Chapter 14, 17, and 18: history vocab

The intellectuals of the Enlightenment were known by the French name philosophe, meaning "philosopher." Not all philosophes were French, however, and few were philosophers in the strict sense of the term. They were writers, pro- fessors, journalists, economists, and above all, social reformers. They came chiefly from the nobility and the middle class

Philosophe

As in Europe, women in colonial religious orders many of them of aristocratic background Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz 1651-1695 Mexican poet Juana Inés de la Cruz was one of seventeenth-century Latin America's best-known literary figures. She was an avid learner but was denied admission to the University of Mexico because she was a woman. As a result of this rejection, she chose to enter a convent, where she could write poetry and plays. She said, "Who has forbidden women to engage in private and individual studies? Have they not a rational soul as men do?"By her late thirties, she had become famous as a great poet. Denounced by her bishop for writing secular literature, she agreed to stop writing and devote herself to purely religious activities. She died at the age of 43 while nursing the sick during an epidemic in Mexico City. often lived well. Many nuns worked outside their convents by running schools and hospitals. Indeed, one of these nuns, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, urged that women be educated.

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz

Absolutism is a system in which a ruler holds total power. In 17th century Europe, absolutism was tied to the idea of the divine right of kings. This means that rulers received their power from God and were responsible to no one except God. They had the ability to make laws, levy taxes, administer justice, control officials, and determine foreign policies

Absolutism

The best statement of laissez-faire was made in 1776 by Adam Smith in his famous work The Wealth of Nations. Like the Physiocrats, Smith believed that the state should not interfere in economic matters. Indeed, Smith gave to government only three basic roles: protecting society from invasion (the army); defending citizens from injustice (the police); and keeping up certain public works, such as roads and canals, that private individuals could not afford.

Adam Smith

On the other hand, Napoleon destroyed some revolutionary ideals. Liberty was replaced by a despotism that grew increasingly arbitrary, in spite of protests by such citizens as the prominent writer Anne-Louise-Germaine de Stael. Napoleon shut down 60 of France's 73 newspapers and banned books, including de Stael's. He insisted that all manuscripts be subjected to government scrutiny before they were published. Even the mail was opened by government police

Anne-Louise-Germaine de Stael

Antoine Lavoisier invented a system of naming the chemical elements, much of which is still used today. He is regarded by many as the founder of modern chemistry.

Antoine Lavoisier

In 1588, Philip II made preparations to send an armada- a fleet of warships-to invade England. A successful invasion of England would mean the overthrow of Protestantism. The fleet that set sail had neither the ships nor the manpower that Philip had planned to send

Armada

Bach, a renowned org- anist as well as a com- poser, spent his entire life in Germany. While he was music director at the Church of Saint Thomas in Leipzig, he composed his Mass in B Minor and other works that gave him the reputation of being one of the greatest composers of all time.

Bach

Mannerism was eventually replaced by a new movement- the baroque. This movement began in Italy at the end of the 16th century and eventually spread to the rest of Europe and Latin America. It was eagerly adopted by the Catholic reform movement as shown in the richly detailed buildings at Catholic Courts, especially those of the Hapsburg in Madrid, Prague, Vienna, and Brussels

Baroque

The bourgeoisie, or middle class, was another part of the third estate. This group included about 8 percent of the population, or 2.3 million people. They owned about 20 to 25 percent of the land. The bourgeoisie included merchants, bankers, and industrialists, as well as professional people- lawyers, holders of public offices, doctors, and writers

Bourgeoisie

Ivan expanded the territories of Russia eastward. He also crushed the power of the Russian nobility, or boyars

Boyars

Cardinal Richelieu, Louis XIII's chief minister, strengthened the monarchy's power. Because the Huguenots were seen as a threat to the king =, Richelieu took away their political and military rights. He did preserve their religious rights. Richelieu also set up a network of spies to uncover plots by nobles. He then crushed the conspiracies and executed the conspirators

