European Civilization History 2B - Terms For Final Review

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Philosophe(s)

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Were a group of intellectuals of the 18th century Enlightenment. Public intellectuals dedicated to solving the real problems of the world e.g. The Social Contract (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

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Holy Roman Empire

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was a union of territories in Central Europe during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period under a Holy Roman Emperor.

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Cahiers de doléances

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were the lists of grievances drawn up by each of the three Estates in France, between March and April 1789, the year in which the French Revolution began. Their compilation was ordered by King Louis XVI, to give each of the Estates – the First Estate (the clergy), the Second Estate (the nobility) and the Third Estate, which consisted of the bourgeoisie, the urban workers, and the peasants – the chance to express their hopes and grievances directly to the King. They were explicitly discussed at a special meeting of the Estates-General held on 5 May 1789. Many of these lists have survived and provide considerable information about the state of the country on the eve of the revolution. The documents recorded criticisms of government waste, indirect taxes, church taxes and corruption, and the hunting rights of the aristocracy.

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Robespierre

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is one of the best-known and influential figures of the French Revolution. He largely dominated the Committee of Public Safety and was instrumental in the period of the Revolution commonly known as the Reign of Terror that ended with his arrest and execution in 1794.

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Tennis Court Oath

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was a pivotal event during the French Revolution. The Oath was a pledge signed by 576 out of the 577 members from the Third Estate and a few members of the First Estate during a meeting of the Estates-General of 20 June 1789 in a tennis court near the Palace of Versailles.

The Oath signified the first time that French citizens formally stood in opposition to Louis XVI, and the refusal by members of the National Assembly to back down forced the king to make concessions. The Oath also inspired a wide variety of revolutionary activity in the months afterwards, ranging from rioting across the French countryside to renewed calls for a written French constitution. Moreover, the Oath communicated in unambiguous fashion the idea that the deputies of the National Assembly were declaring themselves the supreme state power. From this point forward, Louis XVI would find the Crown increasingly unable to rest upon monarchical traditions of divine right.

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Plebiscite

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is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to either accept or reject a particular proposal.

Bonaparte instituted this common authoritarian device which allowed him to bypass legislative bodies--as well as permitting local officials to tamper with ballot boxes. e.g. The plebiscite that ratified him "Consul for life."

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Napoleonic Code

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is the French civil code, established under Napoléon I in 1804. It was drafted rapidly by a commission of four eminent jurists and entered into force on March 21, 1804. Even though the Napoleonic code was not the first legal code to be established in a European country with a civil legal system it is considered the first successful codification and strongly influenced the law of many other countries. Historians have called it "one of the few documents which have influenced the whole world."

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Levée en masse

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It is a French term for mass conscription during the French Revolutionary Wars, particularly for the one from 23 August 1793.

The term denotes a short-term requisition of all able-bodied men to defend the nation and has to be viewed in connection with the political events in revolutionary France, namely the new concept of the democratic citizen as opposed to a royal subject.

Central to the understanding of [it] is the idea that the new political rights given to the mass of the French people also created new obligations to the state. As the nation now understood itself as a community of all people, its defense also was assumed to become a responsibility of all. Thus, [it] was created and understood as a means to defend the nation for the nation by the nation.

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Concert of Europe

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was the balance of power that existed in Europe from the fall of Napoleon to the end of the Crimean War. Its founding members were the UK, Austria, Russia and Prussia who were also members of the 6th Coalition (Quadruple Alliance) responsible for the downfall of Napoleon I; in time France became established as a fifth member of the "club". The leading personalities of the system were British foreign secretary Lord Castlereagh, Austrian Chancellor Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich and Alexander I the czar of Russia.

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Congress of Vienna

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was a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by the Austrian statesman Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and held in Vienna from September, 1814 to June, 1815.[1] Its objective was to redraw the continent's political map and settle the many other issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, and the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. The immediate background was France's defeat and surrender in May, 1814, which brought an end to twenty-five years of almost continuous war. The negotiations continued despite a final outburst of fighting triggered by ex-Emperor Napoleon's dramatic return from exile and resumption of power in France during the Hundred Days in March-July, 1815. [It] was a model for the League of Nations and United Nations due to its goal to constitute peace by all parties.

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Chartist Movement

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was a movement for political and social reform in the United Kingdom during the mid-19th century between 1838 and 1848.
[It] stipulated the six main aims of the movement as:
* Suffrage for all men age 21 and
over
* Equal-sized electoral districts
* Voting by secret ballot
* An end to the need for a property
qualification for Parliament
* Pay for Members of Parliament
* Annual election of Parliament

Chartism was possibly the first mass working class labour movement in the world. Its leaders have often been described as either "physical-" or "moral-force" leaders, depending upon their attitudes to violent protest.

William Lovett = Moral Force
Feargus O'Conner = Physical Force

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Whig

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By the first half of the 19th century, however, the [their] political programme came to encompass not only the supremacy of parliament over the monarch and support for free trade, but Catholic emancipation, the abolition of slavery and, significantly, expansion of the franchise (suffrage). Eventually the [they] would evolve into the Liberal Party (while [the other] became the Conservative Party).

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Liberalism

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[its] core was a commitment to individual liberties, or rights. [They] believed that the most important function of government was to protect liberties, and that doing o would benefit all, promoting justice knowledge, progress, and prosperity. [It] had three components:
First - [It] called for equality before the law, which meant ending traditional privileges and the restrictive power of rank and hereditary authority.
Second - [it] held that government needed to be based on political rights and the consent of the governed.
Third - in economics, [it] meant a belief in the benefits of unfettered individualism.

Foundation = John Locke who defended English Parliament's rebellion against absolutism, and in the "inalienable" rights of the British people.

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Otto von Bismarck

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Born into the Junker class of conservative, land-owning aristocrats, he was a skillful diplomat whose power politics played such an important role in German unification. "Real Politik" (politics or diplomacy based primarily on practical considerations, rather than ideological notions.) became closely associated with his governing style.

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Napoleon III of France

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A nephew of Napoleon I, [he] was elected president of the Second Republic in 1848 and staged a coup in 1851. [He] was the only President of the French Second Republic and the only emperor of the Second French Empire.