Chinese, Mandarin

Spanish

English

Hindi

Arabic

Portuguese

Bengali

Russian

Japanese

Punjabi

German

Javanese

Malay

Telugu

Vietnamese

Korean

French

Marathi

Tamil

Urdu

Turkish

Italian

Chinese, Yue / Cantonese

Thai

Gujarati

Chinese, Jin

Chinese, Min Nan

Persian, Dari

Persian, Western

Polish

Pashto

Kannada

Chinese, Xiang

Malayalam

Sundanese

Hausa

Odia

Burmese

Chinese, Hakka

Ukrainian

Bihari, Bhojpuri

Tagalog

Yoruba

Bihari, Maithili

Uzbek

Sindhi

Amharic

Fula

Romanian

Oromo

Igbo

Azerbaijani

Chinese, Gan

Dutch

Kurdish, Central

Kurdish, Northern

Kurdish, Southern

Malagasy

Lahnda, Saraiki

Nepali

Sinhalese

Chittagonian

Zhuang

Khmer

Turkmen

Assamese

Madurese

Somali

Marwari

Bihari, Magahi

Haryanvi

Hungarian

Chhattisgarhi

Greek, Modern

Chewa

Dakhini

Akan, Twi

Akan, Fante

Kazakh

Chinese, Min Bei

Sylheti

Zulu

Czech

Kinyarwanda

Marwari, Dhundhari

Haitian Creole

Chinese, Min Dong

Ilocano

Quechua

Kirundi

Swedish

Hmong

Shona

Uyghur

Hiligaynon

Mossi

Xhosa

Belarusian

Balochi

World History 2

<OpenstaxParagraph>
	Conversation and debate in the public sphere were inseparable from the flourishing print culture of the Enlightenment era. Literacy rates, which hovered around 30 percent for men and 14 percent for women in late-seventeenth-century French cities, had increased to 48 percent for men and 27 percent for women by the mid-eighteenth century. These rising rates led to an explosion of books, pamphlets, newspapers, and political cartoons. The spread of printed materials not only standardized spelling and systems of knowledge, but it also enabled news, opinion, poetry, political philosophy, scientific texts, and information of all kinds to reach a much wider audience than the spoken word alone. The <OpenstaxTerm>Republic of Letters</OpenstaxTerm> was a long-distance community of writers who corresponded with each other across Europe and the Atlantic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, sending handwritten letters and published materials of every kind that provided a crucial international exchange and transmission of ideas. The Republic of Letters was a society whose citizens, rather than living in the same geographic area, like the citizens of a political republic, were united by ideas spread through print. No matter where in Europe or the Atlantic world they lived, all literate people could belong to the Republic of Letters. They engaged with one another on terms of intellectual equality and freely exchanged ideas, just like citizens of a political republic who were, theoretically, free and equal.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	Among the luminaries were prominent philosophers and political leaders, including Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, and Catherine the Great. Given that those who participated in the Republic of Letters hailed from many different countries and spoke many different languages, much of their writing either was in Latin, then the universal language of scholarship in multilingual Europe, or required access to proficient translators. This obstacle made it difficult for the majority of people to participate directly in the print culture of the Enlightenment.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxNote>
	<OpenstaxNoteTitle> The Past Meets the Present </OpenstaxNoteTitle> <OpenstaxH3> Spreading Ideas in the Past and Present </OpenstaxH3>
	<OpenstaxParagraph>
		The emergence of the public sphere in the Enlightenment has had a long-standing influence on the exchange of ideas in the modern world. In his influential 1962 treatise <OpenstaxTerm><OpenstaxEm>The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere</OpenstaxEm></OpenstaxTerm>, German philosopher Jürgen <OpenstaxTerm>Habermas</OpenstaxTerm> identified the development of the free and open exchange of ideas as a product of the eighteenth century. According to Habermas, this development was the result of the “feudal foundations of power” (that is, Europe’s medieval legacy of centralized monarchical rule and the institutional power of Christianity) being supplanted by the development of a capitalist economy and the emergence of spaces for the free and open exchange of ideas beyond the control of the state or the church. Habermas asserted that between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, economic activities that had formerly been part of the domestic space of the household increasingly became associated with spaces of exchange, such as markets and coffeehouses that functioned independently of government authority.
	</OpenstaxParagraph>
	<OpenstaxUl>
		<OpenstaxLi>
			How have modern means of communication, particularly social media, changed the way ideas and information are spread?
		</OpenstaxLi>
		<OpenstaxLi>
			What is considered “public” today, and how do modern conceptions of “public” differ from those of the Enlightenment era?
		</OpenstaxLi>
	</OpenstaxUl>
</OpenstaxNote>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	Despite the pervasive influence of <OpenstaxTerm>print culture</OpenstaxTerm>, the direct impact of Enlightenment texts among the general public was limited by relatively low <OpenstaxTerm>literacy</OpenstaxTerm> rates among the artisans, peasants, and tradespeople of the era. Literacy rates were climbing rapidly among members of the urban elite, particularly wealthy merchants and aristocrats, but they remained well below 20 percent for those at the lower end of the socioeconomic hierarchy, especially in rural areas. Although the Enlightenment embraced, in theory, some democratic principles about the exchange of knowledge, in practice, participation in that exchange was limited to those with adequate wealth and leisure time. Books were prohibitively expensive and remained well out of the reach of all but the wealthiest members of society. Even cheaply printed pamphlets represented a significant expense for most eighteenth-century laborers and peasants. By the second half of the eighteenth century, <OpenstaxTerm>lending libraries</OpenstaxTerm> had emerged to expand the reading public’s access to printed materials, but only select academics and government officials were permitted to borrow books. By the end of the century, however, reading clubs whose members paid an annual fee for access to books and periodicals began to expand the size of the reading public and increase levels of literacy among the middle class.
</OpenstaxParagraph>

