Unit 5 - The Enlightenment and Nationalism Flashcards
How did the Scientific Revolution challenge the old way of thinking?
- Scientists no longer relied on the external authority of the Bible, the Church, the speculations of ancient philosophers, or the received wisdom of cultural tradition
- Departed radically from older ways of thinking
Explain the long-term significance of the Scientific Revolution.
- Within European elite circles, it altered ideas about the place of humankind and sharply challenged both the teachings and authority of the church
- Scientific ways of thinking challenged ancient social hierarchies and political systems
- Scientific ways of thinking played a role in the revolutionary upheavals of the modern era
- By the 20th century, science became so widespread that it largely lost its association with European culture and became the primary marker of global modernity
- Similar to Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, modern science became a universal worldview that is open to all who could accept its premises and techniques
- substantially eroded religious belief and practice, especially among the well educated in the West
What factors help explain the birth of modern science in Europe?
Europe had the ability to draw on technological and scientific advances made elsewhere in Afro-Eurasia
Explain how previous cross-cultural exchanges contributed to the Scientific Revolution (Consider Asian and Islamic countries)
- Many of China’s technological accomplishments flowed into Europe in the centuries before the Scientific Revolution which further inspired practical discoveries
- Islamic world: Europeans took up Indian mathematics, breakthroughs in optics, astronomy, medicine, and pharmacology
- Europeans accessed both ancient Greek learning and remarkable achievements of Muslim scholars. This learning then entered Christian Europe in an explosion of translations from Greek and Arabic into Latin
How did European maritime empires and the Scientific Revolution go hand-in-hand (explain the global context)
- Europeans focused considerable resources on improving navigation, cartography, and shipbuilding to facilitate their long-distance voyages (as well as ballistics and mining techniques)
What role did universities play in the Scientific Revolution?
- allowed scholars to pursue their studies in relative freedom from the dictates of Church or state authorities
- The study of the natural world began to slowly separate itself from philosophy and theology and gained a distinct identity
What was revolutionary about the Scientific Revolution through the lens of religion?
- Breakthroughs in the study of heavens most directly challenged traditional Christian understandings of the universe (ex: Before the Scientific Revolution, educated Europeans believed the earth was stationary and at the center of the universe and around it revolved the sun, moon, and stars. This coincided well with the religious outlook of the Catholic Church because the attention of the entire universe was centered on the earth and its human inhabitants)
How did the scientific contributions of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton impact the thoughts of educated Europeans?
- Copernicus argued that the sun was in the middle and the earth revolved around this. This led to the changing of beliefs that the earth was no longer unique or at the center of God’s attention
- Galileo developed an improved telescope where he made many observations that undermined established understandings of celestial bodies. Some thinkers began to discuss the notion of an unlimited universe.
- Newton formulated the modern laws of motion and mechanics.There was a revolutionary new understanding of the physical universe among the educated Europeans after Newton died. They understood that the universe was no longer propelled by supernatural forces but functioned on its own according to scientific principles
How did the Catholic church react to the Scientific Revolution and scientific thinking in general?
- opposed these ideas as its teachings and authority were under attack
- compelled Galileo to publicly renounce his belief that the earth orbited around the sun and rotated on its axis
How did science and religion coexist?
Scientists and Church leaders learned to coexist through a kind of compartmentalization. Science might prevail in its limited sphere of describing the physical universe, but religion was still the arbiter of truth about those ultimate questions concerning human salvation, righteous behavior, and the larger purposes of life
How was the Scientific Revolution able to reach a widespread audience during the 18th Century?
Through the help of novel techniques of printing and bookmaking by a popular press, growing literacy, and a host of scientific societies
How did the Enlightenment challenge old patterns of European thinking?
- Took aim at arbitrary governments, the “divine right of kings”, and the aristocratic privileges of European society
- Directed against the superstition, ignorance, and corruption of established religion
How did the Enlightenment impact women’s roles in European society?
