The late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed a chain of revolutions that redefined politics, economics, and society. In England, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 overthrew King James II and led to the English Bill of Rights in 1689, which limited royal power and guaranteed parliamentary authority, laying foundations for constitutional monarchy. The Enlightenment, an intellectual movement emphasizing reason, science, and individual rights, gathered pace through writers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose Social Contract appeared in 1762, and Adam Smith, whose Wealth of Nations in 1776 laid the intellectual groundwork for modern capitalism.
These ideas inspired dramatic political upheaval. The American Revolution began in 1775 with the battles of Lexington and Concord, and the Declaration of Independence, drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson, was signed on July 4, 1776. The war concluded with the Treaty of Paris in 1783, and George Washington became the first U.S. president in 1789. Across the Atlantic, the French Revolution erupted in 1789 with the storming of the Bastille on July 14 and entered a violent phase known as the Reign of Terror (1793–1794). Out of the chaos rose Napoleon Bonaparte, who crowned himself emperor in 1804 before his rule was finally broken at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The subsequent Congress of Vienna (1814–1815) redrew the European map, restoring monarchies and creating a conservative order that would shape the next several decades.
Alongside political transformation came the Industrial Revolution, a shift from agrarian economies to mechanized production that began in Britain around 1760. James Watt's improved steam engine, patented in 1769, powered factories, mines, and eventually railroads. Industrialization provoked backlash from workers like the Luddites, who destroyed machinery they feared would cost them their livelihoods, and intersected with moral reform movements, including the British campaign against slavery, which saw the transatlantic slave trade abolished in 1807 and slavery itself outlawed throughout the British Empire in 1833.