7.2.2 The Republic of Letters

1 Understanding the Past

1.1 Developing a Global Perspective

1.1.1 World History as Preparation for Life After College

1.1.2 World History and Global Citizenship

1.1.3 Features of This Textbook

1.2 Primary Sources

1.2.1 Learning to Evaluate Documents and Images

1.2.2 Documentary Sources: Competing Narratives

1.2.3 Textual Sources: The Importance of Language

1.2.4 Hidden in History

1.3 Causation and Interpretation in History

1.3.1 Levels of Causation

1.3.2 Interpretation in History

2 Exchange in East Asia and the Indian Ocean

2.1 India and International Connections

2.1.1 The Mughal Empire

2.1.2 The Sultanate of Gujarat

2.1.3 The Rise of the Maratha Empire

2.1.4 European Colonialism

2.2 The Malacca Sultanate

2.2.1 The Rise of the Malacca Sultanate

2.2.2 European Malacca

2.3 Exchange in East Asia

2.3.1 Japan

2.3.2 China’s Dynastic Exchanges

2.3.3 Korea and Its Neighbors

3 Early Modern Africa and the Wider World

3.1 The Roots of African Trade

3.1.1 Saharan Trade Routes

3.1.2 The Spread of Islam

3.1.3 The Mali Empire

3.2 The Songhai Empire

3.2.1 The Rise of Imperial Songhai

3.2.2 The Reign of Askia the Great

3.2.3 The Decline of Songhai

3.3 The Swahili Coast

3.3.1 The Rise of the Swahili City-States

3.3.2 Slavery on the Swahili Coast

3.3.3 The Contest for the Swahili Coast

3.4 The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade

3.4.1 The Role of Kanem-Bornu

3.4.2 The Arrival of Europeans

3.4.3 The Later Trans-Saharan Slave Trade

4 The Islamic World

4.1 A Connected Islamic World

4.1.1 Politics and Religion in the Ummah

4.1.2 Islamic Trade Networks

4.1.3 Technology in the Islamic World

4.2 The Ottoman Empire

4.2.1 Culture and Society

4.2.2 Expansion, Revolutions, and Reform

4.2.3 Science and Technology

4.3 The Safavid Empire

4.3.1 The Rise of the Safavid Empire

4.3.2 Establishing Shi‘ism as the State Religion

4.3.3 Safavid Government and Culture

5 Foundations of the Atlantic World

5.1 The Protestant Reformation

5.1.1 The Origins of the Protestant Reformation

5.1.2 Calvinists, Anabaptists, and Anglicans

5.1.3 The Catholic Reformation and the Wars of Religion

5.2 Crossing the Atlantic

5.2.1 The Rise of Maritime Nations

5.2.2 The Columbian Exchange

5.3 The Mercantilist Economy

5.3.1 The Rise of Mercantilism

5.3.2 Mercantilism and the Expansion of Empire

5.3.3 Mercantilism and Its Critics

5.4 The Atlantic Slave Trade

5.4.1 Slavery and the Triangular Trade

5.4.2 African and North American Slavery

5.4.3 The Economics of Slavery

6 Colonization and Economic Expansion

6.1 European Colonization in the Americas

6.1.1 Spain’s Encomienda System

6.1.2 English Settlements in North America

6.1.3 French and Dutch Settlements

6.2 The Rise of a Global Economy

6.2.1 The Seven Years’ War

6.2.2 British Influence in India

6.2.3 China’s Dominance in Trade

6.2.4 Colonial Resistance and Revolution

6.3 Capitalism and the First Industrial Revolution

6.3.1 From Mercantilism to Capitalism

6.3.2 Mechanization

6.3.3 Marxism

7 Revolutions in Europe and North America

7.1 The Enlightenment

7.1.1 The Authority of Reason

7.1.2 Natural Rights

7.1.3 Social Contract Theory

7.2 The Exchange of Ideas in the Public Sphere

7.2.1 Public Debate and Dissent

7.2.3 Academies, Universities, and Intellectuals

7.3 Revolutions: America, France, and Haiti

7.3.1 The American Revolution

7.3.2 The French Revolution

7.3.3 The Haitian Revolution

7.4 Nationalism, Liberalism, Conservatism, and the Political Order