CLEP Western Civilization II key terms

A system of monarchy in which the ruler claims sole and unlimited authority over law, taxation, the army, and the church, justifying power by divine right rather than by consent of representative bodies.

The doctrine that a monarch's authority comes directly from God, so that resistance to the ruler is a sin and royal power answers to no earthly parliament or court.

The principle that governmental power is limited by a body of fundamental law and shared with representative institutions, so rulers govern through consent and are bound by legal restraints.

The English statute that settled the Glorious Revolution, barring royal suspension of laws, requiring parliamentary consent for taxation and standing armies, and guaranteeing free elections and debate in Parliament.

The 1688 invasion and settlement in which James II was replaced by William and Mary, producing a limited monarchy and establishing parliamentary supremacy in England without extensive bloodshed.

An economic doctrine holding that national power depends on accumulated bullion and a favorable trade balance, encouraging colonies, tariffs, and state direction of commerce to export more than is imported.

English laws requiring that colonial trade be carried in English or colonial ships and that certain goods pass through English ports, enforcing a mercantilist monopoly over imperial commerce.

The Atlantic trading system linking Europe, Africa, and the Americas: manufactured goods to Africa, enslaved Africans to the Americas, and plantation products such as sugar and tobacco back to Europe.

The global conflict of 1756 to 1763 in which Britain and Prussia fought France, Austria, and their allies, ending with British gains in Canada and India and a major shift in the balance of power.

The successive divisions of Polish territory in 1772, 1793, and 1795 among Russia, Prussia, and Austria, which erased Poland from the map and demonstrated the ambitions of the eastern absolutist powers.

The transformation of European natural philosophy between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, replacing Aristotelian cosmology with mathematical laws, observation, and experiment as the basis for knowledge of nature.

The astronomical model placing the Sun at the center of the planetary system, advanced by Copernicus and confirmed by Galileo and Kepler, which displaced the Earth-centered cosmology of antiquity.

Italian astronomer and physicist who used the telescope to observe lunar craters, Jupiter's moons, and sunspots, supported heliocentrism, and was tried by the Inquisition for his conclusions.

The epistemological position that knowledge derives from sensory experience and observation rather than innate ideas, associated with Locke and Hume and central to the method of the Scientific Revolution.

The eighteenth-century intellectual movement emphasizing reason, natural law, individual rights, toleration, and progress, and criticizing church authority and absolute monarchy in favor of reform and secular knowledge.

The French Enlightenment thinkers, including Voltaire, Diderot, and Montesquieu, who popularized rational criticism of religion, government, and society through essays, the Encyclopédie, and correspondence.

The theory that legitimate political authority arises from an agreement among people, as argued by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, who differed on whether the contract justified absolute rule or the right of resistance.

Genevan philosopher who argued in the Social Contract that legitimate government expresses the general will of the people, and whose writings on liberty and equality influenced the French Revolution.

The rule of eighteenth-century monarchs such as Frederick II, Catherine II, and Joseph II, who adopted selected Enlightenment reforms in administration, law, and education while retaining absolute authority.

The French representative assembly of clergy, nobility, and commoners, summoned in 1789 for the first time since 1614, whose disputes over voting procedure triggered the outbreak of the Revolution.

The French order representing commoners, from peasants to wealthy bourgeois, which demanded voting by head rather than by order and declared itself the National Assembly in June 1789.

The revolutionary body formed when the Third Estate and sympathetic deputies claimed sovereign authority in 1789, abolishing feudal privileges and drafting the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

The period from 1793 to 1794 when the Committee of Public Safety under Robespierre used revolutionary tribunals, mass arrests, and executions to suppress counterrevolution and enforce revolutionary unity.

The Civil Code of 1804 consolidating revolutionary reforms such as equality before the law, secular marriage, and protection of property, while reinforcing male authority within the family.

The 1814 to 1815 settlement of European powers under Metternich that restored monarchies, redrew boundaries, and created a balance of power designed to prevent renewed French or revolutionary expansion.

The nineteenth-century political outlook defending monarchy, aristocracy, religion, and established institutions, distrusting rapid change and viewing revolution as a threat to social order and inherited tradition.

The nineteenth-century ideology championing individual liberties, constitutional government, free trade, and legal equality, generally tied to the propertied middle class rather than to universal suffrage.

The belief that a people sharing language, culture, or history should form a sovereign state, a force that drove nineteenth-century unification movements and later intensified rivalry among European powers.

The practice of the great powers resolving disputes through congresses and consultation after 1815, intended to preserve the Vienna settlement and manage revolutions collectively.

The transition from handcraft and agrarian production to machine manufacturing, factory organization, and mass energy use, beginning in Britain around 1750 and transforming work, cities, and class structure.

The rapid growth of cities as rural migrants moved toward factory employment, producing overcrowding, inadequate sanitation, and new public health problems that reformers addressed in the nineteenth century.

The economic doctrine that government should refrain from interfering in markets, associated with Adam Smith's argument that individual self-interest and free exchange increase national wealth.

The organization of workers into unions to bargain collectively over wages, hours, and conditions, often allied with socialist or labor parties and legalized gradually during the nineteenth century.

The extension of European political and economic control over Africa and Asia in the late nineteenth century, driven by industrial demand for markets and resources, national rivalry, and ideologies of cultural superiority.

The 1884 to 1885 meeting of European powers that set rules for claiming African territory, accelerating the scramble for colonies without any African representation.

The series of diplomatic confrontations before 1914 arising from Austro-Russian rivalry and nationalist movements in southeastern Europe, which helped turn a regional assassination into a continental war.

The 1919 peace settlement imposing territorial losses, disarmament, and reparations on Germany and accepting the League of Nations, whose terms fueled German grievance and revisionism.

The interwar international organization established in 1920 to settle disputes and preserve peace, weakened by the absence of the United States and by its inability to enforce decisions against major powers.

The British and French policy in the 1930s of conceding to German territorial demands to avoid war, culminating in the Munich Agreement of 1938 and discredited by the outbreak of war in 1939.

The prolonged geopolitical and ideological rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union after 1945, pursued through alliances, nuclear deterrence, propaganda, and proxy conflicts rather than direct war.

The American program of economic aid to Western Europe from 1948 that financed reconstruction, encouraged cooperation, and helped draw a dividing line between Western and Soviet spheres.

The organization created by the 1957 Treaty of Rome among six Western European states, establishing a common market and institutions that became the core of later European integration.

The postwar process by which Asian and African colonies gained independence from European empires, driven by nationalist movements and by the weakened finances and legitimacy of the imperial powers.