World History 1600–1914: Absolutism, Revolutions, Industry, and Empire
This domain runs from absolutism through the Enlightenment, the Atlantic revolutions, industrialization, and the age of imperialism. Questions here reward causal reasoning: why a revolution broke out, what actually changed, and who gained or lost. You will often be asked to compare two revolutions or explain how an idea traveled from a philosopher to a political document.
Core content
- Absolutism: Louis XIV's Versailles and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), Peter the Great's westernization, Tokugawa Japan's restricted foreign contact.
- Enlightenment: Locke on natural rights, Montesquieu on separation of powers, Rousseau on the social contract, Voltaire on religious toleration. These ideas surface in the Declaration of Independence, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and Bolívar's writings.
- Revolutions: Glorious Revolution (1688); American (1776); French (1789), driven by the estate system, fiscal crisis, bread prices, and Enlightenment critique; Haitian (1791–1804), led by enslaved people and free people of color and ending slavery; Latin American independence under Bolívar and San Martín.
- Industrial Revolution: began in Britain around 1750 with coal, textiles, and the steam engine; consequences include urbanization, child labor, and reform legislation.
- Imperialism: Berlin Conference (1884–85), Suez Canal (1869), the Opium Wars, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and the Meiji Restoration (1868).
Worked example
A comparison question pairs the French and Haitian revolutions. A strong answer states a criterion first, such as causes, participants, or outcomes. Both drew on Enlightenment ideas and resentment of inequality, but Saint-Domingue's revolution was led by enslaved and free people of color and ended slavery in 1804, while France's revolution abolished slavery in 1794 and Napoleon reinstated it in 1802. Then state why the difference matters.
Traps
Placing the Industrial Revolution in France; listing events instead of explaining causes; assuming colonized peoples welcomed imperialism; treating nationalism as always liberating.