- Women did not have a prominent place in society as they were constantly overshadowed by men. Men believed themselves to be superior
- Rousseau described women as fundamentally different from and inferior to men and urged that the whole education of women should be relative to men
Explain how Enlightened thought was influenced by global awareness.
- Confucianism encouraged Enlightenment thinkers to imagine a future for European civilization without the kind of supernatural religion that they found so offensive in the Christian West
- Voltaire idealized China as an empire governed by an elite of secular scholars selected for their talent (civil service examination), which sharply contrasted to Europe, where aristocratic birth and military prowess was more important.
What major political and social reforms came from the Enlightenment?
- Human society was no longer fixed by tradition of divine command but could be changed, and improved, by human action guided by reason
- Montesquieu advocated for the separation of powers or checks and balances in a central government as a means of preventing the tyranny of a single ruler.
- Many forms of enlightened religion arose in the early modern centuries, reflecting the influence of Enlightenment thinking
- Inspired the French and American Revolutions
Explain the influence of European scientific thinking in China, Japan, and the Ottoman Empire.
China:
- Modern Chinese thinkers selectively assimilated Western science into their own studies of history and the natural world on their own terms
- Imperial officials were impressed by European techniques for predicting eclipses, reforming the calendar, and making accurate maps of the empire
Japan:
- Impressed with Western anatomical studies (translated and studied European texts after lifting ban on imported Western books)
- Learned more about human body (autopsy conducted by Dutch physicians)
Ottoman Empire:
- The notion of a sun-centered solar system did not cause the kind of upset in the Ottoman Empire than it did in Europe
- chose not to translate the works of major European scientists even though they were aware of their achievements
How did nineteenth and twentieth century developments in science challenge Enlightenment ideas?
- Charles Darwin laid out the argument that all life was in constant change (famous books were threatening to many Christian believers)
- Sigmund Freud, a Viennese doctor, applied scientific techniques to the operation of the human mind and emotions which cast further doubt on Enlightenment conceptions of human rationality
- In the 20th century, developments in physics, such as relativity and quantum theory, called into question some of the established verities of the Newtonian view of the world, particularly at the subatomic level and at speeds approaching that of light
Explain the various global political and social upheavals of the “Converging revolutions” in the early eighteenth to mid nineteenth centuries.
- By the 1730s, the Safavid dynasty that had ruled Persia for several centuries had completely collapsed
- The Mughal Empire fragmented
- The Wahhabi movement in Arabia threated the Ottoman Empire, and its religious ideals informed major political upheavals in Central Asia and elsewhere
- China hosted a number of popular though unsuccessful rebellions
- A new wave of Islamic revolutions shook West Africa
What made the Atlantic Revolutions distinct from the converging revolutions across the world?
- New ideas of liberty, equality, free trade, religious tolerance, republicanism, and human rationality were in the air
- They had an immense global impact, extending beyond the Atlantic world
- The ideals that animated these Atlantic revolutions inspired efforts in many countries to abolish slavery, extend the right to vote, to develop constitutions, and to secure greater equality for women
- The divine right of kings, state control of trade, aristocratic privilege, and the authority of a single church were no longer sacrosanct and came under repeated attack
How was the American Revolution both a revolution and not a revolution at the same time?
- It was a conservative movement because it originated in an effort to preserve the existing liberties of the colonies rather than to create new ones
- Local elected assemblies in North America achieved something close to self-government
How was the social structure in Britain and North American colonies similar? How was it different?
Similar:
- There were class distinctions and a small class of wealthy gentlemen were prominent in political life
Differences:
- Compared to Europe, there was a ready availability of land, a scarcity of people, and an absence of both a titled nobility and a single established church, meaning that social life was far more open
- All free men enjoyed the same status excluding enslaved people and white women
Why did the American Revolution happen? How is this linked to global politics?
- The American Revolution grew from a rather sudden and unexpected effort by the British government to tighten its control over the colonies and to extract more revenue from them.
