AP Euro Unit 5 Key Terms

Estates General

A legislative body in pre revolutionary France made up of representatives of each of the three classes, or estates. It was called into session in 1789 for the first time since 1614

Estates

The three legal categories, or orders, of France's inhabitants: the clergy, the nobility, and everyone else.

National Assembly

The first French revolutionary legislature, made up primarily of representatives of the third estate and a few from the nobility and clergy, in session from 1789 to 1791.

Great Fear

The fear of noble reprisals against peasant uprisings that seized the French countryside and led to further revolt.

Jacobin Club

A political club in revolutionary France whose members were well educated radical republicans.

Second Revolution

From 1792 to 1795, the second phase of the French Revolution, during which the fall of the French monarchy introduced a rapid radicalization of politics.

Girondists

A moderate group that fought for control of the French National Convention in 1793

The Mountain

Led by Robespierre, the French National Convention's radical faction, which seized legislative power in 1793.

Sans culottes

The laboring poor of Paris, so called because the men wore trousers instead of the knee breeches of the aristocracy and middle class; the word came to refer to the militant radicals of the city.

Reign of Terror

The period from 1793 to 1794 during which Robespierre's Committee of Public Safety tried and executed thousands suspected of treason and a new revolutionary culture was imposed.

Thermidorian Reaction

A reaction to the violence of the Reign of Terror in 1794, resulting in the execution of Robespierre and the loosening of economic controls.

Napoleonic Code

French civil code promulgated in 1804 that reasserted the 1789 principles of the equality of all male citizens before the law and the absolute security of wealth and private property, as well as restricting rights accorded to women by previous revolutionary laws

Grand Empire

The empire over which Napoleon and his allies ruled, encompassing virtually all of Europe except Great Britain and Russia.

Continental System

A blockade imposed by Napoleon to halt all trade between continental Europe and Britain, thereby weakening the British economy and military.

Congress of Vienna

A meeting of the Quadruple Alliance - Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Great Britain - restoration France, and smaller European states to fashion a general peace settlement that began after the defeat of Napoleon's France in 1814.

Holy Alliance

An alliance formed by the conservative rulers of Austria, Prussia, and Russia in September 1815 that became a symbol of the repression of liberal and revolutionary movements all over Europe.

Karlsbad Decrees of 1819

Issued in 1819, these decrees were designed to uphold Metternich's conservatism, requiring the German states to root subversive ideas and squelch any liberal organization.

Liberalism

The principal ideas of this movement were equality and liberty; liberals demanded representative government and equality before the law as well as individual freedoms such as freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of worship, and freedom from arbitrary arrest.

Laissez faire

A doctrine of economic liberalism that calls for unrestricted private enterprise and no government interference in the economy.

Nationalism

The idea that each people had its own genius and specific identity that manifested itself especially in a common language and history, and often led to the desire for an independent political state.

Socialism

A backlash against the emergence of individualism and the fragmentation of industrial society, and a move toward cooperation and a sense of community; the key ideas were economic planning, greater social equality, and state regulation of property.

Marxism

An influential political program based on the socialist ideas of German radical Karl Marx, which called for a working-class revolution to overthrow capitalist society and establish a Communist state.

Bourgeoisie

The upper-class minority who owned the means of production and, according to Marx, exploited the working class proletariat

Proletariat

The industrial working class who, according to Marx, were unfairly exploited by the profit-seeking bourgeoisie.

Romanticism

An artistic movement at its height from about 1790 to the 1840s that was in part a revolt against classicism and the Enlightenment, characterized by a belief in emotional exuberance, unrestrained imagination, and spontaneity in both art and personal life.

Corn Laws of 1815

British laws governing the import and export of grain, which were revised in 1815 to prohibit the importation of foreign grain unless the price at home rose to improbable levels, thus benefiting the aristocracy but making food prices high for working people.

Peterloo Massacre

The army's violent suppression in 1819 of a protest that took place at Saint Peter's Fields in Manchester in reaction to the revision of the Corn Laws.

Reform Bill of 1832

A major British political reform that increased the number of male voters by about 50 percent and gave political representation to new industrial areas.

Great Famine

The result of four years of potato crop failure in the late 1840s in Ireland, a country that had grown dependent on potatoes as a dietary staple.

Greater Germany

A liberal plan for German national unification that included the German-speaking parts of the Austrian Empire, put forth at the national parliament in 1848 but rejected by Austrian rulers.