(U2) Early Modern Transformations (1648-1815): [1648-1788]

15-19

Peace of Westphalia (1648)

Identify: Series of treaties that ended the Thirty Years’ War and the Dutch Revolt against Spain.

Significance: Recognized the sovereignty of independent states, reduced the power of the Holy Roman Empire and the papacy, and established the modern state system based on territorial sovereignty.

Contextualization: Marked the end of the religious wars era and the beginning of the modern international order.

Baroque Style

Identify: Dramatic, emotional, and ornate artistic style (c. 1600–1750) featuring grandeur, movement, and intense religious emotion, seen in art, architecture, and music.

Significance: Used by the Catholic Church and absolutist monarchs (especially Louis XIV) to display power, glory, and Counter-Reformation fervor.

Contextualization: Artistic expression of Absolutism and the Catholic Reformation.

Fronde (1648–1653)

Identify: Series of rebellions in France by nobles and parlements against the growing power of the monarchy during Louis XIV’s minority.

Significance: Failed rebellions that convinced Louis XIV to centralize power and move the court to Versailles to control the nobility.

Contextualization: Key event that strengthened French absolutism.

Peace of Utrecht (1713)

Identify: Series of treaties that ended the War of the Spanish Succession.

Significance: Prevented France from uniting with Spain; recognized the Protestant succession in Britain and gave Britain important colonial and commercial advantages.

Contextualization: Established a balance of power in Europe after the reign of Louis XIV.

Mercantilism

Identify: Economic theory and policy (dominant 16th–18th centuries) that stressed government regulation of the economy to achieve a favorable balance of trade and accumulate bullion.

Significance: Encouraged colonies, tariffs, and monopolies to strengthen the state; shaped European colonial and commercial policy.

Contextualization: Economic doctrine closely tied to Absolutism and state-building.

Junkers

Identify: Prussian landowning nobility who served as officers in the army and administrators for the Hohenzollern monarchs.

Significance: Formed the backbone of Prussian militarism and bureaucratic absolutism.

Contextualization: Social foundation of Prussian absolutism.

Boyars

Identify: Traditional Russian nobility who held land and opposed centralization under the tsars.

Significance: Peter the Great reduced their power by forcing them into state service and creating a new service nobility.

Contextualization: Obstacle to Russian absolutism that was eventually overcome.

Cossacks

Identify: Semi-autonomous warrior communities in southern Russia and Ukraine known for their horsemanship and military skills.

Significance: Frequently rebelled against central authority; later used by the Russian state for expansion and defense.

Contextualization: Important element in Russian territorial expansion and social unrest.

Sultan

Identify: Title of the Ottoman emperor, who held both political and religious authority as caliph.

Significance: Ruled a multi-ethnic empire using the devshirme and millet systems.

Contextualization: Representative of Islamic imperial power contrasting with European absolutism.

Janissary Corps

Identify: Elite Ottoman infantry units composed of Christian boys taken through the devshirme system and converted to Islam.

Significance: Originally highly effective, but later became corrupt and resistant to reform, contributing to Ottoman decline.

Contextualization: Key military institution of the Ottoman Empire.

Millet System

Identify: Ottoman administrative system that allowed religious minorities (Christians and Jews) to govern themselves in internal matters under their own religious leaders.

Significance: Maintained social order in a diverse empire but reinforced religious divisions.

Contextualization: Ottoman approach to governing a multi-religious empire.

Constitutionalism

Identify: Belief that government power should be limited by law and representative institutions (especially Parliament).

Significance: Developed most strongly in England and the Dutch Republic as an alternative to absolutism.

Contextualization: Major political alternative to royal absolutism in Early Modern Europe.

Republicanism

Identify: Political ideology favoring a government without a monarch, based on the sovereignty of the people or their representatives.

Significance: Strong in the Dutch Republic and later influenced the American and French Revolutions.

Contextualization: Competing ideology with absolutism during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Puritans

Identify: English Protestants who wanted to “purify” the Church of England of Catholic remnants and emphasize strict moral discipline.

Significance: Opposed Charles I, played a major role in the English Civil War, and many migrated to North America.

Contextualization: Radical wing of the English Reformation and drivers of constitutional conflict.

Protectorate

Identify: Military dictatorship established by Oliver Cromwell after the execution of Charles I (1653–1659).

Significance: Failed experiment in republican rule that ultimately led to the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.

Contextualization: Outcome of the English Civil War and Interregnum.

Test Act (1673)

Identify: English law that required all government officials to swear allegiance to the Church of England and take communion according to Anglican rites.

Significance: Excluded Catholics and Protestant dissenters from public office; heightened religious-political tensions.