- Britain began to act like a genuine imperial power by imposing a variety of new taxes and tariffs on the colonies without their consent.
Describe the long-term impacts the American Revolution had on revolutionaries for years to come.
- The “right to revolution” in the Declaration of Independence inspired revolutionaries
- Initiated the political dismantling of Europe’s New World empires
- The revolution accelerated the established democratic tendencies of the colonial societies
Explain how the French Revolution is connected to the American Revolution.
The French government, which had generously aided the Americans in an effort to undermine its British rival, was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and had long sought reforms that would modernize the tax system and make it more equitable
What was the estate system in France? Who made up each of the estates?
- Composed of male representatives of the three estates, or legal orders, of France → the clergy, nobility, and commoners
- The first two estates comprised about 2 percent of the population, and the third estate included everyone else
Contrast the French Revolution to the American Revolution.
Whereas the American Revolution expressed the tensions of a colonial relationship with a distant imperial power, the French insurrection was driven by sharp conflicts within French society
How were French Revolutionaries different from their American counterparts?
- It was a much more violent and far-reaching
- It was a profound social upheaval
- Raised the question of female political equality more explicitly than the American Revolution
In what ways did the French Revolution impact various social groups in French society?
Nobility(second estate) lost power and privileges, church power weakened (first estate), wealthy middle class gained political influence, peasants gained freedom but faced hardships, women gained some rights but were still limited
What was the French Revolution’s effect on women and women’s rights?
- Women made serious political demands, signing petitions detailing their complaints: a lack of education, male competition in female trades, the prevalence of prostitution, and the rapidly rising price of bread and soup
- It opened up the question of women’s rights for consideration and laid the foundations for modern feminism
How did the French Revolution impact France?
- Streets got new names
- Monuments to the royal family were destroyed
Titles vanished - Ordinary men and women new began to think of themselves as belonging to a nation
- The state replaced the Catholic Church as the place for registering births, marriages, and deaths, and revolutionary festivals substituted for church holidays
Explain the spread of French influence following the French Revolution.
- Spread through conquest, largely under the leadership of Napoleon Bonaparte, a highly successful general who seized power in 1799
- Napoleon was intent on spreading its benefits far and wide. In a series of military campaigns, his forces subdued most of Europe, creating the continents largest empire since the days of the Romans
What did the colonial social structure of Haiti look like?
- Three-tiered social class structure based primarily on race, but also on wealth and land ownership
- Whites (grand blancs and petit blancs), free people of color/multiracial, enslaved people
How did the French Revolution inspire the Haitian Revolution?
- The ideas and example of the French Revolution lit several fuses and set in motion a spiral of violence that engulfed the colony for more than a decade
- To the enslaved, the promise of the French Revolution was a personal freedom that challenged the entire slave labor system
Why was the Haitian revolution unique and remarkable?
- Socially, the last had become first
- It was the only completely successful slave revolt in world history
- The lowest order of the society, slaves, became equal, free, and independent citizens
How does the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution reflect enlightenment ideals?
- They had thrown off French colonial rule, creating the second independent republic in the Americas and the first non-European state to emerge from Western colonialism
- The new country’s first head of state, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, defined all Haitian citizens as Black and legally equal regardless of color or class
How did the success of the Haitian Revolution impact enslaved people throughout the Caribbean? The white population?
- It inspired other slave rebellions, gave a boost to the dawning abolitionist movement, and has been a source of pride for people of African descent ever since
- For the white population throughout the hemisphere, the cautionary saying “Remember Haiti” reflected a sense of horror at what had occurred there and a determination not to allow political change to reproduce that fearful outcome again
- It also led to a temporary expansion of slavery elsewhere
Explain the causes and influences of the Latin American Revolutions.
