Chapter 19

Navigation Acts

Mid-seventeenth-century English mercantilist laws that greatly restricted other countries' rights to trade with England and its colonies

What made it possible for Islamic rulers to tolerate more religious difference than European Christian rulers of the same period?

Muslim rulers for the most part guaranteed the lives and property of Christians and Jews on their promise of obedience and the payment of a poll tax

What revolutionary discoveries were made in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and why did they occur in Europe?

"Scientific Revolution," these developments were the result of many more people studying the natural world,

Haskalah

A Jewish Enlightenment movement led by Prussian philosopher Moses Mendelssohn

constitutionalism

A form of government in which power is limited by law and balanced between the authority and power of the government

philosophes

A group of French intellectuals who proclaimed that they were bringing the light of knowledge to their fellow creatures in the Age of Enlightenment.

public sphere

An idealized intellectual space that emerged in Europe during the Enlightenment. Here, the public came together to discuss important social, economic, and political issues

Enlightenment

An intellectual and cultural movement in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and its colonies that used rational and critical thinking to debate issues such as political sovereignty, religious tolerance, gender roles, and racial difference

deism

Belief in a distant, noninterventionist deity, shared by many Enlightenment thinkers.

Bill of Rights of 1689

A bill passed by Parliament and accepted by William and Mary that limited the powers of British monarchs and affirmed those of Parliament

general will

A concept associated with Rousseau, referring to the common interests of all the people, who have replaced the power of the monarch.

What types of economic, social, and political structures were found in the kingdoms and states along the west coast and in the Sudan?

Despite their political differences and whether they were agricultural, pastoral, or a mixture of both, West African cultures all faced the challenges presented by famine, disease, and the slave trade

How were the three Islamic Empires established, and what sorts of government did they set up?

Sufi orders (groups of Islamic mystics) thrived, and Islam became the most important force integrating the region. It was from the many small Turkish chiefs that the founders of the three main empires emerged

enlightened absolutism

Term coined by historians to describe the rule of eighteenth-century monarchs who, without renouncing their own absolute authority, adopted Enlightenment ideals of rationalism, progress, and tolerance.

Copernican hypothesis

The idea that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe.

economic liberalism

The theory, associated with Adam Smith, that the pursuit of self-interest in a competitive market suffices to improve living conditions, rendering government intervention unnecessary and undesirable.

janissaries

Turkish for "recruits"; they formed the elite army corps

law of universal gravitation

Newton's law that all objects are attracted to one another and that the force of attraction is proportional to the object's quantity of matter and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

salons

Regular social gatherings held by talented and rich Parisian women in their homes, where philosophes and their followers met to discuss literature, science, and philosophy

What was the relationship between the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment? How did new ways of understanding the natural world influence thinking about human society?

The growth of the scientific revolution lead to the growth of the enlightenment which was the new way of understanding the natural influenced thinking about human society.

law of inertia

A law formulated by Galileo stating that motion, not rest, is the natural state of an object and that an object continues in motion forever unless stopped by some external force.

How did economic and social change and the rise of Atlantic trade interact with Enlightenment ideas?

A new public sphere emerged in the growing cities in which people exchanged opinions in cafés, bookstores, and other spaces. A consumer revolution brought fashion and imported foods into the reach of common people for the first time

empiricism

A theory of inductive reasoning that calls for acquiring evidence through observation and experimentation rather than reason and speculation.

sensationalism

An idea, espoused by John Locke, that all human ideas and thoughts are produced as a result of sensory impressions

ulama

Religious scholars whom Sunnis trust to interpret the Qur'an and the Sunna, the deeds and sayings of Muhammad

Sepoys

The native Indian troops who were trained as infantrymen

cottage industry

a form of economic activity that became important in eighteenth-century Europe.

What intellectual and social changes occurred as a result of the Scientific Revolution?

assistance of skilled craftsmen who invented new instruments and helped conduct experiments

What new ideas about society and human relations emerged in the Enlightenment, and what new practices and institutions enabled these ideas to take hold?

the strong states that emerged to quell the disorder soon inspired questions about political sovereignty and its limits. Increased movement of peoples, goods, and ideas within and among the states of Asia, Africa, Europe, and its colonies offered examples of shockingly different ways of life and values.