The Enlightenment and Colonial Protest

The Enlightenment and Colonial Protest

The Enlightenment refers to the seventeenth and eighteenth century in which a historical intellectual movement advocating reason as a means to establishing an authoritative system of ethics, government, and logic swept through Europe and the Americas. The intellectual leaders regarded themselves as a courageous elite who would lead the world into progress from a long period of doubtful tradition, irrationality, superstition, and tyranny. The movement helped create the intellectual framework for the American and French Revolutions and led to the rise of classical liberalism and modern capitalism.

While this was an insightful event for the Europe, for the colonists it was truly tremendous. The colonists had suffered under James II just as intensely as the English. James had refused to recognized colonial charters, did not allow colonists any say over laws and taxes, and seemed to rule arbitrarily. Moreover, James was a Catholic and the colonists were primarily Protestant. When James issued the Declarations of Indulgence, which granted freedom of worship to Catholics it deeply troubled the colonies. In the colonists mind, Catholicism equaled absolutism. As news of the Enlightenment filtered in slowly and inaccurately to the colonies the colonists