From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, Europe went through a period of intense thorough transformation. Even though religious wars in Europe had ended by the end of the seventeenth century through the Treaty of Westphalia, Religion was not the only matter that generated conflict among Europeans. The intellectual atmosphere generated by the Age of Enlightenment generated conflict with the Roman Catholic Church as well as with the Monarchial authorities because many European and Euro-American thinkers made use of reason to study the natural world as well as human behavior, doubting the fairness of their religious, economic, social, and political systems. As a result, many enlighten thinkers, commonly known as philosophes, questioned the principles of absolutism, a form of government in which the monarchs had the exclusive right to make laws. These philosophes formed new ideas of liberty and progress, which were distributed across Europe and the Americas. Even though some European thinkers defended the traditional system of absolutism, the Age of Enlightenment led to a series of revolutions in Europe and Euro-America that promoted the notion of autonomy and influenced the creation of new governmental systems, challenging and ultimately weakening the traditional system of European royal absolutism.
Absolutism had grown strong in several European states from the mid seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth century, and even as the system began to weaken, some influential Europeans strongly defended absolutism by clarifying its favorable functionality and religious bases. Some philosophes, such as Thomas Hobbes, believed that human nature was evil; hence, humans could not direct themselves and needed a king to guide them...
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...pendence of many states in the Americas. Constitutionalists in England succeeded in their fight for a government that made decisions based on the voice of the people through a House of Representatives or Parliament. Consequently, the colonies in the Americas created new states based on constitutionalism and popular sovereignty, and in due course became republics. Similarly, the French Revolution ultimately transformed traditional monarchial authority by giving the power to each individual member of the society. The gradual breach from royal absolutism and the transformation of the governments would have not been possible if the Age of Enlightenment had not opened the minds of European and Euro-American thinkers.
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In a comprehensive summary and analyzation of the history of mankind’s record of affairs, Mark T. Gilderhus tackles the many aspects of the overall biography of human existence. Through scrutiny of the goals of past and present historians, a brief explanation of the origins of historiography, a thorough exploration of the philosophies behind history, and a review of the modern approach to past events, Gilderhus sums up the entirety of historical thought in one hundred and twenty-five pages. His superior knowledge is exemplified through his work which effectively conveys the full extent of historiography.
America grew into an independent government, discarding many ideals present in that of England. But was the Doctrine of Discovery ...
The American Revolution holds a very prominent place in the history of this country, as it was the longest and the most painful war Americans ever encountered. It took many years and numerous conflicts to finally gain independence in 1776 from British domination, which had been subjugating its colonies with laws of an unwritten constitution. It must be understood that though Americans were fighting for the right of democracy and each state wanted self-government, later that same issue turned into a big problem. Soon after America became independent, the former British colonies decided to form their own governments. It was then that the real battle began. The task of forming separate constitutions for each state, along with the formation of governmental institutions, turned in to a huge task -- a task so gigantic that it forced some states to rethink the matter and soon the rumors of a central government started circulating.
The Enlightenment period in Europe was a shift in the way that society thought about power and liberty. The ideals of this period helped to inspire the revolutions of the 18th century. The American colonies desired liberty from foreign rule, the French wanted to increase the power of the people in their class structure, and the Haitians fought for representation for the millions of slaves on their island. While the ideas of the enlightenment were not fully employed in each of these revolutions, they brought the nations closer to a fully representative government, rather than one of absolute power.
The start of the American Revolution, described by Edmund Morgan as, “the shot heard around the world,” was the “Americans’ search for principles” (Bender 63). Although the world’s colonies did not necessarily seek independence much like the Americans, the world’s colonies were nonetheless tired of the “administrative tyranny” being carried out by their colonizers (Bender 75). The American Revolution set a new standard in the colonies, proclaiming that the “rights of Englishmen” should and must be the “rights of man,” which established a new set foundation for the universal rights of man (Bender 63). This revolution spread new ideas of democracy for the colonized world, reshaping people’s expectations on how they should be governed. Bender emphasizes America as challenging “the old, imperial social forms and cultural values” and embracing modern individualism” (Bender 74). Bender shapes the American Revolution as a turning point for national governments. The American Revolution commenced a new trend of pushing out the old and introducing new self-reliant systems of government for the former
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The development of the early republic of the United States of America had many influence from ideas on liberty, equality of men, and God-given rights to mankind. These ideas were formed during many outbreaks of riots, resistance of laws passed by British government, and the yearning for independence. All of these ideas caused many revolutions to form, dismantle of the old American government, and the formation of the one that still exists today. The ideas that came from the American Revolution helped influence the founding fathers into how to form the constitution. The French revolution also had some say in the making of the US government. Revolutionary activity and ideas helped the founding fathers form the government that we still live under today.
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By the late eighteenth century, the Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason as it was called had begun to rapidly spread across Europe. People began believing in the ideals of popular government, the centrality of economics to politics, secularism, and progress. This cultural movement was sparked by intellectuals and commonwealth thinkers such as the influential writer John Locke and the famous scientist Isaac Newton, both who emphasized the fact that man, by the use of reason, would be able to solve all of his problems-whether it be problems with the government, morals or the society. However, these ideals weren’t just limited to the European nations where they had first begun. On the other side of the world, off in the United States, American intellectuals began to reason with these ideas as well. As a result, the influence on the profound of modern economic and political thought had a huge impact on the United States, resulting in one of the most important documents in known in American history; the Constitution.
During the 1700s, the Enlightenment had brought an increasing amount of new ideas about how the government should be operating in relation to those people of respective communities. It was these Enlightenment thinkers of this time that brought drastic new ideas to light. They were men like Denis Diderot who discussed ideas about “natural law”and questioned the authority allegedly given to the kings by God. He wrote that “[people] have the most sacred natural right to everything that is not disputed by the rest of the species”. Or there was Abbe Raynal, who communicated that “natural liberty is a right granted by nature to every man”. Thinkers like these two men were leaders in the Enlightenment age, who would eventually influence not only people all over Europe but those in colonies like America and Saint-Domingue...
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The Enlightenment period, also known as The Age of Reason, was a period of social, religious, and political revolution throughout the 18th century which changed the thoughts of man during this “awakening” time. It was a liberation of ignorant thoughts, ideas, and actions that had broken away from the ignorant perception of how society was to be kept and obeyed thus giving little room for new ideas about the world. Puritan society found these new ideas of thought to be extremely radical in comparison to what they believed which was a belief of strong rational religion and morality. Enlightened society believed that the use of reason would be a catalyst of social change and had a demand of political representation thus resulting in a time in history where individualism was widely accepted amongst the new world. Puritan society believed strongly in myth, magic, and religious superstitions that was immensely used by the Puritans before democracy, capitalism, and the scientific revolution gave rise from the Enlightenment period.
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