Unit 5: Conflict, Crisis, and Reaction in the Late 18th Century

Global market economy

An increasingly interconnected 18th-century economy in which European prosperity depended on long-distance trade networks, colonies, and overseas commodity flows.

Colonialism

The policy and practice of acquiring and maintaining overseas territories to extract raw materials and secure markets, tying European growth to imperial expansion and exploitation.

Atlantic slave trade

A major forced migration (16th–19th centuries) in which European traders transported millions of Africans to the Americas for coerced labor, fueling Atlantic plantation economies.

Triangular trade

Atlantic trading system linking Europe, Africa, and the Americas through exchanges of manufactured goods, enslaved labor, and plantation commodities.

Middle Passage

The notoriously inhumane transatlantic voyage that carried enslaved Africans to the Americas; marked by overcrowding, disease, starvation, and high mortality.

Steam engine

A key technology that increased productivity and efficiency in manufacturing and helped push parts of Europe (especially Britain) toward early industrialization.

Spinning jenny

An invention that dramatically increased spinning capacity in textile production, raising manufacturing output and supporting early industrialization.

Industrial Revolution

The transformation in production beginning in Britain in the mid-1700s (later spreading), driven by new technologies and factory-based manufacturing growth.

Capitalism

An economic system whose rise accelerated in the 18th century, emphasizing private property, market exchange, investment, and profit, alongside expanding middle and working classes.

Commercial Revolution

(16th–18th centuries) A long period of European economic expansion marked by growing international trade, colonialism, mercantilism, new financial institutions, and the rise of capitalism.

Financial innovations (18th century)

Developments such as modern banking systems/central banks, stock markets, and wider use of paper money that enabled investment, expanded commerce, and helped states borrow for war.

Balance-of-power diplomacy

A system treating Europe like a scale: when one state gained power or territory, others formed shifting alliances to counterbalance it, often producing rivalry and war.

Fiscal-military state

A state that developed bureaucracies to raise taxes and borrow (public credit/national debt) in order to maintain and supply large standing armies and navies for expensive wars.

Seven Years’ War (1756–1763)

A major global conflict fought in Europe, North America, the Caribbean, and India; a turning point that expanded debts, sharpened imperial rivalry, and boosted British naval/colonial dominance.

Treaty of Paris (1763)

The treaty ending the Seven Years’ War that confirmed major British gains and strengthened Britain’s imperial position while intensifying debate over managing and paying for empire.

Partitions of Poland (1772, 1793, 1795)

The division of Poland-Lithuania by Russia, Prussia, and Austria until it disappeared as an independent state, illustrating aggressive great-power politics and the limits of “enlightened” restraint.

Conservatism

Early 19th-century ideology prioritizing stability and tradition, arguing that social order depends on institutions like monarchy, church, and hierarchy and warning that rapid reform can lead to violence.

Constitutional monarchy

A political system in which a monarch’s power is limited by laws/constitution and representative institutions; in England this was strengthened after 1688–1689.

British East India Company

A company founded in 1600 to trade with Asia that became the dominant power in India by the mid-1700s, central to Britain’s imperial and commercial influence.

Taxation without representation

Colonial grievance that Parliament imposed taxes on the American colonies without colonial representation, helping drive the American Revolution.

Declaration of Independence (1776)

The Continental Congress’s formal statement asserting the American colonies’ independence from Britain and articulating a rights-based justification for separation.

Enlightenment

An 18th-century intellectual movement emphasizing reason, skepticism toward inherited authority, and reform ideas (rights, toleration, constitutional limits) that became politically explosive in crises.

Rationalism

The Enlightenment belief that reason is the primary source of knowledge and should guide public life more than tradition or inherited authority.

Empiricism

The Enlightenment emphasis on knowledge derived from observation and experience, associated with confidence in the scientific method.

Secularism

The view that religion should not dominate government, including criticism of organized religion and support for separating church and state.

Deism

Belief in a distant, non-interventionist God; popular among some Enlightenment-era intellectuals and part of broader religious contestation.