-They were shaped by preceding events in North America, France, and Haiti as well as by their own distinctive societies and historical experiences
- Native-born elites (creoles) in spanish colonies were offended and insulted by the Spanish monarchy’s efforts during the 18th century to exercise great power over its colonies and to subject them to heavier taxes and tariffs
- Creole intellectuals had also become familiar with ideas of popular sovereignty, republican government, and personal liberty derived from European Enlightenment
Why did it take longer for Latin American colonies to gain independence than their North American counterparts?
- Spanish colonies had long been governed in a more authoritarian fashion than their British counterparts and were more sharply divided by class
-Whites throughout Latin America were vastly outnumbered by Native Americans, people of African ancestry, and those of biracial and multiracial backgrounds
How were the Latin American Revolutions shaped by the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions?
American Revolution: when Napoleon invaded Spain and Portugal, deposing the Spanish king Ferdinand VII and forcing the Portuguese royal family into exile in Brazil, Latin Americans were forced to take action due to legitimate royal authority in disarray
French and Haitian Revolutions:
- The extensive violence of the French and Haitian revolutions was a lesson to Latin American elites that political change could easily get out of hand and was fraught with danger to themselves
What role did nativism/nationalism play in the Latin American Revolutions?
- Nativism cast all of those born in the Americas as Americanos, while the enemy was defined as those born in Spain or Portugal
- Nationalist leaders made efforts to mobilize people of color into the struggle with promises of freedom, the end of legal restrictions, and social advancement
What opportunities and barriers existed for women and non-elites in the era of Latin American Revolutions?
- Latin American women continued to be wholly excluded from political life and remained under firm legal control of the men in their families
- Upper-class or wealthy women gave and raised money for the cause and provided safe havens for revolutionary meetings
- Many women were punished for their disloyalty to the Crown, with some 48 executed in Colombia
- Modest improvement in educational opportunities appeared
How did Latin American Independence mark a shift in the relationship between the American continents?
- The United States grew increasingly wealthy, industrialized, democratic, internationally influential, and generally stable
- Latin America became relatively underdeveloped, impoverished, undemocratic, politically unstable, and dependent on foreign technology and investment
Explain the repercussions of the Atlantic Revolutions.
- Britain’s loss of its North American colonies contributed to British colonial rule in India and the Opium wars in China
- During the 19th century, the idea of a constitution found advocates in Poland, Russia, the Spanish-ruled Philippines, China, the Ottoman Empire, and British-governed India
What happened in Europe after the defeat of Napoleon?
- Smaller revolutionary eruptions occurred in 1830, more widely in 1848, and in Paris in 1870
- pushed the major states of Western Europe, the United States, and Argentina to enlarge their voting publics
What role did the Atlantic Revolutions play in the abolition of slavery?
- Enlightenment thinkers in 18th-century Europe had become increasingly critical of slavery as a violation of the natural rights of every person
- Public pronouncements of the American and French revolutions about liberty and equality focused attention on this obvious breach of those principles
What examples/arguments made slavery not essential to commercial success?
- England and New England were among the most prosperous regions of the Western world in the early 19th century were both based on free labor
- Slavery in this view was out of date and seen as unnecessary in the new era of industrial technology and capitalism
Explain the importance of the Great Jamaican Revolt.
- 60,000 enslaved people attacked several hundred plantations
- Important in prompting Britain to abolish slavery throughout its empire in 1833
- There were growing numbers of the British public believing that slavery was morally wrong, economically inefficient, and politically unwise
- These revolts demonstrated the enslaved people were not content and the brutality with which they were suppressed appalled British public opinion
What factors accounted for the end of slavery in Britain?
Various strands of thinking, such as secular, religious, economic, and political, came together in an abolitionist movement most powerfully in Britain, which brought growing pressure on governments to close down the trade in enslaved people and then to ban slavery itself
In what ways did slavery persist after its abolition in Britain?
- Plantation owners vigorously resisted the onslaught of abolitionists
- Slave traders, both European and African, who together shipped millions of additional captives, mostly to Cuba and Brazil, long after the British had declared the trade illegal
- Slave economies continued to flourish well into the 19th century
How did the end of slavery transform the lives of formerly enslaved peoples?
