Early Industrial Revolution

The era of the **Early Industrial Revolution** began between about 1756 AD until 1763 AD. It began on the eve of the Seven Years’ War. It then ended with the four separate treaties that ultimately ended the war.

The transition into the Late Modern Age was marked by two important breaks in historical continuity. The first turning point was the Seven Years’ War (1756-73), the fourth in a series of loosely interconnected European wars of the 18th century, that included the Nine Years' War, the War of Spanish Succession and the War of Austrian Succession. Winston Churchill described it as the first "world war", dividing all the European great powers into two rival alliances, and spilling over into North and South America, the Caribbean, West Africa, India, and the Philippines. The war's far reaching consequences included ending France’s century-long supremacy in Europe, and marking Britain as the predominant colonial power, well on the way to establishing the British Empire, the largest empire in history. It also left all the belligerents saddled with crippling war debts, directly leading to the Partition of Poland from 1772, the American War of Independence from 1775, and the French Revolution from 1789. Meanwhile, the ideas of the giants of the High Enlightenment – Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Kant – were providing the philosophical basis for a century of revolutions in the Western world. The other turning point was an economic development underway in Britain that truly deserved the name "revolution". The Industrial Revolution would bring about a huge increase in the volume and variety of manufactured goods, saw improved systems of transportation and communication, and impacted almost every aspect of human society in some way. In 1760, China, India, and Europe were roughly equivalent in terms of commercial output. A century later, the Industrial Revolution had transformed Europe into the dominant manufacturing power in the world. At the same time, it also bought about the evils of worker exploitation, pollution, and urban squalor.

## History

### Early Industrial Revolution

Human society has passed through two huge and lasting changes that truly deserve the name "revolution". The first was the Neolithic Revolution which began about 8000 BC and transformed society as people settled on the land. For two-and-a-half millennia, peasant agriculture was the everyday activity of the vast majority of humanity, until the second revolution; the **Industrial Revolution** (1760-1840).

There were certain clear circumstances why the Industrial Revolution occurred first in 18th-century Britain. The first factor was that the country had in abundant supply three important commodities; water, iron, and coal. Water not only provided the power to drive mills, but facilitate inland transport, further amplified by a developing network of canals. The commercial success of the Bridgewater Canal, which opened in 1761 and linked local mines to Manchester, inspired a period of intense canal building connecting all the major manufacturing centres across the country. Meanwhile, the sea, never far from any part of Britain, made transport of heavy goods easy between coastal cities. The abundance of coal would become crucial when steam power was successively applied to industry, but even in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution coal was important in making effective use of Britain's iron ore. In 1709, Abraham Darby (d. 1717) discovered that coal could be used for the smelting iron, instead of expensive charcoal. The second factor was social changes associated with the Glorious Revolution (1688-89). With royal power greatly reduced, the British nobility enjoyed none of the privileges associated with France's Ancien Régime, and a new middle class emerged more forcefully in Britain than elsewhere. In this atmosphere, exceptional men could through their own endeavours rise from low origins to exceptional wealth and prestige. As a final ingredient in this promising blend of circumstances, Britain and her empire could offer its budding entrepreneurs an unusually large market. Even when trading opportunities with the American colonies were lost, India began to replace them. As British control of the seas was increasingly established, much of the profitable carrying trade could be secured for British merchant vessels.

A natural sector to lead the new Industrial Revolution was the **textiles industry**. Spinning and weaving were both well suited to relatively simple mechanisation which could slash the cost of production. In 1733, John Kay (d. 1779) patents the first of the devices that revolutionised the industry; the Flying Shuttle dramatically increased the speed of weaving. In wide use by the 1750s, this in turn created demand for yarn and spinning was forced to achieve a similar increase in productivity: in 1764 the Spinning Jenny invented by James Hargreaves (d. 1778); in 1768 the Water Frame by Richard Arkwright (d. 1792); and in 1779 the Spinning Mule by Samuel Crompton (d. 1827). Another sector benefitting from early innovations was the **iron industry**. Until the early 18th century, the smelting of iron required large quantities of expensive charcoal, with the result that ironworks were usually sited inaccessibly in the middle of forests. In 1709 Abraham Darby discovered in his furnace on the River Severn that coal could be used instead. Soon the Severn region became Britain's centre of iron production, with its pre-eminence seen in the construction of the world's first iron bridge in 1779. During the early period of the Industrial Revolution the power was supplied by water and horses, but before long steam power was applied to driving machinery. The first commercially successful steam engine was built in 1712 by Thomas Newcomen (d. 1729) to clear water out of mines in the West Midlands, thus providing more coal to power more steam engines. However, it was not until Scottish engineer James Watt (d. 1819) patented a steam engine in 1781 that could produced continuous rotary motion, that a wide range of manufacturing machinery could be powered. With all this new machinery, there was a growing demand for metal parts, which in turn led to the development of **machine tools**. The first was the precision boring machine invented in 1774 by John Wilkinson (d. 1808), which could drill through a cast-iron cylinder to create the barrel of a cannon or an efficient steam-engine cylinder. The large-scale production of **chemicals** was another important development. The first of these was sulphuric acid for bleaching, whose production by the lead chamber process was invented in 1746 by John Roebuck (d. 1794).