Contextualization: Religious conflict in Restoration England.

Stadholder

Identify: Highest executive official in the Dutch Republic, usually held by the House of Orange.

Significance: Served as military commander and symbolic leader; created tension between republican and monarchical tendencies.

Contextualization: Unique feature of Dutch constitutionalism.

Natural Philosophy

Identify: Term used before “science” for the systematic study of the natural world in the 16th–18th centuries.

Significance: Evolved into modern science through observation, experimentation, and mathematics.

Contextualization: Foundation of the Scientific Revolution.

Copernican Hypothesis

Identify: Theory proposed by Nicolaus Copernicus (1543) that the Earth and planets revolve around the sun (heliocentrism).

Significance: Challenged the geocentric view and Church authority; sparked the Scientific Revolution.

Contextualization: Beginning of the shift from medieval to modern cosmology.

Law of Inertia

Identify: Principle formulated by Galileo that an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.

Significance: Undermined Aristotelian physics and supported the new mechanistic view of the universe.

Contextualization: Key contribution to the Scientific Revolution.

Law of Universal Gravitation

Identify: Isaac Newton’s theory (1687) that every particle of matter attracts every other particle with a force proportional to their mass and inversely proportional to the square of the distance.

Significance: Unified celestial and terrestrial physics; became the cornerstone of the Newtonian worldview.

Contextualization: Culmination of the Scientific Revolution.

Cartesian Dualism

Identify: René Descartes’ philosophy that reality consists of two substances: mind (thinking) and matter (extended).

Significance: Promoted rationalism and the mechanistic view of the physical world.

Contextualization: Major philosophical foundation of the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment.

Enlightenment

Identify: Intellectual movement of the 18th century (c. 1680–1789) that emphasized reason, progress, liberty, and the scientific method as tools to improve society.

Significance: Challenged traditional authority (Church and monarchy) and inspired reforms and revolutions.

Contextualization: Dominant intellectual movement of the 18th century.

Rationalism

Identify: Belief that reason and logical deduction are the primary sources of knowledge (associated with Descartes).

Significance: Encouraged systematic doubt and mathematical certainty in philosophy and science.

Contextualization: Key method of the Scientific Revolution and early Enlightenment.

Sensationalism

Identify: Theory (especially John Locke) that all knowledge comes from sensory experience rather than innate ideas.

Significance: Undermined traditional authority and supported empiricism and education reform.

Contextualization: Foundation of empirical philosophy in the Enlightenment.

Philosophes

Identify: French intellectuals (Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot, Rousseau) who popularized Enlightenment ideas through writing, satire, and the Encyclopedia.

Significance: Spread ideas of tolerance, reason, and reform across Europe and America.

Contextualization: Public face of the Enlightenment.

Deism

Identify: Belief in a distant, non-interventionist God who created the universe and set natural laws in motion but does not perform miracles.

Significance: Rejected organized religion and superstition while maintaining belief in a rational creator.

Contextualization: Religious expression of Enlightenment rationalism.

Salon

Identify: Informal gatherings hosted by wealthy women (salonnières) where philosophes, nobles, and intellectuals discussed ideas.

Significance: Crucial venues for spreading Enlightenment ideas and allowing mixed-gender intellectual exchange.

Contextualization: Social institution of the Enlightenment.

Rococo

Identify: Light, playful, ornate artistic style of the mid-18th century emphasizing elegance, curves, and decoration.

Significance: Reflected aristocratic taste and hedonism; later criticized by Enlightenment thinkers.

Contextualization: Artistic counterpart to late Baroque, associated with the Old Regime.

Public Sphere

Identify: New arenas of public discussion (coffeehouses, salons, newspapers, journals) that emerged in the 18th century.

Significance: Allowed critical debate on political and social issues outside government and Church control.

Contextualization: Social foundation for the spread of Enlightenment ideas.

Enlightened Absolutism

Identify: System in which monarchs (Frederick the Great, Catherine the Great, Joseph II) claimed to rule according to rational, Enlightenment principles while maintaining absolute power.

Significance: Led to reforms in law, education, and religious toleration, but rarely limited royal authority.

Contextualization: Attempt to combine absolutism with Enlightenment ideas.

Cameralism

Identify: German science of administration and economic policy aimed at strengthening the state through efficient bureaucracy and mercantilist policies.

Significance: Influenced Prussian and Austrian state-building.

Contextualization: Economic and administrative arm of enlightened absolutism.

Haskalah

Identify: Jewish Enlightenment movement in the 18th century that encouraged secular education and integration into European society.

Significance: Promoted modernization among European Jews and laid groundwork for later Jewish emancipation.

