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Topic 5.1
📍Topic 5.1: The Enlightenment
📖 AMSCO p.275 - p. 284
Main Idea
Key Timeline
Image Courtesy of Naomi Ling
Things to Know
An Age of New Ideas
- Most Enlightenment thinkers were optimistic — believing in progress for society 💡
- Natural laws ruled society and politics instead of traditional religious thought ⛪
- Socialism and liberalism led to “the Age of Isms”
- Conservatism, favored by the European ruling class, opposed socialism and liberalism
- Conflicting new ideas and old political structures led to revolutions, which often aimed for independence from imperial powers and constitutional representation
- Nationalism led to empires breaking up and new types of government forming
Increasing Urbanization
- Cities grew in population and poverty 🏙️
- People had different opinions on how to solve the sanitation problem
- Some wanted more government-regulated actions
- Christians wanted more private charity
- Conservatives mostly blamed the problem on the poor
Key Movements
- Utopian socialism: the belief that the prototypical society lies in setting up ideal communities
- Key people driving this belief were Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and Robert Owen
- Classical liberalism: the belief that natural rights, constitutional government, laissez-faire economics, and less spending on armies and churches were all beneficial 👍
- Supported by professionals, scholars, and writers such as Adam Smith
- Feminism: the rising movement for women’s suffrage and equality 💁♀️
- 1792: Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Women, arguing for equal opportunities in education
- 1848: The Seneca Falls Convention gathered to demand the right to vote and hold property, among other things
- Abolitionism: providing rights and freedoms for enslaved people and serfs
- USA banned slavery in 1800s
- Serfdom declined as the economy went from agriculturally focused to industrial 🧑🏭
- Zionism: the Jews’ desire to have an independent homeland in the Middle East
- Anti-Semitism fueled violent attacks on Jewish people, who felt unsafe where they were
- Faced challenges such as the Palestinian Arabs and Ottomans occupying the land they wanted
- 1948: modern Israel founded
Terms to Remember
| Term | Definition + Significance |
| Deism | Belief in a distant, non-interfering God who created the world but doesn't intervene in human affairs |
| Liberalism | A belief in individual rights, limited government involvement, and free-market economics |
| Conservatism | A belief in tradition, authority, and the preservation of existing institutions, often resisting rapid changes |
| Anti-Semitism | Discrimination or hatred against Jewish people based on their religion or ethnicity |
| Social contract | An agreement where people follow rules and pay taxes to the government in exchange for protection and order |
| Laissez-faire | A hands-off approach where the government doesn't interfere much in the economy, allowing businesses to compete freely |
| Socialism | An economic system where the government or society collectively owns and controls major industries and resources to reduce economic inequality and help people |
| Age of Isms | An 18th- and 19th-century movement celebrating the birth of ideas such as imperialism, socialism, romanticism, and Darwinism |
| Empiricism | The belief that knowledge comes from experiments and scientific methods, not just tradition or religion |
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