The Rising European Tide (History)
This chapter covers the real heart of the origins of the modern world.
The Scientific Revolution continues to develop though the 18th century does not produce scientist of the state of Sir Isaac Newton, especially key is the proliferation of scientific academies and journals, (original the Royal Society of London and its Philosophical Transactions).
The 18th century becomes especially famous for the Enlightenment, the movement that emerged in Europe in the 18th century after the first wave of the Scientific Revolution and strove to transfer the principles of the Scientific Revolution to the running of society. Voltaire, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson are only some of the most famous of these “enlightened” philosophers.
The 18th century was also an age of dramatic economic growth especially as the European colonies of the America supplied the “mother countries” with wide range of products from sugar, tobacco, to cotton, chocolate, and coffee.
The first great revolution of the age started in what becomes the United States, then spreads to the most populous nation of Western Europe, France, and then returns to the Americas with the only successful revolution by enslaved peoples in what will become the nation of Haiti.
This era sees the emergence of the modern entrepreneurial state state in Britain and the modern bureaucratic state in France.
Adam Smith increasingly became the guiding light for the British economy whereas Napoleon provided the role model of a powerful ruler creating a modern centralized state based on universal conscription and a powerful administrative system.
1) What were the origins and consequences of the Scientific Revolution? Why is this still an ongoing revolution?
2) How did the Enlightenment try to institutionalize the Scientific Method with society? Why was it more successful in Britain than France?
3) Why did the French Revolution become a truly global events? Why and how did it create the modern political spectrum?
4) Yet, by 1815 why had France essentially “lost” its struggle with Britain for global hegemony?
