Early modern Europe: Did you mean...?

Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville (1754-1793) was a French journalist, abolitionist, and politician who played a prominent role in the French Revolution (1789-1799). A leader of the Girondins, a moderate political faction...

René Descartes (1596-1650) was a French mathematician, natural scientist, and philosopher, best known by the phrase 'Cogito ergo sum' ('I think therefore I am'). He published works on optics, coordinate geometry, physiology, and...

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) was a Corsican-born French general and politician who reigned as Emperor of the French with the regnal name Napoleon I from 1804 to 1814 and then again briefly in 1815. He established the largest...

Frederick II of Prussia (1712-1786), better known as Frederick the Great, was one of the most consequential rulers of 18th-century Europe. A scion of the House of Hohenzollern, he came to power in 1740...

The Potsdam Conference, held from 17 July to 2 August 1945 in Potsdam in eastern Germany, decided how the Allies would deal with a defeated Germany and how they could best conduct the...

King William’s War (1688-1697) was the first of four major colonial conflicts fought between England, France, and their respective Native American allies in the 17th and 18th centuries...

The intoxicant known in English as beer takes its name from the Latin bibere (by way of the German bier), meaning "to drink", and the Spanish word for beer, cerveza, comes from the Latin word...

The Council of Clermont in central France was held in November 1095 and witnessed Pope Urban II's (r. 1088-1099) historic call for the First Crusade (1095-1102) to capture Jerusalem for Christendom from its Muslim occupiers...

This is part two of our video series on the history of Napoleon. In this video, we cover the period from the Napoleonic wars until the invasion of Russia. Chapter 00:00 Introduction 00:53 The...

The Monroe Doctrine, a significant piece of United States foreign policy, was first articulated by President James Monroe in 1823, and it essentially warns the powers of Europe from meddling...