Cardinal Richelieu

Catherine II, or Catherine the Great, ruled Russia from 1762 to 1796. She was an intelligent woman who was familiar with the works of the philosophes and seemed to favor enlightened reforms. She invited the French philosophe Denis Diderot to Russia and, when he arrived, urged him to speak frankly, "as man to man." He did so, outlining an ambitious pro- gram of political and financial reform. Catherine, however, was skeptical about what she heard. Diderot's impractical theories, she said, "would have turned everything in my kingdom upside down." She did consider the idea of a new law code that would recognize the principle of the equality of all people in the eyes of the law. In the end, however, she did nothing, because she knew that her success depended on the support of the Russian nobility. Catherine's policy of favoring the landed nobility led to worse conditions for the Russian peasants and eventually to rebellion. Led by an illiterate Cossack (a Russian warrior), Emelyan Pugachev, the rebellion spread across southern Russia, but soon collapsed. Catherine took stronger measures against the peas- ants. All rural reform was halted, and serfdom was expanded into newer parts of the empire. Catherine proved to be a worthy successor to Peter the Great in her policies of territorial expansion. Rus- sia spread southward to the Black Sea by defeating the Turks under Catherine's rule. To the west, Russia gained about 50 percent of Poland's territory.

Catherine II

Complaints grew until England slipped into a civil war in 1642 between the supporters of the king (the Cavaliers or Royalists) and the parliamentary forces (called the Roundheads because of their short hair).

Cavaliers and the Roundheads

The conflict that began during the reign of James came to a head during the reign of his son, Charles I. Charles also believed in the divine right of kings. In 1628, Parliament passed a petition that prohibited the passing of any taxes without Parliaments consent. Although Charles I initially accepted this petition, he later changed his mind. Charles realized that the petition would put limits on the king's power. What was left-the so-called Rump Parliament-had Charles I executed on January 30, 1649. The execution left many people horrified

Charles I

It seemed possible that the revolution would be destroyed, and the old regime reestablished. Confronted with domestic uprisings and external threats, the National Convention gave the Committee of Public Safety broad powers

Committee of Public Safety

In Paris, Napoleon took part in the coup d'etat of 1799 that overthrew the directory and set up a new government, the consulate. In theory, it was a republic, but, in fact, Napoleon held absolute power. Napoleon was called first counsel, a title borrowed from Ancient Rome

Consulate

The Russian word for caesar

Czar

Statement of fundamental political rights adopted by the French National Assembly at the beginning of the French Revolution. Very similar to the Declaration of Independence in U.S. Reflecting Enlightenment thought, the declaration went on to proclaim freedom and equal rights for all men, access to public office based on talent, and an end to exemptions from taxationIronically, though, this declaration brought up important questions about whether women would be treated equally as well.

Declaration of the rights of man and the citizen

Throughout his life, Voltaire championed deism, an eighteenth-century religious philosophy based on reason and natural law. Deism built on the idea of the Newtonian world-machine. In the Deists' view, a mechanic (God) had created the universe. To Voltaire and most other philosophes, the universe was like a clock. God, the clockmaker, had created it, set it in motion, and allowed it to run without his interfer- ence, according to its own natural laws.

Deism

Denis Diderot went to the University of Paris to fulfill his father's hopes that he would be a lawyer or pursue a career in the Church. He did nei- ther. Instead, he became a freelance writer so that he could study and read in many subjects and lan- guages. For the rest of his life, Diderot remained ded- icated to new ideas. Diderot's most famous contribution to the Enlight- enment was the Encyclopedia, or Classified Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Trades, a 28-volume collection of knowledge that he edited. Published between 1751 and 1772, the purpose of the Encyclopedia, according to Diderot, was to "change the general way of thinking." The Encyclopedia became a major weapon in the philosophes' crusade against the old French society. Many of its articles attacked religious superstition and supported religious toleration.

Denis Diderot

James believed that he received his power from God and was responsible only to God. This is called the divine right of kings. Parliament did not think much of the divine right of kings. It had come to assume that the king or queen and Parliament ruled England together

Divine right of king

At Waterloo in Belgium on June 18, 1815, Napoleon met a combined British and Prussian army under the Duke of Wellington and suffered a bloody defeat. This time, the victorious allies exiled him to St. Helena, a small island in the south Atlantic.

