Study sheet: Old Regime and Enlightenment

📋 Course Outline

1. Old Regime Foundations
2. Old Regime Economy
3. Absolute Monarchy and Mercantilism
4. Parliamentary and Republican Alternatives
5. Scientific Revolution
6. Enlightenment Political Thinkers
7. Women and Enlightenment Sociability
8. Enlightenment Legacy

📅 Key Dates

1. 1543Nicolaus Copernicus proposed the heliocentric theory that placed the Sun at the center with planets orbiting it.
2. 1633Galileo Galilei was tried by the Inquisition and forced to publicly reject Copernicus's theory.
3. 1642–1651The English Civil Wars occurred as Stuart monarchs faced opposition from the bourgeoisie controlling Parliament.
4. 1688The Glorious Revolution ended Stuart rule and established a parliamentary monarchy in England.
5. 1689The Bill of Rights guaranteed rights and freedoms, limited the monarch's power, and required Parliament's approval for laws and taxes.

📖 1. Old Regime Foundations

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Old Regime : The social, economic, and political system established in European kingdoms during the Modern Age, from the 15th to the 18th centuries.

★ Must-know

• The Old Regime had an economy based mainly on the primary sector, especially agriculture, authoritarian or absolute monarchies, and a stratified society inherited from the feudal Middle Ages.

Further detail

• Most peasants practiced subsistence farming and grew grains with simple tools, while most land belonged to the nobility and clergy.

• Noble land was inherited by the eldest son through mayorazgo, church land could not be sold through mortmain, and villages also possessed communal forests and pastures.

💡 Memory Hook

Agricultural society and growing bourgeois power contrasted with rigid inherited privilege.

📖 2. Old Regime Economy

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Guilds : Associations of artisans working in the same trade that regulated production and controlled how goods were made.

★ Must-know

• Droughts and floods could cause food shortages, which led to higher prices and then famine.

• Triangular trade connected Europe, Africa, and America by exchanging European goods for enslaved people in Africa, transporting enslaved Africans to America for sale, and using the profits to buy raw products for European markets.

Further detail

• In the domestic system, merchants provided raw materials to peasants, who made textile products in their homes and gained extra income.

• Royal factories produced weapons and luxury goods, while privileged companies controlled foreign trade and imported goods such as tea and cotton from America and Asia.

💡 Memory Hook

Climate crisis → food shortages → higher prices → famine.

📖 3. Absolute Monarchy and Mercantilism

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Absolute monarchy : A system in which the monarch held legislative, executive, and judicial powers and enforced authority through armies and government officials.
• Mercantilism : An economic policy that measured wealth by gold and silver, encouraged exports and national industries, and restricted imports.

★ Must-know

• Absolute monarchs justified their authority through the divine right of kings, the belief that power came from God.

Further detail

• Representative assemblies such as the Estates-General in France and the Cortes in Spain sometimes had to approve new taxes or certain laws.

💡 Memory Hook

LEJ: the monarch controls Legislative, Executive, and Judicial power.

📖 4. Parliamentary and Republican Alternatives

📝 Essential Points

• The Dutch Republic was a republic without a king or queen in which bourgeois political power was organized through seven provinces and their States General.

💡 Memory Hook

Civil Wars → Glorious Revolution → Bill of Rights → parliamentary monarchy.

📖 5. Scientific Revolution

📝 Essential Points

• Johannes Kepler showed that planets move around the Sun in elliptical orbits, and Galileo Galilei's telescope observations supported heliocentrism.

• The scientific method gains knowledge by observing a problem, forming a hypothesis, testing it through experiments or data collection, analyzing results, and drawing a conclusion.

💡 Memory Hook

Observe → hypothesize → test → analyze → conclude.

📖 6. Enlightenment Political Thinkers

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Social contract : The idea that people give up some freedoms in exchange for protection from government.

★ Must-know

• Isaac Newton developed the law of universal gravitation, according to which every object attracts every other object and gravitational force depends on mass and distance.

• Locke identified these natural rights (John Locke, 1632–1704):

  • life
  • liberty
  • property

• Montesquieu divided power into (Baron de Montesquieu, 1748):

  • legislative
  • executive
  • judicial

Further detail

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that government should express the general will and the consent of the people, support equality, and abolish noble privileges. — The Social Contract, 1762

• Voltaire defended freedom of speech, religious tolerance, and reason while criticizing the Church, government, and nobility through satire.

💡 Memory Hook

Hobbes prioritizes order, Locke rights, Montesquieu divided power, and Rousseau general will.

📖 7. Women and Enlightenment Sociability

★ Must-know

• Mary Wollstonecraft argued in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) that women deserved equal education because educated women could contribute more fully to society.

• Most women had few legal rights, limited access to education and property, and no participation in politics during the Enlightenment.

Further detail

• Mary Astell advocated better education and greater opportunities for women, while Émilie du Châtelet translated Newton's work into French and helped spread scientific knowledge.

• Salons hosted by educated women brought philosophers, writers, and scientists together and helped spread Enlightenment ideas throughout Europe.

💡 Memory Hook

Salons filled with women, philosophers, writers, and scientists discussing new ideas.

📖 8. Enlightenment Legacy

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Rationalism : The belief that reason and logical thinking should be used to understand and improve all areas of life.

★ Must-know

• It challenged: absolute monarchy, the divine right of kings, the close relationship between Church and state, social inequality

• Ideas spread through:

  • books
  • newspapers
  • salons
  • literary clubs

• Enlightenment thinkers were not revolutionaries, but their ideas inspired the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and later democratic movements.

Further detail

• Deists believed that God created the universe but that people should understand the world through reason and science, and Enlightenment thinkers promoted religious tolerance.

💡 Memory Hook

Reason and rights challenged authority → inspired revolutions and democratic movements.

📊 Synthesis Tables

Political Systems of the Old Regime

System	Main authority	Key characteristics
Absolute monarchy	Monarch	All state powers; divine right; mercantilism
Parliamentary monarchy	Monarch limited by Parliament	Bill of Rights; parliamentary approval of laws and taxes
Dutch Republic	Bourgeois representatives	Seven provinces coordinated through the States General