Advanced World Studies 9 - Unit 3 Vocabulary

DO NOT TAKE AS FACT

Philosophes

French for “philosopher,” this term was applied to all Enlightenment intellectuals.

Scientific Revolution

A period of intellectual advancements in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that revolutionized religious, philosophical, and scientific beliefs. Many great scientific minds emerged, such as Galileo Galilei and Nicolaus Copernicus, and many new views of the universe were developed.

Scientific Method

A procedure for collecting and analyzing data to reach conclusions developed by English philosopher Francis Bacon.

Universal Law of Gravitation

One of Isaac Newton’s three rules of motion; it states that every object in the universe is attracted to every other object by a force called gravity and was defined in his book Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Principia).

Geocentric

A belief in which the universe revolves around Earth developed by Ptolemy in 100 A.D.; it was widely accepted due to the Church’s support of the theory.

Heliocentric

A belief in which the universe revolves around the Sun developed by Nicholas Copernicus in May 1543.

Rationalism

A system of thought expounded by René Descartes; it is the belief that reason is the main source of knowledge.

Inductive reasoning

The doctrine that scientists should proceed from the particular to the general by making observations and experiments to test theories, which would lead to generally correct principles, was developed by Francis Bacon.

Empiricism

A theory developed by Francis Bacon that says knowledge is obtained through observation.

Ptolemaic system

A model of the universe that placed Earth at the center with all revolving around it; developed by Middle Ages philosophers, based on Ptolemy’s, Aristotle’s, and Christianity’s ideals.

Separation of Power

A form of government envisioned by Montesquieu in which multiple branches limit each other’s powers through checks and balances.

Deism

Championed by Voltaire, an eighteenth-century religious philosophy based on reason and natural law

Laissez-faire

A doctrine stating that the state should not interfere with the economy and economic activity; means “...‘let (people) do (what they want).’” Developed by the Physiocrats.

Wealth of Nations

One of the best statements of laissez-faire, written in 1776 by Adam Smith.

Social Contract

The concept that a society agrees to be governed by its general will and individuals who wish to follow their own interests should be forced to abide by that will; presented in Rousseau’s The Social Contract.

Rococo

An artistic style that replaced Baroque in the 1730s; it was highly secular and emphasized grace, charm, and gentle action.

Enlightened Absolutism

Emerged in the late eighteenth century; rulers tried to govern by Enlightenment principles while maintaining royal power. Some examples of this include Frederick II of Prussia and Joseph II of Austria

The Seven Years’ War

Started in 1756 with the subsequent wars from the War of Austrian Succession over Silesia between allies Britain and Prussia and allies Austria, Russia, and France. Prussia, Russia, and Austria concluded the war in 1763 after Peter III withdrew Russian troops and created a stalemate. France and Britain concluded after the French defeat in North America in the same year with the Treaty of Paris.

War of Austrian Succession

Started in 1740 with the confusion of Maria Theresa succeeding Charles VI in Austria, which King Frederick II of Prussia took advantage of by invading Austrian Silesia. It was fought in three places; Prussia took Silesia, France occupied some Austrian territory and took Madras, and the British captured Louisbourg. It ended in 1748 with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.

French and Indian War

The American part of the Seven Years’ War was fought between Britain and France, with their respective Native American allies. The British ultimately won due to their persistence, and by the Treaty of Paris, France gave Canada and lands east of the Mississippi to England.

Popular Sovereignty

The right to govern through consent of the people.

Federal System

A form of government in which power is shared between the national and state governments.

Stamp Act

Imposed by Parliament, it required printed materials in American colonies to carry a stamp showing a tax had been paid to Britain.

Lexington and Concord

The first fights of the Revolutionary War were fought in these cities between colonists and the British army in 1775.

Common Sense

A pamphlet written by Thomas Paine; it argued that monarchies seized power from people and King George III was a tyrant. Common Sense persuaded many colonists to declare independence.

