Chapter 21: The Enlightenment, Nationalism, and Revolution Flashcards
Italian Peninsula
Cavour, the classical liberalist prime minister of the Piedmont-Sardinia, led the drive to unite the entire Italian Peninsula under the only native dynasty, the House of Savoy. At the time, the region was divided among a patchwork of kingdoms and city-states, and most people spoke regional languages rather than Italian.
immigration
The movement of people into a country from a different country. Many Italians immigrated in the late 19th century to the US and Argentina, where the constitution of 1853 specifically encouraged immigration.
conservatism
A particularly popular novel school of thought amongst European rulers regarding how to improve society which pairs with romanticism but opposes socialism and liberalism. Conservatives tried to quell revolutionary change.
Deism
The belief that a divinity simply set natural laws in motion and then didn’t interfere or cause miracles in the world.
romanticism
A new school of thought on how to improve society which pairs with conservatism but opposes socialism and liberalism. Romantics were fascinated with nature, the exotic, and emotion. They turned to instinct & sensitivity for inspiration rather than to reason. They were apolitical and focused on the history and distinctive traits of each culture. Famous ones include Samuel Coleridge and Jose Hernandez.
nationalism
A feeling of intense loyalty to others who share one’s language and culture. The idea that people who share a culture should also share a gov’t threatened to destroy all of the multi-ethnic empires in Europe.
Mary Wollstonecraft
She was an English philosopher who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
Voltaire
Francois-Marie Arouet, whose pen name was Voltaire, wrote the social satire Candide. After being exiled to England for 3 years due to a conflict with a member of the French aristocracy, he developed an appreciation for its constitutional monarchy and regard for civil rights. He brought these ideas back to FR, where he campaigned for religious liberty and judicial reform. His idea of religious liberty influenced the US Constitution.
salons
Social gatherings of European intellectuals which took place in the homes of the rich and famous. Some women, as hostesses, made their marks on the 18th century by bringing together artists, politicians, philosophers, and popular writers who took the progressive ideas of the Enlightenment to the public.
Deists
They argued that God created the world and then sat back to observe its movements. They believed that God’s natural laws could be discovered by scientific inquiry. Their relationship to God is consequently more impersonal and theoretical than those of Christians who focused on miracles and faith. Nevertheless, many of the Deists viewed regular church attendance as an important social obligation and moral guide.
liberals
After the 1824 Mexican constitution, which guaranteed basic civil rights but did not address serious issues of inequitable land distribution, widespread poverty, the status of Mexican Indians, and inequitable educational access, the political environment featured liberals calling for reforms and conservatives opposing them. The liberals were influenced by the FR and US political models, stressing the importance of individual rights and opposing the centralized state model of gov’t. They wanted to limit the role of the Roman Catholic Church in politics and in education.
Samuel Coleridge
This British poet wrote the Romantic poem “Kubla Khan,” which he claimed was the product of an opium-induced dream.
Jose Hernandez
He published Martin Fierro, an epic poem that romanticized the Argentine gaucho (a rough equivalent of the North American cowboy).
First, Second, Third Estates
France had social and legal classes separated into three estates. The First Estate (clergy) and the Second Estate (nobility) paid almost no direct tax and they resisted calls that they pay any more. The burden of taxation fell on the Third Estate (common people) of peasants, urban workers, and the bourgeoisie, or middle class.
bourgeoisie
The middle class in the Third Estate of the French social and legal system.
Tennis Court Oath
After being outvoted 2-1 in the Estates-General meeting of 1789, the Third Estate would declare its intentions of reforming the voting process so that a National Assembly could grant one vote per member rather than one vote per estate. Representatives from the Third Estate supported this revolutionary idea with the Tennis Court Oath, which also called for a constitution limiting the king’s power.
Bastille
Though the National Assembly began meeting in Paris, the King threatened to arrest the leaders, so angry crowds rioted in Paris and elsewhere in FR. A crowd in Paris stormed the Bastille, a former prison that still symbolized the abuses of the monarchy and the corrupt aristocracy.
Olympe de Gouges
This FR playwright was sent to the guillotine for writing the Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Female Citizen, which alienated the male dominated leadership of the FR Revolution. She had asserted that FR women should be given the same political rights as FR men.
primogeniture
The right of an eldest son to inherit all his parents’ property, which was prohibited in France by the Directory.
Marrons
Escaped slaves who revolted against their white masters, killing them and burning their houses, during the Haitian Revolution.
creoles
They were born of European parents in the Americas. They are well-educated and aware of the ideas behind the revolutions in North America and FR. They considered themselves superior to the mestizos, who were born of European and Indian parents. Many wanted independence from Spain because of the country’s mercantilist policies, which required that the colonists buy manufactured goods only from Spain and sell their products only to Spain.
mestizos
Considered inferior to the creoles, who were born of European parents in the Americas, the mestizos were born of European and Indian parents.
Peninsulares
They were colonists who were born in Spain or Portugal, who were superior to everyone.
Zionism
The desire of Jews to reestablish an independent homeland where their ancestors had lived in the Middle East. After centuries of battling anti-Semitism and pogroms, many European Jews had concluded that living in peace and security wasn’t a realistic hope. To be safe, they needed to control their own land, and Austro-Hungarian Jew Theodor Herzl led this movement.
Emile Zola
Alfred Dreyfus, a FR military officer who was Jewish, was convicted of treason against the FR gov’t. However, people discovered that the conviction had been based on forged documents, so anti-Semitism was the reason for his imprisonment. The Dreyfus Affair inspired a worldwide outcry and raised support for Zionism. French novelist Emile Zola took up Dreyfus’ cause, spreading the news.
Edmund Burke
An English statesman who liked French thinker Joseph de Maistre, Burke was a conservative against the tide of Enlightenment thinking by viewing revolutions as bloody, disruptive, and unlikely to yield positive results. However, the desire of common people for constitutional gov’t and democratic practices erupted in revolutions throughout the 19th century.
John Locke
Like philosopher Thomas Hobbes of Leviathan, John Locke of Two Treatises of Gov’t, viewed political life as the result of a social contract. Locke argued that the social contract implied the right, and even the responsibility, of citizens to revolt against unjust gov’t. He also argued that each man had a natural right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of property. He proposed that children were born with minds like “blank slates” waiting to be filled with knowledge, arguing that the environment shapes people.
social contract
Established by Thomas Hobbes, social contract theory states that people must give up certain rights to an absolutist monarch in exchange for the protection of living under law and order. Alternatively, John Locke argued that the social contract implied the right, and even the responsibility, of citizens to revolt against unjust gov’t.
Baron Montesquieu
A major French Enlightenment philosopher who wrote The Spirit of the Laws, which praised the British gov’tal use of checks on power by means of its Parliament. He influenced the American system, which adopted his ideas by separating its executive branch from its legislative branch and from its judicial branch.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
One of his early works was Emile or On Education in which he laid out his ideas on child-rearing and education. A later work titled The Social Contract stated the obligation of a sovereign to carry out the General Will of the people. He was an optimist who believed that society could improve. He gave revolutionaries of the late 18th century hope of establishing better gov’ts.