- The economic lives of enslaved people did not improve dramatically upon emancipation
- Freedmen everywhere desperately sought economic autonomy on their own land
- Independent peasant agriculture proved possible for some
- Did not achieve anything close to political equality, except in Haiti
How did the end of slavery in the Muslim world differ than in the North American world?
- The freeing of enslaved people was not required, but was strongly recommended
- Generated no popular grassroots antislavery movements
- Slavery was outlawed gradually only in the 20th century under the pressure of international opinion
How did the Atlantic Revolutions contribute to the growth of nationalism?
By the end of the 20th century, the idea that humankind was divided into separate nations, each with a distinct culture and territory and deserving an independent political life, was so widespread as to seem natural and timeless
How did Europe’s modern transformation assist in the rise of nationalism?
- Printing allowed a growing reading public to think of themselves as members of a common linguistic group or nation
- Inspired the political unification of Italy and Germany, gathering their previously fragmented peoples into new states
- Encouraged Greeks, Serbs, and Bulgarians to assert their independence from the Ottoman Empire
In what ways did political and cultural leaders promote nationalism?
Deliberately sought to instill national loyalties in their citizens through schools, public rituals, the mass media, and military service
List the different political ideologies nationalism took on in the nineteenth century.
- Some supporters of liberal democracy and representative government (France, US) saw nationalism with its emphasis on the people as an aid to their aspirations to wider involvement in political life
- nationalism could be used to combat socialism and feminism, as these movements divided the nation along class or gender lines
What did nationalism look like beyond Europe?
- In British-ruled India, small groups of Western-educated men began to think of their diverse country as a single nation
- The notion of the Ottoman Empire as a Turkish national state rather than a Muslim or dynastic empire took hold
- By the end of the 19th century, some Chinese intellectuals began to think in terms of a Chinese nation beset both by a foreign ruling dynasty and by Europeans
- When Japan confronted European aggression in the second half of the 19th century, it sense of itself as a distinct culture transformed into an assertive modern nationalism
How did the French Revolution and the Enlightenment contribute to the beginning of the feminist movement?
- European Enlightenment thinkers challenged many ancient traditions, including on occasion that of women’s intrinsic inferiority
- The French Revolution stimulated Mary Wollstonecraft to advocate for the rights of women
How was feminism a trans-atlantic movement?
European and American women attended the same conferences, corresponded regularly, and read one another’s work
What were the achievements and limitations of nineteenth-century feminism?
Achievements:
- Upper- and middle-class women gained entrance to universities
- Women’s literacy rates were growing steadily
- In the US, a number of states passed legislation allowing women to manage and control their own property and wages, separate from their husbands
Limitations:
- widespread voting rights for women in national elections were not achieved until after WWI
- Some academic and medical experts argued that the strains of education and life outside of the home would cause serious reproductive damage and depopulate the nation
- Feminists were viewed as selfish, willing to sacrifice the family or even the nation while pursuing their individual goals
What did the feminist movement look like beyond Europe and North America?
- Spread less widely
- An independent school for girls was founded in Mexico in 1869
- Overtly feminist newspaper was established in Brazil in 1852
- In the Islamic world and in China, some modernists believed that education and a higher status for women strengthened the nation in its struggles for development and independence and deserved support
What changed with the Atlantic Revolutions? What expectations remained unfulfilled?
- Political life changed in each of the four locations of the Atlantic revolutions
- Political ties to a colonial power were broken
- Social outcomes were more varied
- Nurtured nationalist sentiments and loyalties both within and outside those nations
- Almost everywhere, the aftermath produced disappointment as they generated unfulfilled expectations (ex: Women did not benefit substantially from these revolutions)
How did critics of revolutions use revolutionary activities to justify their positions?
- Critics argued that revolutions were largely unnecessary because societies were changing (ex: Slavery was ended peacefully in many places, Nonviolent protests made many gains for women)