Duke of Wellington

To solve the religious problem, Henry IV issued the Edict of Nates in 1598. The edict recognized Catholicism as the official religion of France. It also gave the Huguenots the right to worship and to enjoy all political privileges such as holding public offices

Edict of Nantes

Mannerism spread from Italy to other parts of Europe and perhaps reached its high point in the work of El Greco, "the Greek". El Greco studied the elements of Renaissance painting in Venice. He also wrote many works on painting. From Venice, El Greco moved to Rome. His career as a painter stalled there possibly because he had criticized Michelangelo's abilities as a painter. When he moved to Spain, El Greco met with success. In El Greco's paintings, the figures are elongated or contorted and he sometimes used unusual shades of yellow and green against an eerie background of stormy grays. The mood of his works reflects well the tensions created by the religious upheavals of the Reformation

El Greco

The method for election shows that the new government was much more conservative than the government of Robespierre. Members of both houses were chosen by electors, or qualified voters. Only those who owned or rented property worth a certain amount could be electors-only 30,000 people in the whole nation qualified

Electors

Elizabeth Tudor ascended the English throne in 1558. During her reign, the small island kingdom became the leader of the Protestant nations of Europe and laid the foundations for a world empire. Intelligent, careful, and self-confident, Elizabeth moved quickly to solve the difficult religious problem she inherited from her Catholic half sister, Queen Mary Tudor. Elizabeth repealed the laws favoring Catholics

Elizabeth Tudor

The proposed Constitution cre- ated a federal system in which power would be shared between the national government and the state governments. The national, or federal, govern- ment was given the power to levy taxes, raise an army, regulate trade, and create a national currency. The federal government was divided into three branches, each with some power to check the work- ings of the others. The first branch was the executive branch. A president served as the chief executive. The president had the power to execute laws, veto the legislature's acts, supervise foreign affairs, and direct military forces.

Federal system

Frederick II, or Frederick the Great, was one of the best educated and most cultured monarchs in the eighteenth century. He was well versed in the ideas of the Enlightenment and even invited Voltaire to live at his court for several years. Frederick was a dedi- cated ruler. He, too, enlarged the Prussian army, and he kept a strict watch over the bureaucracy. For a time, Frederick seemed quite willing to make enlightened reforms. He abolished the use of torture except in treason and murder cases. He also granted limited freedom of speech and press, as well as greater religious toleration.

Frederick II

Frederick William the Great Elector laid the foundation for the Prussian state. Realizing that Prussia was a small, open territory with no natural frontiers for defense, Frederick William built a large and efficient standing army. He had a force of forty thousand men, which made the Prussian army the 4 largest in Europe. To maintain the army and his own power, Frederick set up the General War Commissariat to levy taxes for the army and oversee its growth

Frederick William the Great Elector

Galileo Galilei taught mathematics. He was the first European to make regular observations of the heavens using a telescope. With this tool, Galileo made a remarkable series of discoveries: mountains on the Moon, four moons revolving around Jupiter, and sunspots. Galileo's observations seemed to destroy yet another aspect of the Ptolemaic conception. Heav- enly bodies had been seen as pure orbs of light. Instead, it appeared that they were composed of material substance, just as Earth was. Galileo's discoveries, published in The Starry Mes- senger in 1610, did more to make Europeans aware of the new view of the universe than did the works of Copernicus and Kepler. In the midst of his newfound fame, however, Galileo found himself under suspi- cion by the authorities of the Catholic Church. The Church ordered Galileo to abandon the Copernican idea. The Copernican system threatened the Church's entire conception of the universe and seemed to contradict the Bible. In the Copernican view, the heavens were no longer a spiritual world but a world of matter. Humans were no longer at the center of the universe, and God was no longer in a specific place.

Galileo Galilei

Ptolemy, who lived in the second century A.D, was the greatest astronomer of antiquity. Using his ideas, as well as those of Aristotle and of Christianity, the philosophers of the Middle Ages had constructed a model of the universe known later as the Ptolemaic (TAH•luh•MAY•ik) system. This system is called geocentric because it places Earth at the center of the universe.

Geocentric

Railed by the newly appointed minister of justice, Georges Danton, the sans-culottes attacked the palace, and the royal family had to seek protection from the legislative assembly

Georges Danton

Perhaps the greatest figure of the baroque period was the Italian architect and sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who completed Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. Action, exuberance, and dramatic effects mark the work of Bernini in the interior of Saint Peters

Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Handel was a German who spent much of his career in England. He is probably best known for his religious music. Handel's Messiah has been called a rare work that appeals immediately to everyone and yet is a masterpiece of the highest order.

