AP World History: Modern

## Learning Outcomes

- Understand the main political ideas of the Enlightenment
- Distinguish between **natural rights**, **social contract**, and **popular sovereignty**
- Identify the views of **John Locke**, **Montesquieu**, and **Jean-Jacques Rousseau**
- Explain how Enlightenment ideas challenged **divine-right monarchy**
- Connect Enlightenment thought to the **American**, **French**, and **Haitian** Revolutions
- Evaluate the limits of Enlightenment ideas, especially for women and enslaved people

## AP World History: Modern Syllabus

For the AP World History: Modern, you are expected to understand Enlightenment philosophy and natural rights, with a focus on the following syllabus points:

- Know that the **Enlightenment** was an intellectual movement of the **17th and 18th centuries** that emphasized reason and criticism of traditional authority
- Identify **John Locke** with natural rights, consent of the governed, limited government, and resistance to tyranny
- Identify **Montesquieu** with separation of powers and constitutional government
- Identify **Jean-Jacques Rousseau** with popular sovereignty and the general will
- Explain the difference between **natural rights**, **social contract**, and **popular sovereignty**
- Understand how Enlightenment ideas challenged **divine-right rule** and absolute monarchy
- Connect these ideas to the **Declaration of Independence (1776)** and the **Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789)**
- Understand that Enlightenment ideals were applied unevenly, especially regarding **slavery**, **women**, and colonial subjects

## Test Your Knowledge

_Attempt these questions before reading this article. If you find some difficult or cannot remember the answers, look more closely at that area during your revision._

1. What were **natural rights**, according to John Locke?
2. How is **social contract** different from **popular sovereignty**?
3. Why did Enlightenment ideas challenge absolute monarchy?
4. Which thinker is most closely linked to **separation of powers**?
5. How did the **Haitian Revolution** reveal limits in Enlightenment claims about liberty and equality?

## Introduction

The Enlightenment was one of the most important intellectual developments behind the revolutions of the late **1700s** and early **1800s**. For AP World, the key issue is not just that philosophers wrote new ideas, but that those ideas gave people a political language for attacking old systems of power.

These thinkers argued that rulers were not automatically legitimate because of birth, tradition, or religion. Instead, government had to be justified by its relationship to the people. That shift helped weaken old-regime authority and supported new claims about rights, law, and representation.

> **Key Term: Enlightenment**
> An intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries that emphasized reason, individual liberty, and criticism of traditional authority.

## Introduction to the core ideas

### Natural rights, social contract, and popular sovereignty

These three ideas are closely linked, but they are not the same. Students often blur them together, which can cost marks in SAQs and essays.

> **Key Term: natural rights**
> Rights believed to belong to all human beings by nature rather than being granted by government.
>
> **Key Term: social contract**
> The idea that government gains legitimacy through an agreement with the governed to protect order and rights.
>
> **Key Term: popular sovereignty**
> The principle that political authority comes from the people rather than from divine-right monarchy or hereditary rule.

A useful way to separate them is this:

- **Natural rights** answer: what rights do people possess?
- **Social contract** answers: why does government exist?
- **Popular sovereignty** answers: where does authority come from?

For AP essays, this distinction matters. If a prompt asks about political thought, precise use of terms shows stronger analysis than simply saying “Enlightenment thinkers believed in freedom.”

The Enlightenment directly challenged the older idea of **divine right**, which held that kings ruled because God chose them. If rights exist before government, and if authority comes from the people, then monarchy is no longer automatically justified.

> **Key Term: divine right**
> The belief that a monarch’s authority comes from God rather than from the consent of the governed.

This was a major change in the theme of **GOV**. Instead of asking whether a ruler came from the right family, Enlightenment thinkers asked whether a ruler protected rights and governed justly.

> **Test Tip:** In SAQs, define the concept first, then apply it. A short answer like “Popular sovereignty means authority rests with the people, which challenged monarchy in France” is stronger than a vague sentence about freedom.