Contextualization: Jewish version of the broader Enlightenment.

Enclosure

Identify: Process in 18th-century Britain where open fields and common lands were fenced off into private plots.

Significance: Increased agricultural productivity and efficiency but displaced many peasants, contributing to rural poverty and migration to cities.

Contextualization: Agricultural Revolution that supported industrialization.

Proletarianization

Identify: Process by which people lost control of the means of production and became dependent on wage labor.

Significance: Created a growing class of landless workers essential for the Industrial Revolution.

Contextualization: Social consequence of agricultural and economic change in Early Modern Europe.

Cottage Industry

Identify: Domestic system of manufacturing (especially textiles) where rural families produced goods for merchants on a piece-rate basis.

Significance: Increased production and income before factories; served as a bridge to full industrialization.

Contextualization: Proto-industrialization.

Putting-Out System

Identify: Merchant-organized system in which raw materials were “put out” to rural workers who processed them at home and returned finished products.

Significance: Expanded manufacturing without large capital investment in factories.

Contextualization: Key feature of the cottage industry and proto-industrialization.

Industrious Revolution

Identify: 17th–18th century increase in labor intensity and market-oriented work by European households before the Industrial Revolution.

Significance: Raised productivity and prepared the workforce for later factory labor.

Contextualization: Precursor to the Industrial Revolution.

Guild System

Identify: Medieval urban associations that regulated craft production, training, and quality standards.

Significance: Gradually declined in the 18th century due to economic liberalism and proto-industrialization.

Contextualization: Traditional economic organization challenged by new commercial forces.

Economic Liberalism

Identify: Theory (associated with Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, 1776) advocating free markets, minimal government intervention, and laissez-faire policies.

Significance: Challenged mercantilism and became the dominant economic ideology of the 19th century.

Contextualization: Intellectual foundation of modern capitalism.

Navigation Acts

Identify: Series of English laws (1651 onward) that regulated colonial trade to benefit England.

Significance: Restricted colonial commerce to English ships and ports; created tension with American colonies.

Contextualization: Mercantilist colonial policy.

Treaty of Paris (1763)

Identify: Treaty that ended the Seven Years’ War.

Significance: Gave Britain dominance in North America and India; weakened France and Spain.

Contextualization: Established British colonial supremacy in the 18th century.

Debt Peonage

Identify: System in Spanish America in which indigenous or mixed-race workers were tied to landowners through inescapable debt.

Significance: Replaced the encomienda as a form of coerced labor.

Contextualization: Labor exploitation in colonial Latin America.

Transatlantic Slave Trade

Identify: Massive forced migration of Africans to the Americas (c. 1500–1800), primarily to work on sugar, tobacco, and cotton plantations.

Significance: Enormously profitable for European merchants; caused immense human suffering and shaped the Atlantic economy.

Contextualization: Central element of the Atlantic economy and triangular trade.

Community Controls

Identify: Informal social mechanisms (gossip, shaming, charivari) used by villages to enforce moral norms.

Significance: Maintained social order in rural communities before strong state policing.

Contextualization: Traditional rural social regulation.

Charivari

Identify: Noisy public ritual (mocking processions, rough music) used to humiliate individuals who violated community norms (especially in marriage).

Significance: Served as an informal tool of social control.

Contextualization: Popular culture and community justice in Early Modern Europe.

Illegitimacy Explosion

Identify: Sharp rise in out-of-wedlock births in the 18th century, especially in cities.

Significance: Reflected changing sexual behavior, urbanization, and weakening of traditional community controls.

Contextualization: Social change during the era of expansion.

Wet-Nursing

Identify: Practice in which urban middle- and upper-class mothers sent infants to rural wet nurses.

Significance: Contributed to higher infant mortality and reflected class differences in child-rearing.

Contextualization: Family life and gender roles in the 18th century.

Blood Sports

Identify: Popular entertainments such as bear-baiting, cockfighting, and public executions.

Significance: Reflected the rough, violent character of popular culture before the civilizing process.

Contextualization: Traditional popular culture.

Carnival

Identify: Festive period before Lent involving feasting, drinking, masquerades, and social inversion.

Significance: Provided temporary release from social hierarchy and norms.

Contextualization: Key element of pre-modern popular culture.

Just Price

Identify: Medieval and early modern idea that goods should be sold at a fair price based on need rather than pure market supply and demand.

Significance: Gradually replaced by market pricing during the commercial revolution.

Contextualization: Traditional economic ethics challenged by capitalism.

Consumer Revolution

Identify: 18th-century surge in the consumption of colonial goods (sugar, tea, coffee, tobacco) and manufactured items by a growing middle class.