Handel

Haydn spent most of his adult life as musical director for wealthy Hungarian princes. Visits to England introduced him to a world where musicians wrote for public concerts rather than princely patrons. This "liberty," as he called it, led him to write two great works, The Creation and The Seasons.

Hayden

In May 1543, Nicholas Copernicus, a native of Poland, published his famous book, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. Copernicus, a mathematician, felt that the geocentric system was too complicated. He believed that his heliocentric, or sun-centered, conception of the universe offered a more accurate explanation than did the Ptolemaic system. Copernicus argued that the Sun, not Earth, was at the center of the universe. The planets revolved around the Sun. The Moon, however, revolved around Earth. Moreover, according to Copernicus, the apparent movement of the Sun around Earth was really caused by the daily rotation of Earth on its axis and the journey of Earth around the Sun each year.

Heliocentric

For 30 years, battles raged in France between the Catholics and Huguenots. Finally in 1589, Henry of Navarre, the Huguenot political leader, succeeded to the throne as Henry IV. He realized that as a Protestant he would never be accepted by Catholic France. Therefore, he converted to Catholicism. When Henry IV was crowned king in 1594, the fighting in France finally came to an end

Henry of Navarre

Religion played an important role in the outbreak of the Thirty years' war, called the "last of the religious wars". However, political and territorial motives were also evident. Beginning in 1618 in the Holy Roman Empire, the war first involved the struggle between Catholic forces, led by the Hapsburg Holy Roman emperors, and Protestant (primarily Calvinists) nobles in Bohemia.

Holy Roman Empire

Huguenots were French Protestants influenced by John Calvin. They made up only about 7 percent of the total French population, but 40 to 50 percent of the nobility became Huguenots. This made the huguenots a powerful political threat to the Crown. An extreme Catholic party-known as the ultra-Catholics-strongly opposed the Huguenots

Huguenots

The person who developed the scientific method was actually not a scientist. Francis Bacon, an Eng- lish philosopher with few scientific credentials, believed that instead of relying on the ideas of ancient authorities, scientists should use inductive reasoning to learn about nature. In other words, scientists should pro- ceed from the particular to the general. System- atic observations and carefully organized experiments to test hypotheses (theories) would lead to correct general principles

Inductive reasoning

Born in 1642, Isaac Newton showed few signs of brilliance until he attended Cambridge Uni- versity. Later, he became a professor of mathematics at the university and wrote his major work, Mathe- matical Principles of Natural Philosophy. This work is known simply as the Principia, by the first word of its Latin title.

Isaac Newton

A new Russian state emerged in the 15th century under the principality of Muscovy and its grand dukes. In the 16th century, Ivan IV became the first ruler to take the title of czar.

Ivan IV

The mountain represented the interests of radicals in Paris, and many belonged to the Jacobins club. Increasingly they felt the king needed to be executed to ensure he was not a rallying point for opponents of the republic

Jacobins

With the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603, the Tudor dynasty came to an end. The Stuart line of rulers began with the accession to the throne of Elizabeth's cousin, the king of Scotland, who became James I of England. James believed that he received his power from God and was responsible only to God. This is called the Divine right of kings

James I

When Charles died, leaving no heirs to the throne, James II became king in 1685. James was an open and devout Catholic. Religion was once more a cause of conflict between king and Parliament. James named Catholics to high positions in the government, army, navy, and universities

James II

New leaders of the people emerged, including Jean-Paul Marat, who published a radical journal called friend of the people. Marat defended the September massacres.

Jean-Paul Marat

John Locke vowed the exercise of political power quite differently. His two treatises of government, written in 1679 and 1680 but too radical and too dangerous to be published then, first appeared in 1690. In his treatises, especially the second one, Locke argued against the absolute rule of one person. He described how governments are formed and what justifies them. Unlike Hobbes, Locke believed that before society was organized, humans lived In a state of equality and freedom rather than in a state of war. In this state of nature, no one was necessarily sovereign over anyone else. Locke believed that all humans has certain natural rights

John Locke

The greatest supporter of militant Catholicism in the second half of the sixteenth century was King Philip II of Spain, the son and heir of Charles V. King Philip II, whose reign extended from 1556 to 1598, ushered in an age of Spanish greatness

King Philip II

The state, then, should not interrupt the free play of natural economic forces by imposing government regulations on the economy. The state should leave the economy alone. This doctrine became known by its French name, laissez-faire, meaning "to let (people) do (what they want).