### John Locke and the rights-based challenge to monarchy

Of all the Enlightenment thinkers, **John Locke (1632–1704)** is the most important for this subtopic. His political ideas became central to later revolutionary documents.

Locke argued that people were born with natural rights to **life, liberty, and property**. Government did not create these rights. Its purpose was to protect them. If a ruler failed to do that, then the ruler had broken the social contract.

That argument had huge consequences. It meant subjects could become citizens with justified grounds to resist tyranny. Rebellion was no longer always a sin or a crime. Under certain conditions, it could be legitimate.

Locke is also strongly linked to:

- **consent of the governed**
- **limited government**
- **separation of church and state**
- the **right of resistance**
  > **Key Term: consent of the governed**
  > The principle that government is legitimate only if the people accept its authority.

Locke’s ideas fit the Atlantic world well because colonists and reformers could use them to argue that oppressive government had lost legitimacy. This is why the **Declaration of Independence (1776)** is so often read as a Lockean document. Its claims about equality, rights, and the people’s power to alter or abolish government closely reflect Locke’s political logic.

Locke did not advocate modern full democracy in the broadest sense. That distinction is important. He supported limited government and rights protection, but not necessarily universal political participation.

> **Test Tip:** Do not say every Enlightenment thinker supported mass democracy. A better claim is that Enlightenment thinkers often supported constitutional government and limits on rulers, though not always broad suffrage.

## Key thinkers and the spread of rights language

### Montesquieu, Rousseau, and constitutional thinking

**Montesquieu** is most closely associated with one idea: **separation of powers**.

> **Key Term: separation of powers**
> The division of government into different branches so that no single ruler or institution can dominate the whole state.

In practical terms, Montesquieu argued that executive, legislative, and judicial power should not all be concentrated in one place. This was a direct attack on arbitrary monarchy. If power is divided, tyranny becomes harder.

That idea later influenced the structure of the **United States Constitution**, where authority was distributed across branches of government. For AP World, this is a strong example of Enlightenment thought shaping a new political system.

**Jean-Jacques Rousseau** is different from Locke. He is less associated with property rights and more associated with the idea that sovereignty rests in the people.

> **Key Term: general will**
> Rousseau’s idea that the collective will of the people should guide political authority.

Rousseau argued that political freedom came through participation in a community governed by the general will. In AP terms, link him mainly to:

- **popular sovereignty**
- **social contract**
- stronger emphasis on political participation than Locke

This matters because revolutionary movements did not all borrow Enlightenment ideas in the same way. The American Revolution drew heavily on Lockean rights language. The French Revolution also used rights language, but it moved more strongly toward the language of nation and sovereignty.

A high-scoring comparison might note this:

- **Locke**: protect natural rights, especially life, liberty, property
- **Montesquieu**: prevent tyranny through institutional design
- **Rousseau**: locate sovereignty in the people and the general will

### Revolutionary documents and Atlantic applications

Two documents are especially important for this subtopic.

The **Declaration of Independence (1776)** justified separation from Britain by arguing that governments derive “their just powers” from the people. It also asserted that people could change or remove a government that became destructive of their rights.

The **Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789)** declared that men were born free and equal in rights and that sovereignty rested in the nation. It also named rights such as liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.

> **Key Term: Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen**
> A French revolutionary document from 1789 that declared rights and stated that sovereignty resided in the nation.

These documents show the AP skill of **causation** well. Enlightenment philosophy did not mechanically cause revolution on its own. Economic grievances, class tensions, and political crises mattered too. But Enlightenment ideas supplied a framework that made rebellion easier to justify.

This is a strong AP argument: Enlightenment thought worked best when joined to immediate pressures such as taxation, inequality, or imperial control.

## Limits and contradictions of Enlightenment natural rights

### Universal language, unequal reality

One of the most important things to understand is that Enlightenment ideas were often presented as universal but applied selectively.

In theory, rights belonged to all humans. In practice, many groups were excluded:

- women
- enslaved Africans and their descendants
- indigenous peoples
- non-property-holding men in many places

This is where AP essays can move from description to evaluation. Students who only celebrate Enlightenment ideas miss one of the biggest historical tensions of the period.

