The Age of Enlightenment car its name of the intellectual, cultural movement and scientist known under the name of Lights. It corresponds basically to the European . The English revolution of 1688 constitutes the first time of them. Artistically, it corresponds to the period Rococo then neo-classic , and musicalement, at the traditional period baroque then .

Usual significances

One finds as of the Années 1670, the mention of “century lit” in certain historical or philosophical writings reporting the experiments and scientific progresses of time. The inflection anticlerical and combative that the philosophy of the Lights in the years 1750 takes was to mark the expression. In France prérévolutionnaire, the formula is devoted by the representatives of the Lights then by the revolutionists themselves. Historiography retained the expression: “The Age of Enlightenment: century one, deeply, but how much various. The reason lights all the men, it is the light, or more precisely, not being of a ray, but a beam, the Lights. ” August 1st

History of the Lights

Explorations, trade and international relations

After the Treated of the Pyrenees (1659), the France took a dominant position in Europe, in the majority of the fields.

With, the development of the international business of the United Provinces to the detriment of the Spain and Portugal had pushed the Dutchman Hugo Grotius to renew the rules of the International law and to provide the foundations of the natural Right modern. The center of gravity of international competition moved towards the North of Europe.

The trade towards the Indies pushed three powers in the competition: United Provinces, the England and France.

With, the Franco-English competition appeared during the Guerre Seven Year old, in Europe and America. The French defeat pushed France to seek a revenge, which it did by helping the English colonies of America in their process of independence.

Navigation and geographical exploration extended to more remote zones: the Pacific Ocean and the the Far East. The English James Cook and the French Jean-François of Perugia were in competition.

The American colonies supported the heavy taxes more and more badly that the kingdom of England in the commercial exchanges imposed to them.

The development of the international business testified to a total process and a search for specific rules, which increased the range of the renewal of the ideas on the world: definition of the Commercial law, process of American independence, International law and natural Right. Europe reinforced overall the supremacy which it had acquired on the world with the Renaissance following the large explorations.

Regency (1715-1723)

In 1715, Louis XIV left for successor a five year old child. Louis XV succeeded his back grandfather, the Sun king, who had made France the first European power. During the eight years which followed, the duke of Orleans, nephew of the late king, ensured the Régence.

Regency was marked by a violent reaction against all that had characterized the end of the preceding reign. Versailles was temporarily forsaken and the Court is established in Paris, where it carried out a life of pleasures, festivals and impiétés…

The system of Law

With died of Louis XIV, the Treasury was empty and the two years incomes following were already spent. With an aim of solving this monetary crisis, the system of the Scottish economist Law, become General inspector of Finances in 1720, aimed at increasing the money supply by having recourse to the creation and the generalization of the paper money. This reform was to produce a rise of marketing activity as well as the progressive extinction of the national debt. Law thus will introduce the paper money in 1716 and will create a private banking which will become the Royal Bank in 1718. The actions going up out of arrow, their value dropped. Taken fear, the public lost confidence in the tickets and required their silver and gold refunding. The value of the issued tickets going far beyond boxes it bank, this one went bankrupt and Law escaped. The system had thus failed. The maritime trade had received a sharp impulse from it, but in France the confidence of the public in the banks was destroyed for a long time.

Louis XV (1723-1774)

At the beginning of 1723, Louis XV was declared king. But until in 1743, it discharged from the capacity, initially on the Regent who died a few months later, then on the duke of Bourbon and finally on its former tutor, the cardinal of Fleury which managed to restore finances. After the death of this last in 1743, the first acts of the king seemed to show that it was laid out to control itself. The publication of the Encyclopédie was prohibited.

Louis XV had spirit and good sense, but it missed will and of confidence in him. Instead of exerting itself the trade of king, it gave up the direction of the kingdom to the duke of Choiseul, which indirectly supported the opposition of the Parliaments and the philosophers. In 1770, with the arrival of the triumvirate Maupeou - Pivot - Terray, the capacity hardens.

Moreover, France enjoyed a relative prosperity: consumption progressed and the prices of the manufactured or imported goods increased.

Louis XVI (1774-1793)

The May 10th 1774, with died of Louis XV, his grandson became king under the name of Louis XVI. It was dominated by his wife, Marie-Antoinette and by the noble privileged ones. The new king chooses good ministers who developed the country and his economy but the project to establish the equality in front of the tax caused strong reactions at the noble ones. Finances were disastrous and the money missed: the kingdom was then in full crisis. The situation of the kingdom was degraded very quickly. The king yielded to all the claims the noble ones and middle-class which, conscious of the injustice, benefitted from it to assert their rights.

As from 1788, France sank in the economic crisis. If, in 1783, the signature of the treated of Versailles had put an end to the war of American independence, it had devoted the republican ideal near part of the company, wearied Absolutisme.

The Revolution (1789-1799)

Louis XVI convened the General states which met in Versailles at the beginning of May 1789. After a complex process of dissensions, in particular on the mode of representativeness of its members and the extent of their functions, most of the Third state, but also a great noble number of and members of the Clergé meets out of royal control, where they proclaim illegally National Assembly, having a legislative power and either only advisory like that of the General states. The Constituante abolishes the absolutism and the Féodalité. It adopted the Déclaration of the human rights and of the citizen and a constitution gave to France “one and indivisible”.

The war with the adjoining countries, desired at the same time by Louis XVI, either king de France but king of the French, and by the majority of the members of the legislative Parliament, precipitated the fall of the royalty and the proclamation of the republic. Excesses of the revolutionary tendencies and counter-revolutionaries, the economic crisis and the growing capacity of the army, will support the coup d'etat of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799.

Beginnings of the United States

At the beginning of, the Earth was inhabited approximately 700 million inhabitants. The America still was populated very little.

The treated of Paris marked the end of the Guerre of independence of the United States. The colonists who remained attached to the British Crown (Loyaliste S), had to emigrate. Much settled in current the Canada.

The new Federal state recovered the territories located at the east of the the Mississippi. Thomas Jefferson took an active part in the ordinances of the North-West in 1785, 1787, and 1788, which prepared the administrative cutting of these territories, with the system of the Township S, thus preparing the Conquête of the West. The territories located at the north of the Ohio, yielded by the Virginia to the the United States, were the prototype of this new organization.

A personality also originating in Virginia, James Madison wrote the American Constitution (1787). Jefferson and Madison were 3rd and 4th presidents of the United States.

With the whole beginning of, Thomas Jefferson advantageously negotiated the purchase of the Louisiana (in the west of the Mississippi) to Napoleon Bonaparte, which had other concerns in Europe.

Thus the State was formed which became at the end of the most powerful State of the world. Today still, immense the Library of the Congress (128 million volumes) and the University of Virginia, testify to the personality of Thomas Jefferson, large in love with the Bibliothèque S and the To know.

Chronology of the Age of Enlightenment

Random links:

Jacques Boullaire | Philatelic living room of autumn | Léo Major | Flames | Samone (Turin)