Laissez-faire

Beginning in the 1580s, the standard for playwrights was set by Lope de Vega. He wrote an extraordinary number of plays, perhaps 1,500 in all. Almost 500 of them survive to this day. Vega'd plays are thought to be witty, charming, action-packed, and realistic. Lop eve Vega made no apologies for the fact that he wrote hi splays to please his audiences and satisfy public demand.

Lope de Vega

The bourgeoisie also shared certain goals with the nobles. Both were drawn to the new political ideas of the Enlightenment. In addition, both groups were increasingly upset with a monarchial system resting on privileges and on an old and rigid social order. The opposition of these elites to the old order led them to take drastic action against the absolute monarchy of Louis XVI

Louis XIV

The reign of Louis XIV has long been regarded as the best example of absolutism in the 17th century. French culture, language, and manners reached into all levels of European society. French diplomacy and wars dominated the political affairs of Europe. The court of Louis XIV was imitated throughout Europe

Louis XIV

The artistic Renaissance came to an end when a new movement, called Mannerism, emerged in Italy in the 1520s and 1530s. The Reformation revival of religious values brought much political turmoil. Especially in Italy, the worldly enthusiasm of the Renaissance declined as people grew more anxious and uncertain and wished for spiritual experience

Mannerism

Women as well as men were involved in the Scientific Revolution. One of the most promi- nent female scientists of the seventeenth century, Margaret Cavendish, came from an aristocratic family. She wrote a num- ber of works on scientific matters, including Obser- vations Upon Experimental Philosophy. In her work, Cavendish was especially critical of the growing belief that humans, through science, were the masters of nature: "We have no power at all over natural causes and effects . . . for man is but a small part, his powers are but particular actions of Nature, and he cannot have a supreme and absolute power."

Margaret Cavendish

It was difficult to rule, however, because it was a sprawling empire composed of many different nationalities, languages, religions, and cultures. Empress Maria Theresa, who inherited the throne in 1740, worked to centralize the Austrian Empire and strengthen the power of the state. She was not open to the philosophes' calls for reform, but she worked hard to alleviate the condi- tion of the serfs.

Maria Theresa

The most famous of the female astronomers in Ger- many was Maria Winkelmann. She received training in astronomy from a self-taught astronomer. Her chance to be a practicing astronomer came when she married Gottfried Kirch, Prussia's foremost astron- omer, and became his assistant. Winkelmann made some original contributions to astronomy, including the discovery of a comet. Winkelmann's problems with the Berlin Academy reflect the obstacles women faced in being accepted as scientists. Such work was considered to be chiefly for males. In the view of most people in the seven- teenth century, a life devoted to any kind of scholar- ship was at odds with the domestic duties women were expected to perform.

Maria Winkelmann

For centuries, male intellectuals had argued that the nature of women made them inferior to men and made male domination of women necessary. By the eighteenth century, however, female thinkers began to express their ideas about improving the condition of women. The strongest statement for the rights of women was advanced by the English writer Mary Wollstonecraft. Many see her as the founder of the modern European and American movement for women's rights.Wollstonecraft pointed out that the power of men over women was equally wrong. Wollstonecraft further argued that the Enlightenment was based on an ideal of reason in all human beings. Because women have reason, then they are entitled to the same rights as men. Women, Woll- stonecraft declared, should have equal rights in education, as well as in economic and political life.

Mary Wollstonecraft

The Committee of Public Safety was dominated by Georges Danton, then by the radical Jacobin Maximilien Robespierre.

Maximilien Robespierre

Latin America was a multiracial society. Already by 1501, Spanish rulers permitted intermarriage between Europeans and Native Americans, whose offspring became known as mestizos. In addition, over a period of three centuries, possibly as many as 8 million African slaves were brought to Span- ish and Portuguese America to work the plantations.