Significance: Stimulated demand and helped create a more commercialized society.

Contextualization: Economic and social change preparing the ground for industrialization.

Pietism

Identify: Protestant movement (especially in Germany) emphasizing personal devotion, emotional faith, and moral living over formal doctrine.

Significance: Revived religious feeling and influenced Methodism.

Contextualization: Religious revival within Protestantism.

Methodists

Identify: Evangelical Protestant movement founded by John and Charles Wesley in 18th-century England.

Significance: Stressed personal conversion, discipline, and social reform; appealed especially to the working classes.

Contextualization: Major religious response to the social changes of the era.

Jansenism

Identify: Strict Catholic movement in France influenced by Augustine that emphasized original sin and predestination.

Significance: Opposed by the Jesuits and condemned by the papacy; reflected tensions within Catholicism.

Contextualization: Catholic counterpart to Protestant rigorism.

Estates General

Identify: French representative assembly divided into three estates (clergy, nobility, commoners) that had not met since 1614.

Significance: Convened by Louis XVI in 1789 due to financial crisis; its calling led directly to the French Revolution.

Contextualization: Trigger event of the French Revolution.

Estates

Identify: The three legal social orders in France: First (clergy), Second (nobility), and Third (commoners).

Significance: Voting by estate gave disproportionate power to the privileged orders.

Contextualization: Social and political structure of the Old Regime.

National Assembly

Identify: Assembly formed by the Third Estate in June 1789 after declaring themselves representatives of the nation.

Significance: Took the Tennis Court Oath and began drafting a constitution; marked the beginning of the French Revolution.

Contextualization: Birth of revolutionary France.

Great Fear (1789)

Identify: Wave of peasant panic and uprisings across rural France in the summer of 1789, fueled by rumors of aristocratic plots.

Significance: Forced the National Assembly to abolish feudal privileges on the Night of August 4.

Contextualization: Peasant participation in the early French Revolution.

Jacobin Club

Identify: Radical political club in Paris during the French Revolution that pushed for democratic reforms and later the Republic.

Significance: Dominated the National Convention and led the Reign of Terror under Robespierre.

Contextualization: Radical phase of the French Revolution.

Second Revolution (1792)

Identify: Radical phase of the French Revolution beginning with the fall of the monarchy and the establishment of the First Republic.

Significance: Led to war with Europe, the execution of Louis XVI, and the Committee of Public Safety.

Contextualization: Shift from moderate to radical revolution.

Girondists

Identify: Moderate republican faction in the National Convention who favored war but opposed extreme centralization.

Significance: Lost power to the more radical Mountain and many were executed during the Terror.

Contextualization: Moderate vs. radical split in the Revolution.

The Mountain

Identify: Radical Jacobin faction in the National Convention, led by Robespierre and Danton, who sat on the upper benches.

Significance: Directed the Reign of Terror and implemented extreme revolutionary policies.

Contextualization: Leaders of the radical phase of the Revolution.

Sans-culottes

Identify: Radical working-class Parisians (literally “without breeches”) who demanded price controls, direct democracy, and extreme measures.

Significance: Provided the street power that pushed the Revolution leftward.

Contextualization: Popular radicalism during the French Revolution.

Reign of Terror (1793–1794)

Identify: Period of extreme violence and repression led by the Committee of Public Safety to defend the Revolution against internal and external enemies.

Significance: Executed tens of thousands; ultimately led to the Thermidorian Reaction.

Contextualization: Most violent phase of the French Revolution.

Thermidorian Reaction (1794)

Identify: Moderate backlash against the Terror that overthrew Robespierre on July 27–28, 1794.

Significance: Ended the radical phase and led to the Directory.

Contextualization: Swing back toward moderation in the Revolution.

Napoleonic Code (1804)

Identify: Civil code issued by Napoleon that standardized French law, emphasizing equality before the law, property rights, and secularism.

Significance: Spread across Europe with Napoleon’s conquests and remains the basis of law in many countries.

Contextualization: Lasting legal legacy of the French Revolution and Napoleonic era.

Grand Empire

Identify: Vast empire created by Napoleon at its height (1807–1812), including France, satellite states, and conquered territories.

Significance: Spread revolutionary reforms but also provoked strong nationalist resistance.

Contextualization: Peak of Napoleonic power and the spread of French revolutionary ideas.

Continental System

Identify: Napoleon’s economic blockade (1806) aimed at destroying British trade by closing European ports to British goods.

Significance: Damaged European economies more than Britain’s and contributed to Napoleon’s eventual downfall.

Contextualization: Economic warfare during the Napoleonic Wars.