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This is a timeline of the 18th century. 1700s John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. The Battle of Poltava in 1709 turned the Russian Empire into a European power. 1700–1721: Great Northern War between the Russian and Swedish Empires. 1701: Kingdom of Prussia declared under King Frederick I. 1701: Ashanti Empire is formed under Osei Kofi ...
Europe. Britain. In a friendly keyboard contest in Rome between Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, the result is a draw – Handel being the winner on the organ and Scarlatti on the harpsichord. Go to Handel, George Frideric (1685–1759) in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (2 rev ed.)
- Overview
- The age of reason: human understanding of the universe
Historians place the Enlightenment in Europe (with a strong emphasis on France) during the late 17th and the 18th centuries, or, more comprehensively, between the Glorious Revolution in 1688 and the French Revolution of 1789. It represents a phase in the intellectual history of Europe and also programs of reform, inspired by a belief in the possibility of a better world, that outlined specific targets for criticism and programs of action.
What led to the Enlightenment?
The roots of the Enlightenment can be found in the humanism of the Renaissance, with its emphasis on the study of Classical literature. The Protestant Reformation, with its antipathy toward received religious dogma, was another precursor. Perhaps the most important sources of what became the Enlightenment were the complementary rational and empirical methods of discovering truth that were introduced by the scientific revolution.
Renaissance
Learn more about the Renaissance.
Reformation
The powers and uses of reason had first been explored by the philosophers of ancient Greece. The Romans adopted and preserved much of Greek culture, notably including the ideas of a rational natural order and natural law. Amid the turmoil of empire, however, a new concern arose for personal salvation, and the way was paved for the triumph of the Christian religion. Christian thinkers gradually found uses for their Greco-Roman heritage. The system of thought known as Scholasticism, culminating in the work of Thomas Aquinas, resurrected reason as a tool of understanding. In Thomas’s presentation, Aristotle provided the method for obtaining that truth which was ascertainable by reason alone; since Christian revelation contained a higher truth, Thomas placed the natural law evident to reason subordinate to, but not in conflict with, eternal law and divine law.
The intellectual and political edifice of Christianity, seemingly impregnable in the Middle Ages, fell in turn to the assaults made on it by humanism, the Renaissance, and the Protestant Reformation. Humanism bred the experimental science of Francis Bacon, Nicolaus Copernicus, and Galileo and the mathematical investigations of René Descartes, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Isaac Newton. The Renaissance rediscovered much of Classical culture and revived the notion of humans as creative beings, and the Reformation, more directly but in the long run no less effectively, challenged the monolithic authority of the Roman Catholic Church. For Martin Luther, as for Bacon or Descartes, the way to truth lay in the application of human reason. Both the Renaissance and the Reformation were less movements for intellectual liberty than changes of authority, but, since they appealed to different authorities, they contributed to the breakdown of the community of thought. Received authority, whether of Ptolemy in the sciences or of the church in matters of the spirit, was to be subject to the probings of unfettered minds.
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European History
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Storming of the Bastille, 14 July 1789, an iconic event of the French Revolution. Development of the Watt steam engine in the late 18th century was an important element in the Industrial Revolution in Europe. The American Revolutionary War took place in the late 18th century.
In the 18th century, Europe grew both economically and socially. Here are 10 events that changed Europe during the 1700s. The Agricultural Revolution started in Great Britain and paved the way for the Industrial Revolution. There were new practices, such as crop rotation and effective use of livestock.
- Rachel Abbey
Dec 10, 2019 · The Grand Tour, which didn't come to an end until the close of the eighteenth century, began in the sixteenth century and gained popularity during the seventeenth century. Read to find out what started this event and what the typical Tour entailed.
France, 1715–89. The year 1789 is the great dividing line in the history of modern France. The fall of the Bastille, a medieval fortress used as a state prison, on July 14, 1789, symbolizes for France, as well as for other nations, the end of the premodern era characterized by an organicist and religiously sanctioned traditionalism.
