Key Terms of the French Revolution and Ancien Régime

Key Terms: French Revolution and Ancien Régime

Establishment: Responding to social divisions' own criteria. Feud, Ant, and the estates are closed groups, normally entered by circumstances of birth, as opposed to social classes that were defined by common interests.

Third Estate: One of the three estates of society's own feud. It consists of people who do not have the same privileges as the clergy and the nobility. Inside the Third Estate was the bourgeoisie.

Ancien Régime: A set of rules, social structures, and forms of government and property that existed in Europe until the liberal revolutions started in the late 18th century. A French expression used to describe the company they wanted to change.

Enlightenment: A cultural, political, and philosophical movement held in Europe and America in the eighteenth century. The main objective of the Enlightenment was to illuminate all spheres of life and society through reason.

Estates General: Assembly of the three estates (nobility, clergy, and third estate), convened by the king of the Ancien Régime to give special concessions to the king. Louis XVI summoned it due to the poor state of finances. Here begins the French Revolution; the Third Estate refused to vote by estates, requiring the individual vote. Denied this demand by the king, the representatives of the Third Estate proclaimed the National Assembly and, after, the Constituent Assembly.

Censitary Suffrage: Consists of the allocation of voting rights only to the portion of the population that is registered in an electoral roll. Usually, they have certain economic requirements or are related to the level of education, social, or marital status. It was used by the gentry to restrict access to the power of the other classes.

National Sovereignty: A concept that recognizes and believes that the power of a nation resides in the people.

The right to veto means the right of the great powers to oppose a majority decision.

Thirteen Colonies: A name that has been historically given to colonial possessions of Great Britain on the Atlantic coast of North America, between Nova Scotia and Florida. In the late eighteenth century, they were united under an independent government to create the current U.S.

Concordat: A diplomatic agreement between the Holy See and a state which regulates relations between the two powers on questions and issues that concern them in one way or another.

Continental System: The main base of the foreign policy of Emperor Napoleon of France in their struggle against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It was an offensive strategy that Napoleon used against Britain with the intention to isolate and weaken it.