Mestizos

When Ivan's dynasty ended in 1598, a period of anarchy known as the Time of Troubles followed. This period ended when the zemskysobor, or National Assembly chose Micheal Romanov as the new czar in 1613

Micheal Romanov

On of the crowning achievements of the golden age of Spanish literature was the work of Miguel de Cervantes. His novel Don Quixote has been hailed as one of the greatest literary works of all time

Miguel de Cervantes

By 1560, Calvinism and Catholicism had become highly militant (combative) religions. They were aggressive in winning converts and in eliminating each other's authority

Militant

Charles-Louis de Secondat, the Baron de Montesquieu, came from the French nobility. His most famous work, The Spirit of the Laws, was pub- lished in 1748. In this study of governments, Mon- tesquieu tried to use the scientific method to find the natural laws that govern the social and political rela- tionships of human beings. Montesquieu identified three basic kinds of gov- ernments: (1) republics, suitable for small states; (2) despotism, appropriate for large states; and (3) monarchies, ideal for moderate-size states. He used England as an example of a monarchy. Montesquieu believed that England's government had three branches: the executive (the monarch), the legislative (parliament), and the judicial (the courts of law)

Montesquieu

Mozart was truly a child prodigy. His failure to get a regular patron to support him financially made his life miserable. Nevertheless, he wrote music passionately. His The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute, and Don Giovanni are three of the world's great- est operas. Haydn remarked to Mozart's father, "Your son is the greatest composer known to me."

Mozart

Mulattoes—the offspring of Africans and Euro- peans — joined mestizos and other descendants of Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans to pro- duce a unique society in Latin America.

Mulattoes

Napoleon Bonaparte's role in the French Revolution is complex. In one sense, he brought it to an end when he came to power in 1799. Yet he was a child of the revolution as well. Without it, he would never have risen to power, and he himself never failed to remind the French that he had persevered the best parts of the revolution during his reign as emperor

Napoleon Bonaparte's

A second important factor in the defeat of Napoleon was nationalism. Nationalism is the sense off unique identity of a people based on common language, religion, and national symbols. Nationalism was one of the most important forces of the nineteenth century. A new era was born when French people decided that they were the nation

Nationalism

Locke believed that all humans had certain natural rights- rights with which they were born. These included rights to life, liberty, and property.

Natural Rights

Philip's first major goal was to consolidate the lands inherited from his father. These included Spain, the Netherlands, and possessions in Italy and the Americas

Netherlands

Parliament proved victorious, due largely to the New Model Army of Oliver Cromwell, a military genius. The New Model Army was made up chiefly of more extreme Puritans, known as the Independents. These men believed that they were doing battle for God. As Cromwell wrote, "This is none other but the hand of God; and to him alone belongs the glory." Some credit is due to Cromwell. His soldiers were well disciplined and trained in the new military tactics of the 17th century. The victorious New Model Army lost no time in taking control. Cromwell purged Parliament of any members who had not supported him.

Oliver Cromwell

A woman who wrote plays and pamphlets in France that refused to accept this exclusion of women from political rights when the "Declaration of the Rights of Man" was established. . Echoing the words of the official declaration, she penned a Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen. In it, she insisted that women should have all the same rights as men.

Olympe de Gouges

The Romanov dynasty lasted until 1917. One of its most prominent members was Peter the Great, who became czar in 1689. Like other Romanov czars who preceded him, Peter was an absolutist monarch who claimed the divine right to rule

Peter the Great

Renaissance humanists had mastered Greek as well as Latin and thus had access to newly discovered works by Ptolemy, Archimedes, and Plato. These writings made it obvious that some ancient thinkers had disagreed with Aristotle and other accepted authorities of the Middle Ages. Other developments also encouraged new ways of thinking. Technical problems that required careful observation and accurate measurements, such as cal- culating the amount of weight that ships could hold, served to stimulate scientific activity. Then, too, the invention of new instruments, such as the telescope and microscope, made fresh scientific discoveries possible. Above all, the printing press helped spread new ideas quickly and easily.

Ptolemy

In the Ptolemaic system, the universe is a series of concentric spheres — spheres one inside the other. Earth is fixed, or motionless, at the center of these spheres. The spheres are made of a crystal-like, trans- parent substance, in which the heavenly bodies— pure orbs of light — are embedded. The rotation of the spheres makes these heavenly bodies rotate about the earth and move in relation to one another.

