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By their marriage in October 1469, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella of Castile initiated a confederation of the two kingdoms that became the basis for the unification of Spain. -
Henry established the Church of England and is credited with establishing the Royal Navy, encouraging shipbuilding and the creation of anchorages and dockyards.
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Important events of her reign included the restoration of England to Protestantism and England's defeat of the Spanish Armada. The period of her reign became known as the Elizabethan Era.
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The Edict of Nantes granted the Calvinist Protestants of France, also known as Huguenots, substantial rights in the nation, which was predominantly Catholic. -
Don Quixote follows the adventures of a member of an hidalgo from La Mancha named Alonso Quijano, who reads so many chivalric romances that he either loses or pretends to have lost his mind in order to become a knight-errant. -
The primary cause of the Thirty Years' War was the actions of Emperor Ferdinand II in forcing the protestants into Catholicism.
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The Petition of Right is an English constitutional document setting out specific individual protections against the state -
The reign of Louis XIV is often referred to as The Great Century, forever associated with the image of an absolute monarch and a strong, centralized state.
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Long Parliament’s main duty was to ensure that Parliament met every three years and could not be dissolved without its own consent. It also worked to abolish the prerogative courts which were seen as challenging the supremacy of the law and to declare the collection of non-parliamentary taxation, such as ship money, illegal.
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The Peace of Westphalia is the collective name for two peace treaties signed in October 1648 in the cities of Osnabrück and Münster. They ended the Thirty Years' War and brought peace to the Holy Roman Empire. -
Leviathan was one of the most influential philosophical texts produced during the seventeenth century and was written partly as a response to the fear Hobbes experienced during the political turmoil of the English Civil Wars. -
Charles II was restored to the throne after several years of exile during the Puritan Commonwealth. The time of his reign is known as the Restoration period.
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Peter’s major achievements include the founding of St. Petersburg in 1703, the victory against Sweden at the Battle of Poltava in 1709, and the birth of the Russian navy.
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Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the Brandenburg Concertos.
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Permanently established Parliament as the ruling power of England and, later, the United Kingdom, representing a shift from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy.
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John Locke's Two Treatises of Government was published anonymously in 1689. In it, Locke proposed that government emerges from the consent of the governed to protect their natural rights. -
The English Bill of Rights clearly established that the monarchy could not rule without the consent of Parliament. -
A “true story” about a young Englishman who went on a dangerous sea voyage against the wishes of his parents. -
Swift's main purpose in Gulliver's Travels was to illustrate how the English government and society needed a reformation. -
Frederick II led his nation through multiple wars with Austria and its allies. His military tactics expanded and consolidated Prussian lands, while his domestic policies transformed his kingdom into a modern state and European power.
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“The Spirit of Laws” compares republic, monarchy, and despotism in government. The Catholic Church condemned the book in 1751 because it asserted that the clergy held no political power.
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Twenty-eight-volume reference book published by André Le Breton and edited by translator and philosopher Denis Diderot.
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The Seven Years' War resulted from an attempt by the Austrian Habsburgs to win back the province of Silesia, which had been taken from them by Frederick the Great of Prussia. Overseas colonial struggles between Great Britain and France for control of North America and India were also a cause of the war.
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A savage denunciation of metaphysical optimism that reveals a world of horrors and folly. -
During his 59-year reign, he pushed through a British victory in the Seven Years' War, led England's successful resistance to Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, and presided over the loss of the American Revolution.
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Stated that people could only experience true freedom if they lived in a civil society that ensured the rights and well-being of its citizens. -
During her 34-year reign, Catherine westernized Russia. She led her country into full participation in the political and cultural life of Europe. She championed the arts and reorganized the Russian law code.
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Joseph II is one of the best-known representatives of Enlightened Absolutism. As a monarch, he was indebted to the ideas of Enlightenment rationalism and implemented numerous reforms in the Habsburg Monarchy.
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The Boston Massacre was a street fight between a patriot mob, throwing snowballs, stones, and sticks, and a squad of British soldiers. Several colonists were killed and this led to a campaign by speech-writers to rouse the citizens. -
American colonists were angry with the British for imposing taxation without representation and dumped 342 chests of tea, imported by the British East India Company into the harbor. -
The Intolerable Acts were a series of laws passed by the British Parliament after the Boston Tea Party. The laws aimed to punish Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in the Tea Party protest of the Tea Act. -
The British marched into Lexington and Concord with the intention of seizing the colonists’ weapons. The fighting only lasted for about 10 minutes. After this, British troops were forced to return to Boston. -
“Wealth of Nations” describes the idea that the individual need to fulfill self-interest results in social benefit. This idea was often referred to as the invisible hand. -
An official step that was taken by the American colonies in declaring independence from Britain. -
A siege that ended with British General Charles Cornwallis surrendering his army of some 8,000 men to General George Washington at Yorktown, giving up any chance of winning the Revolutionary War.
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The formal end of the American Revolution. The Treaty of Paris formally recognized the United States as independent from Britain. -
A spontaneous riot during the early stages of the French Revolution was brought about by women in the marketplace in Paris. This riot was over the high price and scarcity of bread. -
Ratifying the constitution informed the public of the provisions of the new government. -
The Tennis Court Oath was when the men of the National Assembly swore an oath never to stop meeting until a constitution had been established for France. -
The Storming of the Bastille occurred in Paris, France when revolutionary insurgents stormed and seized control of the medieval armoury, fortress, and political prison known as the Bastille. -
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen is a human civil rights document from the French Revolution that outlines the natural rights of all men including freedom, ownership, security, and resistance to oppression. -
Written by French activist, feminist, and playwright Olympe de Gouges in response to the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. -
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is one of the trailblazing works of feminism. It argued that the educational system of this time deliberately trained women to be frivolous and incapable. -
The monarchy was abolished and a republic was established. War continued throughout Europe. After the radicals gained control, those who were against the revolution were subject to arrest or execution.
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The National Convention was elected to provide a new constitution for the country after the overthrow of the monarchy. -
A National Convention committee that formed the provisional government and war cabinet during the violent Reign of Terror. -
Period of the French Revolution when, following the creation of the First Republic, a series of massacres and numerous public executions took place in response to revolutionary fervor, anticlerical sentiment, and accusations of treason by the Committee of Public Safety.
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The Directory, a five-member committee that governed France from November 1795 to November 1799, failed to reform the disastrous economy, relied heavily on the army and violence, and represented another turn towards dictatorship during the French Revolution.
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After seizing political power in France in a 1799 coup d'état, he crowned himself emperor in 1804. -
Naval engagement between the British Royal Navy and the combined fleets of the French and Spanish Navies during the War of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars. -
This battle was the first military engagement of the Third Coalition between Napoleon of France and General M.I. Kutuzov of Russia and Austria. The fighting lasted for only about 9 hours. This battle is considered one of Napoleon’s greatest victories as his 68,000 troops took out an opposing army of nearly 90,000. -
The Battle of Leipzig was a 3-day battle in which Prussia, Sweden, and Russia, led by Tsar Alexander I and Karl von Schwarzenberg defeated the army of Napoleon.
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Napoleon abdicated the throne, and, in the Treaty of Fontainebleau, was banished to the Mediterranean island of Elba. -
This committee was responsible for reorganizing Europe after the Napoleonic Wars.
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Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena after he was defeated by the British at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, as he had previously escaped his exile to Elba.