Liberalism

Late 18th-century ideology emphasizing individual rights, limited government, and free markets; associated with thinkers such as John Locke and Adam Smith.

Romanticism

Late 18th- to mid-19th-century cultural movement reacting against Enlightenment rationalism and industrial disruption, emphasizing emotion, imagination, nature, and individual experience (with political themes of freedom/rights).

Haitian Revolution (1791–1804)

Uprising in Saint-Domingue that became the first successful large-scale slave revolt, creating the first black-led republic and challenging Atlantic slavery and “universal rights” claims.

Ancien Régime

France’s pre-1789 political and social order marked by estate privilege, unequal taxation, fragmented laws, and a powerful Catholic Church, making fiscal reform difficult.

Three Estates

The traditional division of French society: First Estate (clergy), Second Estate (nobility), and Third Estate (everyone else), with privilege and taxation organized unevenly across them.

Aristocratic revolt

Elite resistance to reform in late 18th-century France—privileged groups defending exemptions and blocking tax changes—contributing to political deadlock and crisis.

Estates-General (1789)

Estate-based representative body called by Louis XVI (not convened since 1614); its procedural disputes (voting by order vs. by head) triggered a sovereignty crisis.

National Assembly

The body formed when Third Estate representatives declared themselves the representatives of the nation (June 17, 1789), shifting sovereignty from king to nation.

Tennis Court Oath

(June 20, 1789) Pledge by the National Assembly not to disband until France had a constitution, symbolizing open defiance of royal authority.

Storming of the Bastille

(July 14, 1789) Paris crowd seized a royal fortress-prison; militarily limited but symbolically powerful as a strike against royal authority and fear of repression.

Great Fear

(Summer 1789) Rural panic over rumored aristocratic plots; peasants attacked manors and destroyed feudal records, pushing the Assembly toward ending feudal privileges.

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

(August 1789) Revolutionary statement of legal equality, popular sovereignty, and natural rights (liberty, property, security, resistance to oppression) that also raised questions about exclusion.

Civil Constitution of the Clergy

(1790) Reorganization of the French Catholic Church requiring clergy loyalty oaths; intensified conflict by dividing communities and fueling counterrevolution.

Flight to Varennes

(1791) Louis XVI’s failed attempt to escape France, which shattered confidence in the king’s loyalty to the constitutional order.

Committee of Public Safety

Emergency governing body during the radical phase of the French Revolution, associated with Robespierre, central to directing war efforts and internal security.

Reign of Terror

(1793–1794) Period of state-directed violence against suspected enemies of the revolution, justified as necessary for survival amid war, rebellion, and political crisis.

Levée en masse

Mass conscription and mobilization that expanded French armies, linked citizenship to military duty, and helped turn war into a “people’s” project.

Thermidorian Reaction

(1794) Political shift that curtailed the radical phase after the Terror and helped produce a new, less extreme revolutionary government.

Directory

(1795–1799) Post-Terror regime seeking stability but facing war, economic instability, and polarization; often relied on the army to maintain order.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Military leader who seized power in the 1799 coup (18 Brumaire) as First Consul and later emperor (1804), combining revolutionary language with authoritarian rule to stabilize France.

Napoleonic Code

(1804) Comprehensive civil law code standardizing laws and emphasizing equality before the law and property rights, while also reinforcing patriarchal family authority and limiting some rights.

Continental System

Napoleon’s economic warfare strategy restricting British trade with continental Europe to weaken Britain; caused hardship, smuggling, and resentment in trade-dependent regions.

Congress of Vienna (1814–1815)

Diplomatic settlement after Napoleon aiming to restore legitimate monarchies, contain France, and rebuild a durable balance of power under leaders such as Metternich, Castlereagh, Alexander I, and Talleyrand.

Principle of legitimacy

Vienna-era conservative principle seeking to restore “rightful” dynasties and traditional rulers after Napoleon to reduce revolutionary appeal and reject conquest-made regimes.