Ptolemaic system

Religion was an issue as well. The Puritans (Protestants in England inspired by Calvinist ideas) did not like the king's strong defense of the Church of England. While members of the Church of England, the puritans wished to make the church more protestant. Many of Englands gentry, mostly well-to-do landowners, had become Puritans. The Puritan gentry formed an important part of the House of Commons, the lower house of Parliament. It was not wise to alienate them

Puritans

For roughly a year during 1793 and 1794, the Committee of Public Safety took control of the government. To defend France from domestic threats, the Committee adopted policies that became known as the Reign of Terror

Reign of Terror

A science of chemistry also arose in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Robert Boyle was one of the first scientists to conduct controlled experiments. His pioneering work on the properties of gases led to Boyle's Law. This generalization states that the volume of a gas varies with the pressure exerted on it. In the eighteenth century

Robert Boyle

The new conception of the universe brought about by the Scientific Revolution strongly influenced the Western view of humankind. Nowhere is this more evident than in the work of the seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes (day•KAHRT). Descartes began by thinking and writing about the doubt and uncertainty that seemed to be everywhere in the confusion of the seventeenth century. He ended with a philosophy that dominated Western thought until the twentieth century. The starting point for Descartes's new system was doubt. In his most famous work, Discourse on Method, written in 1637, Descartes decided to set aside all that he had learned and to begin again. One fact seemed to him to be beyond doubt—his own existence

Rene Descartes

Robert Walpole served as head of cabinet (later called prime minister) from 1721 to 1742 and pursued a peaceful foreign policy. However, growing trade and industry led to an ever-increasing middle class. The middle class favored expansion of trade and of Britain's world empire. They found a spokesman in William Pitt the Elder, who became head of cabinet in 1757. He expanded the British Empire by acquiring Canada and India in the Seven Years' War.

Robert Walpole

The baroque and neoclassical styles that had domi- nated seventeenth-century art continued into the eigh- teenth century. By the 1730s, however, a new artistic style, known as rococo, had spread all over Europe. Unlike the baroque style, which stressed grandeur and power, rococo emphasized grace, charm, and gentle action. Rococo made use of delicate designs colored in gold with graceful curves. The rococo style was highly secular. Its lightness and charm spoke of the pursuit of pleasure, happiness, and love.Rococo's appeal is evident in the work of Antoine Watteau. In his paintings, gentlemen and ladies in elegant dress reveal a world of upper-class pleasure and joy.

Rococo

Enlightenment ideas were also spread through the salon. Salons were the elegant drawing rooms of the wealthy upper class's great urban houses. Invited guests gathered in these salons and took part in conversations that were often centered on the new ideas of the philosophes. The salons brought writers and artists together with aristocrats, govern- ment officials, and wealthy middle-class people. The women who hosted the salons found them- selves in a position to sway political opinion and influence literary and artistic taste.

Salons

Many members of the Paris Commune proudly called themselves sans-culottes, meaning "without breeches." They wore long trousers, not the knee-length breeches of the nobles, which identified them as ordinary patriots without fine clothes. Often, sans-culottes are depicted as poor workers, but many were merchants or artisans-the elite of their neighborhoods

Sans-culottes

During the Scientific Revolution, people became concerned about how they could best understand the physical world. The result was the creation of a scientific method—a systematic procedure for collecting and analyzing evidence. The scientific method was crucial to the evolution of science in the modern world.

Scientific method

The government functioned through a sepa- ration of powers. In this separation, the executive, legislative, and judicial powers of the government limit and control each other in a system of checks and balances. By preventing any one person or group from gaining too much power, this system provides the greatest freedom and security for the state.

Separation of powers

In his famous work The Social Contract, pub- lished in 1762, Rousseau presented his concept of the social contract. Through a social contract, an entire society agrees to be governed by its general will. Individuals who wish instead to follow their own self-interests must be forced to abide by the general will. "This means nothing less than that [they] will be forced to be free," said Rousseau. Thus, liberty is achieved by being forced to follow what is best for "the general will," because the general will repre- sents what is best for the entire community.

