A History of Western Society: Printed Page 501
A History of Western Society, Value Edition: Printed Page 484
A History of Western Society, Concise Edition: Printed Page 502
The seventeenth century represented a difficult passage between two centuries of dynamism and growth. On one side lay the sixteenth century of religious enthusiasm and strife, overseas expansion, rising population, and vigorous commerce. On the other side stretched the eighteenth-
With the re-
The eighteenth century was to see this status quo thrown into question by new Enlightenment aspirations for human society, which themselves derived from the inquisitive and self-
Make Connections
Think about the larger developments and continuities within and across chapters.
This chapter has argued that, despite their political differences, rulers in absolutist and constitutionalist nations faced similar obstacles in the mid-
Proponents of absolutism in western Europe believed that their form of monarchical rule was fundamentally different from and superior to what they saw as the “despotism” of Russia and the Ottoman Empire. What was the basis of this belief, and how accurate do you think it was?