Declaration of Independence

Written by Thomas Jefferson and approved by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence stated that “all men are created equal…certain unalienable Rights…Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” It also stated that the United States was to become a new nation, and that since the colonists had been governed without consent by Britain, they justifiably had the right to overthrow the British government in America.

Articles of Confederation

The United States’ first constitution, the Articles created a weak central government as opposed to a strong central government. However, it was so weak it wasn’t able to deal with problems.

Constitution

Created a federal system in which the government contained three branches: the executive branch, which included the president; the legislative branch, which consisted of two houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives; and the judicial branch, formed by the Supreme Court and other courts. It was mainly created by James Madison, whose belief in the division of powers contributed to the three branches.

Bill of Rights

The original 10 amendments to the Constitution; it guaranteed freedom of religion, speech, press, petition, and assembly, as well as the right to bear arms and guaranteed trial by jury, due process of law, and the protection of property rights.

Amendment

An addition or change to a constitutional document.

Federalist Party

A group of people who believed a government should be divided into national authority and state-wide authority, as well as different branches to do different tasks.

Anti-Federalist Party

A group of people that opposed the Constitution and the Federalist Party’s ideals, and wanted a stronger centralized government.

Three Estates

France was divided into these before the French Revolution- The first estate was the clergy; they numbered ~130,000 people and were divided between high-ranking bishops and cardinals and poorer priests. The second estate was the nobility, numbering ~350,000 and holding leading positions in government, military, and law. The third estate was divided between the peasants and middle class.

Taille

France’s annual tax on property that provided income for the monarchy; neither the first nor second estates were required to pay this.

Bourgeoisie

The French middle class occupied ~8% of the population, or roughly 2 million people. Included merchants, bankers, doctors, etc.

Sans-culottes

Meaning “without breeches,” members of the Paris Commune called themselves this due to their wearing of long trousers, unlike the breeches of the nobles, showing them as ordinary people.

Clergy

Made up of religious figures such as bishops, cardinals, and priests; the clergy made up the First Estate in France.

Peasants

Making up 75-80% of the Third Estate in France, peasants owed certain duties to the nobility, such as harvesting crops.

Nobility

They held leading positions in government, military, law, and the Church and made up the Second Estate in France.

Estates General

The French parliament; it was called in 1789 for the first time since 1614, when France was on the verge of a financial and economic collapse from the government’s spending in the Americas.

Cahiers

The official lists of complaints, proposals, and wishes compiled by the Third Estate before the French Revolution in 1789.

Tennis Court Oath

An oath sworn by the Third Estate’s deputies in 1789 saying they would continue meeting until they had a new constitution. It was named so because the oath was sworn in an indoor tennis court after their original meeting place was found locked.

National Assembly

It revoked the legal privileges of the nobles and clergy shortly after the start of the French Revolution. It also adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, which reflected the ideas of the Enlightenment in stating that the natural rights of a man include liberty, property, and security, as well as granting freedoms of speech and press.

Bastille

A fortress in France used as a prison and armory that, in 1789, was stormed by almost 900 Parisians who decapitated the warden and demolished the Bastille. This marked the beginning of the French Revolution.

Declaration of the Rights of Man

Adopted by the National Assembly on August 26, 1789, this French Declaration stated the basic rights of a man, being “‘liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.’” It also included the ideas that all are innocent until proven guilty, that appointment to office should be based on talent, and that all citizens and groups should pay taxes. It also stated freedoms of speech and the press.

Paris Commune

A group of radicals in France during the French Revolution who attacked the royal palace in August of 1792, took the king captive, and forced the National Assembly to suspend the monarchy.

Girondins

A political club that represented areas outside of Paris due to their fear of the Mountain (radical mobs in Paris).

Jacobites

A political club that included much of the Mountain and felt the king needed to be executed.

National Convention - France

The ruling body of France starting in 1792; it abolished the monarchy in France and established a republic. They were convinced by the Mountain to condemn Louis XVI to death, which they did by guillotine; they also gave power to the Committee of Public Safety to meet foreign and domestic crises.

