in the political, economic and cultural equality of women. Many of the feminists of the early modern era specifically noted access to education, property and the ballot as critical to women’s equality
Feminism
A statement of the rights of women written by Olympe de Gouges in response to the Declaration of the Rights of Man
Declaration of the Rights of Women and of the Female Citizen
Enlightenment concept of the agreement made by the people living in a state of nature to give up some of their rights in order for governments to be established.
Social Contract
Gran Colombia
The temporary union of the northern portion of South America after independence movements led by Simón Bólivar; ended in 1830
The most radical and ruthless of the political groups formed in the wake of the French Revolution, and in association with Maximilien Robespierre they instituted the Reign of Terror from 1793–94.
Jacobins
Fossil Fuel Revolution
The transition from water, wind, plant, and animal power to coal, petroleum, and natural gas beginning in the 1800s. The new form of mineral-intensive economy pioneered in Britain during the late 1700s and imitated in the U.S. has led to environmental and human costs
The establishment of colonial empires.
Imperialism
Women’s Suffrage
The right of women by law to vote in national or local elections. In Great Britain woman suffrage was first advocated by Mary Wollstonecraft in her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and was demanded by the Chartist movement of the 1840s
Written by the 18th-century British proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, it is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. It calls for the recognition of fundamental rights for women and their access to education.
Vindication of the Rights of Woman
An Enlightenment philosophy that favored civil rights, the protection of private property, and representative government.
Liberalism
Declaration of Independence
Document that set forth the American colonists’ reasons for separation from Great Britain. Thomas Jefferson, the principal author, incorporated Enlightenment ideas such as “social contract” into the declaration.
The period of most extreme violence during the French Revolution.
Reign of Terror
The money and equipment needed to engage in industrialization
Capital
The emergence of various movements of national consciousness within the territories of the Ottoman Empire located on the Balkan peninsula in the 1800s. The ultimate goal of each was the creation of nation-state with religion playing an integral part in national identities.
Balkan nationalism
The right of all males within a given society to vote.
Universal Male Suffrage
Māori/Māori Nationalism
A member of a Polynesian group that settled New Zealand about 800 C.E./Movement among native Maori tribes that led to increased warfare with the British, the selection of the first Maori king to prevent the selling of land, and the emergence of new Maori religious movements.
Published in 1776, by Adam Smith, it is a clearly written account of political economy at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution that is widely considered to be the first modern work in the field of economics. The work is also the first comprehensive defense of free market policies
Wealth of Nations
Jamaica Letter
- Document written by Simon Bolivar to the Governor of Jamaica in 1815 that communicated his views on the independence movement in Venezuela and the form of government under which the country should operate. Similar to the American Declaration of Independence it communicated the reasons to push for independence. Bolivar also states that it is important for governments to be established with the consent of the governed.
Code Napoleon
Collection of laws that standardized French law under the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte.
A system of organizing the manufacture of an article in a series of separate specialized operations, each of which is carried out by a different worker or group of workers.
Specialization of Labor
Ottomanism
Form of nationalism, likely inspired and created as a reaction to European ideas of nationalism and the growing Western involvement in the Ottoman Empire. It promoted equality and the acceptance of all separate ethnicities in the Empire regardless of their religion.
Seneca Falls Conference
The first women’s rights convention in the United States. Held in July 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, the meeting launched the women’s suffrage movement
The call for reforms by native Filipinos with colonial Spain (1880-1886). Goals included Filipino representation in the Spanish parliament and the legalization of Spanish and Filipino equality.
Propaganda Movement