After the invention of the Printed Press, the structure of society in Europe was altered for years to come. As I stated in my previous entry, information would now spread easily, faster and more efficiently throughout the continent, resulting in a dramatic increase of literacy in the population. Science emerged as a true game player when it came to knowledge and overall, people began to think and therefore exist.

The Age of Enlightenment

With a wider availability of literature, new schools of thought surged across Europe. Up until the Fifteenth Century, I’m quite sure you would have labeled someone as a “Leader”, if that person had military experience or any sort of involvement with the Clergy or the Monarchy. Now, there was a new type of leaders: there were “Intellectual Leaders”.

Rene Descartes, John Stuart Mill, Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon and many others were early pioneers of what would be called the “Scientific Revolution”. New ideas centered around reason and evidence, as well as progress, liberty, toleration, constitution and the separation of Church and State.

People began to ask, to wonder, to find out and ask the why of things. One of the earliest questions that was poised by the Age of Enlightenment was the actual necessity of a King in a Monarchy. Why do we need a King? Who put him there? Why is it that only his descendants have the right to govern? Why is the reasoning behind the Church? The more time passed, the more people moved towards progress and logic, leaving behind the blind faith and beliefs in the unknown.

Following the Age of Enlightenment, the structural society solidified the power of the two greatest Monarchies in Europe: England and France as superpowers of the world, and it wouldn’t take too long before both of them would want to figure out which of the two was the most powerful nation on Earth.