Electors

Individuals qualified to vote in an election.

Coup d’etat

An overthrow of the government, usually a sudden one.

Guillotine

A mechanism used for execution in France that consists of a blade falling down guide rails to the endpoint where a person’s neck would be, decapitating them in the process. As many as 16,000 guillotine executions were carried out during the French Reign of Terror.

Reign of Terror

A period in France between 1793 and 1794 in which the Committee of Public Safety prosecuted counterrevolutionaries and traitors in an attempt to meet the domestic crises at the time. Almost 40,000 people were killed while the Committee attempted to bring rebellious cities under Convention control.

De-Christianization

Happened in France in 1793 due to the Convention members’ beliefs that the Catholic faith encouraged superstition rather than reason; many Christian references in France were purged, and many changes were made to the calendar year. Despite this, Robespierre eventually realized that France would remain overwhelmingly Catholic.

The Directory

Under the Constitution of 1795 in France, it was a committee of five chosen by the Council of Elders and was known mainly for corruption. It was overthrown in 1799 by Napoleon Bonaparte.

Consulate

A French government set up by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799 after the Directory. It was supposedly a republic, but Napoleon held complete power. The Consulate (Napoleon) appointed officials, controlled the army, conducted foreign affairs, and influenced the legislature.

Nationalism

The sense of identity of people being based on language, religion, and symbols. This contributed to Napoleon’s downfall because the people he conquered adopted Nationalism ideas, which united them in their hatred of him and revealed the power of national feeling.

Napoleonic Code

Also known as the Civil Code, the most important of the seven law codes introduced in 1804 in France; it preserved revolutionary principles such as the equality of citizens before the law, the right to choose a profession, religious toleration, and the abolition of serfdom.

Trafalgar

A battle between British and French-Spanish fleets in 1805 caused by Napoleon’s desire to invade Britain; the French-Spanish fleet was defeated, which ended Napoleon’s plans for invasion.

Continental System

Another one of Napoleon’s failed attempts to defeat Britain, the Continental System was designed to stop British goods from reaching Europe to be sold; this would’ve financially weakened the British.

The Grand Army

Napoleon’s army of over 600,000 that invaded Russia because of the Russians’ refusal to remain in the Continental System; this was the beginning of the end for Napoleon, as although they had “won,” only around 40,000 soldiers made it back to Poland, which caused other European states to attack the crippled French army.

Conservatism

A political philosophy favoring obedience to political authority and organized religion; many rulers who wanted to stop the spread of French Revolution ideas believed in this.

Intervention

The idea that outside powers have the right to send armies into countries in which there are revolutions to restore a government.

Liberalism

A political philosophy grown from the Enlightenment that stated that humans should be as free as possible from government restraint and that the rights of all people should be protected.

Elba

The island Napoleon was exiled to after the disaster of the Grand Army and the fall of Paris in March 1814. He escaped and returned to France.

St. Helena

The island Napoleon was exiled to after his bloody defeat at Waterloo by the British and Prussian armies, where he died in 1821.

Waterloo

A battle between French and British/Prussian forces on June 18, 1815, after Napoleon returned from Elba and attacked Belgium. Napoleon’s forces lost miserably, and Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena.

Congress of Vienna

A meeting between Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia after the defeat of Napoleon in September 1814. The Congress’s goals were to restore the old order, which they did by restoring royal families to their positions of power, and to balance political and military power in Europe.

Civil Liberties

The basic rights of all people; included equality before the law and freedoms of speech, press, assembly, et cetera.

Nicolaus Copernicus

A highly influential mathematician in the Scientific Revolution, he developed the theory of the universe being heliocentric.

Galileo Galilei

He was the first European to make observations of space using a telescope. He made a number of remarkable discoveries, such as sunspots and the moons of Jupiter.

