Unit 5 · Revolutions, c. 1750–1900

The Enlightenment ● (core concept) — An 18th-century intellectual movement that applied reason and empiricist methods to the natural world, human relationships, and the public role of religion, questioning established traditions in all areas of life. Its rise and spread often preceded revolutions and rebellions against existing governments.

Empiricism ● (core concept) — An approach to knowledge based on observation and experience rather than tradition or authority. Enlightenment philosophers applied empiricist methods to both the natural world and human relationships.

Natural rights ● (core concept) — Fundamental rights that Enlightenment philosophers claimed all individuals possess simply by being human. Revolutionary documents invoked natural rights to justify resistance to unjust rulers.

Social contract ● (core concept) — The Enlightenment idea that legitimate government rests on an agreement between rulers and the ruled, in which people accept authority in exchange for protection of their rights. It implied that people could withdraw consent from tyrannical governments.

Reform movements ● (core concept) — Movements inspired by Enlightenment ideas and religious ideals that pushed for an expansion of rights. The CED ties them to expanded suffrage, the abolition of slavery, and the end of serfdom.

Abolition of slavery ● (core concept) — The movement to end enslaved labor, one of the reform movements influenced by Enlightenment ideas of natural rights and human equality. It contributed to the 19th-century expansion of rights.

End of serfdom ● (core concept) — The abolition of serfdom, the system that bound peasants to landowners' estates. Ending it was part of the 19th-century expansion of rights influenced by Enlightenment ideals.

Expanded suffrage ● (core concept) — The widening of voting rights to larger portions of the population during the 19th century. The CED presents it as one of the clearest signs of the expansion of rights tied to Enlightenment ideals.

Women's suffrage ● (core concept) — The movement demanding voting rights for women. Along with an emerging feminism, it challenged existing political and gender hierarchies.

Feminism ● (core concept) — The emerging 19th-century movement asserting women's equality and rights. It challenged political and gender hierarchies alongside demands for women's suffrage.

Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ○ — A 1792 work by Mary Wollstonecraft arguing that women deserve the same education and rational rights as men. It is a foundational text of early feminism.

Seneca Falls Conference (1848) ○ — An 1848 women's rights convention in New York organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. It issued demands for women's equality, including suffrage.

Nationalism ● (core concept) — The belief that people sharing a language, religion, social customs, or territory form a distinct nation that deserves self-rule. It became a major force shaping states and empires, and governments sometimes harnessed it to foster unity.

Nation-states ● (core concept) — Independent states whose borders align with a shared national identity, such as the United States after the American Revolution. Waves of revolution and rebellion from the 18th century onward produced new nation-states around the world.

Democracy ● (core concept) — A system of government in which power ultimately rests with the people, typically through elected representation. Discontent with monarchist and imperial rule encouraged its development as an alternative ideology.

19th-century liberalism ● (core concept) — A 19th-century political ideology emphasizing individual rights, constitutional government, and limits on state power. It developed alongside democracy as discontent with monarchist and imperial rule grew.

American Revolution ● (core concept) — The successful 1776-1783 revolt of Britain's North American colonies, which established the republic of the United States. It became a model and inspiration for a number of the revolutions that followed.

Haitian Revolution ● (core concept) — The successful 1791-1804 revolt that overthrew French colonial rule and created the independent state of Haiti. It helped drive the emergence of independent states in the Americas.

Latin American independence movements ● (core concept) — The early-19th-century revolts, inspired by democratic ideals and by writings such as Bolivar's Letter from Jamaica, that ended Spanish and Portuguese colonial rule and created independent states across Latin America.

French Revolution ● (core concept) — The 1789 revolution that overthrew France's monarchy in the name of liberty, equality, and popular sovereignty. Its Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen influenced resistance to political authority worldwide.

American Declaration of Independence ● (core concept) — The 1776 document declaring the American colonies' break from Britain on the basis of natural rights and the social contract. It reflected Enlightenment philosophy and inspired later revolutions.

French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen ● (core concept) — The 1789 French revolutionary charter proclaiming liberty, legal equality, and popular sovereignty. It applied Enlightenment ideas to justify resistance to the old regime.

Bolivar's Letter from Jamaica ● (core concept) — Simon Bolivar's 1815 letter laying out the case for Latin American independence from Spain. The CED cites it as a revolutionary document that spread Enlightenment-inspired resistance to colonial rule.

Industrial Revolution ● (core concept) — The late-18th-century shift to machine-based manufacturing, beginning in Britain, that transformed how goods were produced. Contributing factors included waterways, coal and iron deposits, urbanization, improved agriculture, private property protections, foreign resources, and accumulated capital.

Factory system ● (core concept) — A method of production that concentrated workers and machines in a single location. It increased output and led to a growing specialization of labor.

Specialization of labor ● (core concept) — The division of production into narrow, repetitive tasks assigned to individual workers. The factory system made this division of labor increasingly common.

First Industrial Revolution ● (core concept) — The initial wave of steam-powered industrialization, centered in Britain and northwestern Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. During it, Europe and the United States gained a growing share of global manufacturing while Middle Eastern and Asian shares declined.

Shift in global manufacturing shares ● (core concept) — The redistribution of world manufacturing during the First Industrial Revolution: steam-powered industrial production raised the shares of Europe and the United States, while the shares of the Middle East and Asia, which kept producing manufactured goods, declined.

