AP European History - Units 3 + 4 Vocabulary

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Absolutism

a political system in which a ruler holds total power.

Divine Right of Kings

the belief that the kings receive their power from God and are responsible only to God.

Restoration

the period of time after the death of Oliver Cromwell, where a monarch was restored by Parliament within England.

Constitutional monarchy

a government in which the king or queen shares power with a lawmaking body and has their power limited by the country’s constitution. 

Enclosure movement

the process of consolidating small landholdings into a smaller number of larger farms in England during the eighteenth century.

Tariff

a tax on an imported good or service.

Cottage industry

a method of production in which tasks are done by individuals in their rural homes. Also known as the putting-out system. 

Proto-industrialization

a system of rural manufacture that was intermediate between autarchic feudal production and modern urban factory production.

Navigation Acts

English laws that protected the monopoly to sell British goods, such as sugar, within the empire. 

Oligarchy

where a small group of people control the government.

Balance of power

a system in which no one empire, kingdom, or country would dominate, either on the continent or in the New World.

Fronde

a series of uprisings in France from 1648 to 1653 that challenged the growing power of the monarch. 

Intendants

royal representatives that went to the countryside in France to run the country on behalf of the king.

Junkers

Prussian nobility

Boyars

Russian nobility

Grand Embassy

a group of about 250 boyars in Russia who traveled to Europe to see how more advanced Western European countries operated.

Holy Synod

established by Peter the Great, it was made up of officials and priests within the Russian Orthodox church who were obedient to the tsar

Natural laws

general principles about the way the world works, which are based on mathematical proofs or expressed in mathematical formulas

Astronomy

the study of the universe beyond the earth. 

Heliocentric

sun centered

Rationalism

the theory that reason rather than experience is the foundation of certainty in knowledge.

Empiricism

the theory that all human knowledge comes through what the senses can experience.

Social Contract

a mutually beneficial agreement struck between the people and those who would govern them. 

Tabula Rasa

blank slate

Philosophes

18th century intellectuals of the Enlightenment

Deism

the belief that God had created the world and set it in motion and then left it to run on its own according to natural laws. 

Methodism

founded by John Wesley, it is a Protestant Christian theology that focuses on a personal experience with God, through which any individual can earn salvation. 

Laissez-Faire

a French phrase that means “hands off” it promotes the idea that government should not interfere with the economy

Consumer Revolution

refers to the significant increase in the consumption of goods and services that occurred in Europe during the 18th century, driven by rising incomes and changes in societal attitudes towards consumerism.

Domesticity

the idea of the home as a private sphere distinct from the encroachments of the public world. 

Rococo

an artistic movement in the 18th century that was more graceful and secular than Baroque and reflected a general shift in emphasis from the public to the private sphere. 

Neoclassicism

an artistic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries that honored secular values of reason and order and upheld the classical ideals of simplicity and symmetry. 

Enlightened Absolutism

a system in which rulers tried to govern by Enlightenment principles while maintaining their full royal powers.