Social contract

On the Baltic in 1703, Peter began construction of a new city, St. Petersburg, his window to the West. Finished during Peter's lifetime, St. Petersburg remained the Russian capital until 1918

St. Petersburg

Thomas Hobbes was alarmed by the revolutionary upheavals in England. He wrote Leviathan, a work on political thought, to try to deal with the problem of disorder. Leviathan was published in 1651. Hobbes claimed that before society was organized human life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Humans were guided not by reason and moral ideals but by a ruthless struggle for self-preservation

Thomas Hobbes

In the first book of the Principia, Newton defined the three laws of motion that govern the planetary bodies, as well as objects on Earth. Crucial to his whole argument was the universal law of gravitation. This law explains why the planetary bodies do not go off in straight lines but instead continue in elliptical orbits about the Sun. The law states, in mathematical terms, that every object in the universe is attracted to every other object by a force called gravity.

Universal law of gravitation

The greatest figure of the Enlightenment was François-Marie Arouet, known simply as Voltaire. A Parisian, Voltaire came from a prosperous middle-class family. He wrote an almost endless stream of pamphlets, novels, plays, letters, essays, and histories, which brought him both fame and wealth. Voltaire was especially well known for his criti- cism of Christianity and his strong belief in religious toleration. He fought against religious intolerance in France. In 1763, he penned his Treatise on Toleration, in which he reminded governments that "all men are brothers under God."

Voltaire

Of all the forms of Elizabethan literature, none expressed the energy of the era better than drama. Of all the dramatists, none is more famous than William Shakespeare. When Shakespeare appeared in London in 1592, Elizabethans already enjoyed the stage. Although he was best known for writing plays, he was also an actor and shareholder in the chief theater company of the time, the Lord Chamberlain's Men. Shakespeare has long been viewed as an universal genius.

William Shakespeare

Philip faced growing resistance from the Dutch in the northern provinces led by William the Silent, the prince of Orange. The struggle dragged on until 1609 when a 12-year truce finally ended the war

William the Silent

Parliament next abolished the monarchy and the House of Lords and declared England a republic, or commonwealth

commonwealth

Seven law codes were created, but the most important was the Civil Code, or Napoleonic Code, introduced in 1804. It preserved many of the principles that the revolutionaries had fought for: equality of all citizens before the law; the right of the individual to choose a profession; religious toleration; and the abolition of serfdom and all feudal obligations

civil code

To stay in power, the directory began to rely on the military, but in military leader turned on the government. In 1799 the successful and popular general Napoleon Bonaparte toppled the directory in a coup d'etat, a sudden overthrow of the government. Napoleon then seized power

coup d'etat

Under the new constitution, the executive was a committee of five called the directory. The council of Elders chose the directors from a list presented by the Council of 500. The directory, which lasted from 1795 to 1799, became known mainly for corruption.

directory

Many historians once assumed that a new type of monarchy emerged in the later eighteenth century, which they called enlightened absolutism. In the system of enlightened absolutism, rulers tried to gov- ern by Enlightenment principles while maintaining their royal powers.

enlightened absolutism

Since the Middle Ages, France's population had been divided by law into one of three status groups, or estates. The first estate consisted of the clergy, the second estate the nobles, and the third estate everyone else. Thus the third estate included anyone from the lowliest peasant to the wealthiest merchant

estates

Both factions, or dissenting groups, tried to influence the "plain", the majority of deputies who did not belong to any political club

factions

From 1560 to 1660, Europe witnessed severe economic and social crises. One major economic problem was inflation, or rising prices. A growing population in the sixteenth century increased the demand for land and food and drove up prices for both

inflation

Descartes has rightly been called the father of modern rationalism. This system of thought is based on the belief that reason is the chief source of knowledge.

rationalism

Despite controlling most of the wealth of the kingdom, neither the clergy nor the nobles had to pay the taille, France's chief tax

taille

On June 17, 1789, the third estate body declared that it was the National Assembly and would draft a constitution Three days later, on June 20, its deputies arrived at their meeting place, only to find the doors had been locked. They then moved to a nearby indoor tennis court and swore that they would continue meeting until they had a new constitution. The oath swore is known as the tennis court oath

tennis court oath

A belief in witchcraft, or magic, had been part of traditional village culture for centuries. The religious zeal that led to the Inquisition and the hunt for heretics was extended to concern about witchcraft. During the 16th and 17th centuries, an intense hysteria affected the lives of many Europeans. Perhaps more than a hundred thousand people were charged with witchcraft. As more and more people were brought to trial, the fear of witches grew, as did the fear of being accused fo witchcraft

witchcraft