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 Baroque | Relating to a grand, ornate style that characterized European painting, music, and architecture in the 1600s and early 1700s |
| Junker | Prussian landowning nobility |
| Mulatto | Persons of mixed European and African ancestry |
| Guerrilla | A member of a loosely organized fighting force that makes surprise attacks on enemy troops occupying his or her country |
| Coup d'etat | Sudden overthrow of gov't leaders by a small group |
| Habeas Corpus | Legal principle that requires aurthorities to show reasons why a person should be held in custody and to provide a speedy trial |
| Absolute Monarch | A king or queen who has unlimited power and seeks to control all aspects of society |
| Divine Right | The idea that monarchs are God's representatives on earth and are therefore answerable only to God. |
| Boyar | A landowning noble of Russia |
| Constitutional Monarchy | A system of governing in which the ruler's power is limited by law |
| Scientific Revolution | A major change in European thought, starting in the mid-1500s, in which the study of the natural world began to be characterized by careful observation and the questioning of accepted beliefs |
| Scientific Method | A logical procedure for gathering information about the natural world, in which experimentation and observation are used to test hypotheses |
| Enlightenment | An 18th century European movement in which thinkers attempted to apply the principles of reason and the scientific method to all aspects of society |
| Social Contract | The agreement by which people define and limit their individual rights, thus creating and organized society or government |
| Philosophes | One of a group of social thinkers in France during the Enlightenment |
| Enlightened Despot | One of the 18th century European monarchs who was inspired by Enlightenment ideas to rule justly and respect the rights of subjects |
| Federal System | A system of government in which power is divided between a central authority and a number of indiviual states |
| Estate | One of three distinct social classesin France during the 1700's; clergy, nobility, and commoners (the third estate) |
| Estates-general | An assembly of representatives from all three of the estates, or social classes, in France |
| National Assembly | A French congress established by representatives of the third Estate on June 17, 1789, to enact laws and reforms in the name of the French people |
| Plebiscite | A direct vote in which a country's people have the opportunity to approve or reject a proposal |
| Napoleonic Code | A comprehensive and uniform system of laws established for France by Napoleon |
| Blockade | The use of troops or ships to prevent commerical traffic from entering or leaving a city or region |
| Balance of pwer | A political situation in which on one nation is powerful enough to pose a threat to others |
| Peninsulares | In Spanish colonial society, coloists who were born in Spain |
| Creole | In Spanish colonial society, a colonist who was born in Latin America to Spanish parents |
| Conservative | In the first half of the 19th Century, a European - usually a wealthy landowner or noble - who wanted to preserve the traditional monarchies of Europe. |
| Liberal | In the first half of the 19th century, a European - usually a middle-class busuness leader or merchant - who wanted to give more political pwer to elected parliaments |
| Radical | In the first half of the 19th century, a European who favored drastic change extend democracy to all people |
| Nation-state | An independent geopolitical unit of people having a common culture and identity |
| Russification | The process of forcing Russian culture on all ethnic groups in the Russian empire |
| Kaiser | A German emperor |
| Realism | A 19th century artistic movement in whoch writers and painters sought to show life as it is rather than life as it should be |
| Impressionism | A movement in 19th century painting, in which artists racted against realism by seeking to convery their impressions of subjects or moments in time |
| Romanticism | Artistic movement of the early 1800s emphasizing individuality and emotion |