Enlightenment era

  • the 30 year war begains

    The first traces of enlightenment are found in the early French philosophers around 1670.
  • war and peace

    a treatise on war and international relations titled On the Law of War and Peace eventually became accepted as the basis for the rules of modern warfare.
  • the 30 year war ends

  • thomas hobbes

    The first major Enlightenment figure in England was Thomas Hobbes, who caused great controversy with the release of his provocative treatise Leviathan
  • william and mary

    English Protestants helped overthrow the Catholic king James II and installed the Protestant monarchs William and Mary.
  • John Locke

    John Locke came into the picture, promoting the opposite type of government—a representative government
  • the social contract

    a work championing a form of government based on small, direct democracy that directly reflects the will of the population
  • Beccaria

    Beccaria’s book On Crimes and Punishments exposed these practices and led to the abolition of many.
  • Goethe

    Goethe’s morose The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) helped fuel the Sturm und Drang movement
  • woman rights

    A French feminist and reformer in the waning years of the Enlightenment who articulated the rights of women with her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen

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