Spread of industrialization ● (core concept) — The diffusion of industrial production methods from northwestern Europe to other parts of Europe, the United States, Russia, and Japan during the 19th century.

Steam engine ● (core concept) — A machine that converts the energy of pressurized steam into mechanical power. It drove factories, railroads, and steamships, making it possible to exploit fossil-fuel energy on a vast scale.

Internal combustion engine ● (core concept) — An engine that burns fuel inside the engine itself to produce power. Along with the steam engine, it let societies tap the vast energy stored in fossil fuels, especially coal and oil.

Fossil fuels revolution ● (core concept) — The harnessing of coal and oil, energy stored over geological time, by steam and internal-combustion engines. It greatly increased the energy available to human societies.

Second Industrial Revolution ● (core concept) — The late-19th-century wave of industrialization marked by new methods for producing steel, chemicals, electricity, and precision machinery. It followed the steam-powered first wave.

Railroads ● (core concept) — Steam-powered rail networks that moved goods and people quickly over land. They opened interior regions to development, trade, and migration.

Steamships ● (core concept) — Ships powered by steam engines rather than wind. They made long-distance and river transport faster and more reliable, boosting global trade and migration.

Telegraph ● (core concept) — An electrical system for sending coded messages over wires almost instantly. It revolutionized long-distance communication, tying distant regions into global trade networks.

State-sponsored industrialization ● (core concept) — Government-directed programs to build modern industry, adopted by a small number of states as the Industrial Revolution's influence grew. Rulers used state power to push industrialization from above rather than leaving it to private enterprise.

Meiji Era ● (core concept) — The period of Japanese history (1868-1912) in which internal reforms, prompted partly by expanding U.S. and European influence in Asia, supported rapid industrialization and made Japan a growing regional power.

Mercantilism ● (core concept) — An economic system in which governments tightly regulated trade, often through colonies and trade surpluses, to accumulate national wealth and power. Western European countries began abandoning it in favor of free trade during the Industrial Age.

Laissez-faire capitalism ● (core concept) — An economic doctrine, associated with Adam Smith, holding that markets work best when governments minimize interference. Its growing acceptance pushed Western Europe away from mercantilism toward free trade and free markets.

Free trade ● (core concept) — Trade between countries with minimal tariffs or government restrictions. Western European states adopted free-trade policies in the Industrial Age, partly in response to laissez-faire ideas.

Transnational businesses ● (core concept) — Large companies operating across national borders. The global nature of trade and production encouraged their growth, supported by new practices in banking and finance.

Industrial capitalism ● (core concept) — The economic system built on private ownership of industrial production. The CED credits it with raising living standards for some and with making consumer goods more available, affordable, and varied.

Consumer goods ● (core concept) — Manufactured products bought for personal use. Improved manufacturing methods under industrial capitalism increased their availability, affordability, and variety.

Adam Smith ● (core concept) — The Scottish economist whose theories of laissez-faire capitalism and free markets influenced Western European governments to abandon mercantilism. His ideas shaped 19th-century economic policy.

Limited-liability corporations ○ — Companies whose investors risk only the money they put in, not their personal assets. This financial innovation helped large transnational businesses raise capital.

Stock markets ○ — Markets where shares of companies are bought and sold. They were among the new financial instruments that funded large-scale business in the Industrial Age.

Labor unions ● (core concept) — Organizations of workers formed to improve conditions, limit hours, and win higher wages. In industrialized states, workers often organized themselves into unions.

Workers' movements ● (core concept) — Broader collective efforts by industrial workers, including unions and political parties, that promoted alternative visions of society in response to industrial capitalism.

Karl Marx ● (core concept) — The philosopher whose critique of industrial capitalism inspired socialist and communist movements. Discontent with established power structures spread his ideas through industrial societies.

Socialism ● (core concept) — The ideology advocating collective or state control of production to reduce inequality. It emerged as an alternative vision of society in response to industrial capitalism.

Communism ● (core concept) — The ideology, associated with Karl Marx, calling for the abolition of private ownership of production and a classless society. It grew out of discontent with industrial capitalism's inequalities.

Reforms in industrial societies ● (core concept) — The political, social, educational, and urban reforms promoted by governments, organizations, and individuals in response to the changes brought by industrial capitalism.

Ottoman and Qing reform efforts ● (core concept) — Attempts by the Ottoman Empire and Qing China to reform and modernize their economies and militaries as industrializing states expanded. These efforts were often resisted by members of government and established elite groups.

Middle class ● (core concept) — A new social class of merchants, managers, and professionals that grew with industrialization. Middle-class families could live on one income, which increasingly confined middle-class women to household and child-rearing roles.

Industrial working class ● (core concept) — The new class of wage laborers employed in factories and mines. Working-class women and children typically had to take wage-earning jobs to supplement family income.

Urbanization ● (core concept) — The rapid growth of cities driven by industrialization and global capitalism. It brought challenges including pollution, poverty, increased crime, public health crises, housing shortages, and strained infrastructure.

Women's roles in industrial society ● (core concept) — Industrialization split women's experience by class: working-class women and children typically held wage-earning jobs to support their families, while middle-class women were increasingly limited to household roles and child development.