The early United States used Enlightenment language while preserving slavery. France proclaimed rights in **1789**, but the issue of rights in the colonies remained unresolved. These contradictions made later struggles more intense, because excluded groups could use the same rights language against the states that ignored them.

### Haiti and the exposure of Enlightenment hypocrisy

The **Haitian Revolution (1791–1804)** is one of the best examples of both the spread and the criticism of Enlightenment thought.

Enslaved people in **Saint-Domingue**, the French colony that became Haiti, used the language of liberty and equality to challenge slavery and colonial rule. In doing so, they pushed Enlightenment claims further than many European and American revolutionaries had been willing to go.

Haiti became:

- the first independent state founded by formerly enslaved people
- the second independent country in the Americas

That makes Haiti a crucial example for both **GOV** and **SIO**. It shows that rights language could travel across class and racial boundaries, but it also exposed how often so-called universal principles excluded enslaved people.

A strong AP comparison would note:

- **American Revolution**: promoted rights but preserved slavery
- **French Revolution**: declared rights but struggled over colonial application
- **Haitian Revolution**: applied liberty and equality against slavery itself

This is why Haiti is so valuable in LEQs and DBQs. It is both an extension of the Enlightenment and a critique of it.

> **Key Term: Haitian Revolution**
> A revolution in Saint-Domingue from 1791 to 1804 in which enslaved people overthrew French rule and created independent Haiti.

### Women and the extension of rights arguments

Women also challenged the narrow application of Enlightenment thought. The clearest AP example is **Mary Wollstonecraft**.

In **A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)**, Wollstonecraft argued that women possessed reason and deserved education and equality. Her argument used Enlightenment logic against male exclusion. If reason and rights are universal, then women cannot be left out.

> **Key Term: Mary Wollstonecraft**
> An English writer who used Enlightenment ideas to argue for women’s education and greater equality in 1792.

Wollstonecraft is important because she reveals a continuity across revolutionary politics: declarations of rights often stopped short of full inclusion, but excluded groups learned to turn those principles back on the societies that proclaimed them.

For AP World, that means Enlightenment thought was both liberating and limited. It weakened monarchy and privilege, but many hierarchies survived.

### How to use this in an AP argument

For a causation or comparison essay, a strong thesis might say:

The Enlightenment challenged divine-right monarchy by promoting natural rights, the social contract, and popular sovereignty, helping inspire Atlantic revolutions; however, its ideals were applied unevenly, as shown by the exclusion of women and the persistence of slavery.

That kind of thesis works because it does three things:

- identifies the main ideas
- links them to outcomes
- qualifies the claim with limits and contradictions

## Key Point Checklist

_This article has covered the following key knowledge points:_

- The Enlightenment was a **17th- and 18th-century** intellectual movement centered on reason and criticism of traditional authority
- **Natural rights** were understood as inherent rights, not rights granted by government
- **Social contract** theory explained that government exists by agreement with the governed
- **Popular sovereignty** meant that political authority came from the people, not divine-right monarchy
- **John Locke** argued for life, liberty, property, consent of the governed, and resistance to tyranny
- **Montesquieu** argued for **separation of powers** to prevent tyranny
- **Rousseau** is most strongly associated with **popular sovereignty** and the **general will**
- The **Declaration of Independence (1776)** reflected Lockean ideas about equality, rights, and altering unjust government
- The **Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789)** linked rights language to national sovereignty in revolutionary France
- Enlightenment ideas helped inspire the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions
- The **Haitian Revolution (1791–1804)** showed both the spread of Enlightenment ideals and the hypocrisy of applying them selectively
- **Mary Wollstonecraft** used Enlightenment reasoning to argue for women’s rights and education in **1792**

## Key Terms and Concepts

- Enlightenment
- natural rights
- social contract
- popular sovereignty
- divine right
- consent of the governed
- separation of powers
- general will
- Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
- Haitian Revolution
- Mary Wollstonecraft


The Enlightenment - Enlightenment philosophy and natural rights