- Committee of Public Safety
- the provisional government of revolutionary France from 1793 to 1794
- Congress of Vienna
- an 1814–1815 meeting of Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Austria to restore the balance of power and assert principles of conservatism
- conservatism
- a political ideology that emerged in reaction to the freedoms associated with the revolutions of the eighteenth century and advocated submitting to government authority and giving religious doctrine a central role in maintaining social order and stability
- Continental Congresses
- two assemblies of elected colonial representatives that met in Philadelphia in 1774 and 1775, the second time to adopt the powers of government and approve the Declaration of Independence from Britain
- deductive reasoning
- a form of logical reasoning that begins with a general statement and applies it to specific conclusions
- Directory
- an executive council of five men established by the Convention in France to replace the Committee of Public Safety after the decline of the Reign of Terror
- empiricism
- a philosophical concept based on the belief that all knowledge derives from sensory experience
- enlightened despot
- an absolutist ruler influenced by the principles of the Enlightenment
- Estates General
- a legislative assembly of the three estates, or orders, of French society: the clergy, the nobility, and commoners
- general will
- a concept in political philosophy by which the state can be legitimate only if it is guided by the will of the people as a whole
- gens de couleur libres
- a French term that referred to free people of color in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, now Haiti
- Germanic Confederation
- an alliance of thirty-nine mostly German-speaking states developed to replace the Holy Roman Empire in 1815
- Girondins
- a moderate faction of the Jacobin political club in revolutionary France
- inductive reasoning
- a form of logical reasoning that gathers specific examples and observations to arrive at a broad generalization
- Jacobins
- a radical political club in revolutionary France that supported overthrowing the monarchy
- liberalism
- a political ideology that promotes freedom of expression, popular sovereignty, the protection of civil rights and private property, and representative government
- Mountain
- a radical faction of the Jacobin club in revolutionary France that supported executing the king
- nationalism
- a political ideology that promotes the interests of the nation over international concerns and advocates the uniqueness and inherent superiority of the individual’s own country over others
- natural rights
- universal and inalienable rights that cannot be revoked or rescinded by human laws
- popular sovereignty
- the idea that government should exist only by the consent of the governed
- Proclamation Line
- the boundary of westward settlement that Britain marked out in its thirteen North American colonies
- public sphere
- shared spaces that enabled the exchange of ideas and information outside the control of state and church, like coffeehouses and salons
- Reign of Terror
- a period of the French Revolution during which the revolutionary government adopted repressive measures to prevent dissent
- Risorgimento
- an Italian term that refers to the unification of Italy
- salon
- informal gathering in the homes of wealthy aristocrats, generally hosted by women, that served as a site for the discussion of Enlightenment ideas and philosophies
- sans-culottes
- a French term that referred to radicals from the lower and working classes during the French Revolution
- Stamp Act
- an act of the British Parliament that imposed taxes on legal documents and other printed materials in its North American colonies in 1765
- the social contract
- an implicit agreement among members of a society to surrender their natural rights to the state, which is then charged with maintaining and protecting those rights
- Vodou
- a mix of Roman Catholic and indigenous West African religious practices popular in Haiti