Isaac Newton

Wrote a book titled Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, known as the Principia. In this book, he defined the three laws of motion and the universal law of gravitation, which states that any object is attracted to every other object via gravity.

Montesquieu

A French noble who tried to find natural laws that govern relationships of humans and contributed to the idea of separation of powers in a government with checks and balances.

John Locke

A seventeenth-century political thinker who believed that humans are born with a tabula rasa, or a blank slate, and are molded by the world around them.

Jean-Jacques Rosseau

A famous philosophe who wrote The Social Contract, in which he presents his concept of the social contract, or a government being governed by its general will; thus, people are “...forced to be free.”

Mary Wollstonecraft

One of if not the most influential female Enlightenment thinkers, she championed women’s rights and pointed out that the power of men over women was wrong.

Adam Smith

A Scottish philosopher who made one of the best statements of laissez-faire in 1776 in his work The Wealth of Nations, which stated that the government should only protect society from invasion, defend citizens from injustice, and keep up public works that an individual couldn’t do.

Johannes Kepler

A German mathematician who destroyed the Ptolemaic system by proving Copernicus’s theory of heliocentrism.

Robert Boyle

One of the first scientists to conduct controlled experiments, he developed Boyle’s Law, which stated that the volume of a gas varies with the pressure exerted on it.

René Descartes

A seventeenth-century French philosopher, he considered the confusion and doubt of the time and developed a principle of the separation of mind and body. He was the father of rationalism.

Voltaire

A French philosopher who was well known for his criticism of Christianity and his championing of deism, a philosophy based on reason, and religious toleration.

Frederick II

Ruled from 1740 to 1786; he was one of the most well-educated monarchs of the time and embraced Enlightenment reforms such as the ideas of natural rights, religious toleration, and equality in law.

Catherine the Great

One of the most famous Russian czarinas, she ruled Russia from 1762 to 1796 and was very intelligent and familiar with the works of the philosophes. She expanded Russia’s landmass and military greatly.

Joseph II

He was probably the monarch who most implemented Enlightenment ideas. He made many reforms to Austria, including the abolition of serfdom and the death penalty, the establishment of principles of equality before the law, and religious toleration. His reform movement mostly failed, as he realized and acknowledged on his epitaph.

Thomas Paine

Published Common Sense in January of 1776, a persuasive pamphlet emphasizing the need for the American colonies to split from the British monarchy; it worked very well.

Thomas Jefferson

The author of the Declaration of Independence, he distrusted strong central governments and believed in religious freedom and separation of church and state. He was one of the most important Founding Fathers and was influenced by Enlightenment thinkers.

King Louis XVI

The king of France around the time of the French Revolution; his throne was overthrown by peasant rebellions in the 1780s and 90s and he was executed by guillotine in January 1793.

Marie Antoinette

The last queen of France before the French Revolution, her extravagance and luxurious lifestyle led the poor and jobless French people to feel unfairly treated, revolt, and execute her via the guillotine.

Robespierre

The leader of the Committee of Public Safety that terrorized France during the Reign of Terror; he was obsessed with ridding France of corruption but was executed in 1794 due to people’s fear of him.

Napoleon Bonaparte

He brought an end to the French Revolution in 1799 when he came to power. He made many achievements, such as establishing peace with the Church and codifying the laws. He became the greatest power in Europe between 1807 and 1812 after defeating the Austrian, Prussian, and Russian armies, and spread ideas of the French Revolution, such as legal equality and religious toleration. However, once he decided to invade Russia, his rule came to an end, as over 520,000 of the 600,000 soldiers did not come home, and later in June 1815, he was brutally defeated at Waterloo and exiled to St. Helena.

King Louis XVIII

Came to power in France after Napoleon’s failed attempt to invade Russia and exile; was shortly after replaced by Napoleon again.

Metternich

An Austrian foreign minister, he was the most influential leader at the Congress of Vienna, saying that royal families that ruled before Napoleon should be returned to power after Napoleon’s defeat.