Enlightenment

Before the Enlightenment

In the late 1500’s, a revolution began. This period of great change is known as the “Scientific Revolution.” For centuries, mankind had been progressing, but very slowly – especially in the area of science. Medicine was primitive, people’s idea of the universe was very limited and restricted by religious belief, man’s idea of how nature functioned was limited by superstition and fear, and human beings did not even have a basic understanding of how and what they breathed, how they saw or heard, or what ideas or tools were necessary to figure these puzzles out.

Starting in the late 1500’s, men like Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Leibniz, and others began to explain to mankind the nature of both the seen and the unseen universe. To do this, they devised new methods of calculation and measurement, and perhaps more importantly, they introduced what we know as the “Scientific Method.” For centuries, humans had taken as absolute truth that which they appeared to see and perceive, and that which had been passed down to them from prior generations – without dispute. The men of the Scientific Revolution questioned everything, and to do this, they observed, measured, experimented and formulated hypotheses and theories about why things were the way they were, and set about proving or disproving their hypotheses, or the ideas of the ages. The Scientific Revolution is another topic which will be covered in AP World History, and one which you will need to understand before you move on to the Enlightenment period.

The World Changed

It was not only in science that reason and close observation triumphed over ignorance and unquestioned tradition. Ideas about human society, government, religion and culture began to be questioned. Intellectuals in the late 17th and early 18th century thought that if people had been so wrong about the nature of the universe, perhaps they could be wrong about a great many other things, including perhaps most importantly, the rights of man.

These thinkers, known to us as the “Philosophes” (the French word for “philosophers”) ushered in an age called the Enlightenment – for during this time, many people in Europe and North America came to see that they had been living in the unquestioned darkness of tyranny and ignorance for many centuries.

America is Based on Enlightenment Ideas

With only one or two exceptions, the governments of Europe and North America in the 18th century were monarchies, most of them absolute monarchies in which the king or queen was not controlled or limited by anyone or any law. The monarch’s word was law. In England, King George III was more limited in his power than other European monarchs, but still exercised a great deal of direct influence, especially over the North American colonies, which was increasingly resented.

The Enlightenment period led directly to the founding of the United States of America, and the American Revolution was really the taking of Enlightenment ideas and putting them into practice – and so has the entire history of America to the present day. The French Revolution spread the ideas of the Enlightenment throughout Europe, and when the Revolutionary period was over in the early 1800’s much of European society had changed. You will be studying these changes as AP World History takes you into the study of the modern world.

France – The Home of the Enlightenment:

During the early to mid 1700’s, some French (and other) writers began to criticize the structure of French society, culture and especially government. France was an absolute monarchy where the king’s will was law, and subject to change on a whim. This monarchy was based on an idea known as the “Divine Right of Kings”, which held that monarchs were placed on the throne by God, and were ruling in His stead – therefore, disobeying the King was tantamount to disobeying God.

Using logic, reason, sarcasm and wit, men such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, Condorcet, Diderot and many others began to show that not only was this idea ridiculous, but that many other ideas held to be true in France and Europe were too. Mostly, the philosophes condemned the privilege, rights and riches of the few in the upper class who enjoyed absolute power while the majority of the people had no rights at all and lived in poverty. This is the main point of this crash course in AP World History on the Enlightenment – that people in Europe and North America began to assert their rights as individuals, and were determined that others would have that ability as well.

Both the American and French revolutions were grounded on Enlightenment thought. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, a model of Enlightenment thought. Ten years after the American Revolution, the French people rose up against their monarch, and proclaimed a government of “Liberty, Equality and Brotherhood.” These two events were the culmination and manifestation of Enlightenment ideas, and are still being felt today, especially in nations attempting to establish the rule of law and some form of democracy.

If you take nothing else from this AP World History crash course on the Enlightenment, let it be this: that without the thinkers of the Enlightenment, a great many of us might still be living in a state of both ignorance and oppression.