There is no more striking example of the rewards available to men of merit in the developing British Industrial Revolution than **Richard Arkwright** (1732-92). Born the youngest of seven children to a wig-maker, he died sixty years later a man of immensely wealth and prestige. In his youth, Arkwright travelled the country with his father buying hair for wigs, and soon became interested in the spinning industry. In 1769, he set up his first mill using a spinning machine of his own design powered by a horse. Two years later, he financed the construction of a new mill, this one using the greater power of a waterwheel. In it Arkwright created a factory environment with disciplined employees, each specialising in different tasks. His factory system worked brilliantly. By 1782, the self-made man had mills on suitable rivers all over the country and employed 5000 workers. British society welcomed this rapidly self-made man, and in 1786 he was granted a knighthood.

After the early British Industrial Revolution, industrialisation inevitably spread rapidly throughout Europe and beyond. The Industrial Revolution marked a major turning point in world history, impacting almost every aspect of human society in some way. It brought about an increased volume and variety of manufactured goods and a general rise of living standards. It moved people from the countryside into rapidly expanding towns and cities. It saw improved systems of transportation, communication and banking. In 1760, China, India, and Europe were roughly equivalent in terms of commercial output. A century later, the Industrial Revolution had turned Europe into the world’s dominant manufacturing power. At the same time, it also bought about the evils of the exploitation of workers including child labour, pollution, and urban squalor.

### **French and Indian War in** North America

By 1750, the British colonies of North America had made great progress in wealth and civilization: the population had grown to well over a million; Philadelphia could rival many European cities in stylishness and culture; and the mainland was commercially worth much more to Britain than the West Indies. Meanwhile, there were only about French colonists in French Canada and the Mississippi basin, which most in the St. Lawrence region. It had been plain for some years that the Ohio valley was a dangerous area of friction between French and British colonists. The French had been established in the region since the early 17th-century, when it had been their earliest route to the south. For the British, it was the first new region available for expansion beyond the Appalachians. Steady encroachment by British colonists in this dangerous area of friction turned to violence in 1752, when the French destroy a British trading centre at Pickawillany and evicted every English-speaking trader. In response, in 1754 the governor of Virginia sent a young major, George Washington (d. 1799), and 160 men to build a new British fort near what is now Pittsburgh, to make the region safe for British trade. This first campaign was a disaster. Washington built and then was forced to abandon his fort, with the loss of one-third of his men. The French subsequently built the nearby Fort Duquesne.

This small skirmish between the parties was the first blood of what would prove to be the conclusive war between the French and British on American soil; **French and Indian War** (1754-63). The British government was reluctant to renew formal hostilities with the French so soon after the War of Austrian Succession (1740-48), but it did send major general Edward Braddock to North America with a small British army; Washington became his personal aide-de-camp. In 1755, Braddock marched into the Ohio Valley with some 1,500 men to capture Fort Duquesne. This second campaign was equally unsuccessful. Their army was ambushed by the French in July 1755, killing two-thirds of the British forces, including Braddock himself. Yet Washington’s courage and authority in the field had no not gone unnoticed. On his return to Virginia, he was promoted to colonel and commander-in-chief of Virginia's troops; he was still only twenty-three years old. The next two years saw more striking French victories over the British, thanks largely to the skills of the Marquis of Montcalm who arrived in 1756 to command the French forces in America. The French took several important British frontier forts, including Fort Oswego on Lake Ontario in 1756, and Fort William Henry near Albany in 1757. In July 1758, they also held Fort Carillon between Lake George and Lake Champlain against a much larger British force. By now the French threat to the British colonies seemed overwhelming, with western New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia virtually abandoned to marauding parties of Indians allied with the French. By this time, France and Britain were now formally at war in the wider Seven Years' War (1756-73).

### Seven Years’ War

In the aftermath of the War of the Austrian Succession, two intense rivalries threatened the precariously established peace in Europe. One rivalry was between the developing colonial empires of France and Britain. British aggression in North America had reached a level that the French could no longer ignore, and open warfare had already broken-out in 1754 with the French and Indian War. Meanwhile with the collapse of the once mighty Mughal Empire in India, an intense rivalry was ongoing, as the two aggressive imperial powers attempted to advance their commercial interests though military support in dynastic struggles within the numerous Indian principalities. The other unfinished business was between Austria and Prussia over the annexation of the rich province of Silesia by Frederick the Great in 1740. For eight years, Austrian Empress Maria Theresa Habsburg plotted revenge on the Prussians. In her time of need during the War of the Austrian Succession, her British allies who had proved rather half-hearted, and instead Marie Theresa changed alignment and signed an alliance with France. Almost inevitably, Britain responded by allying with Prussia. This, in turn, prompted Russia to join France and form the *Triple Alliance*, because the aggrandisement of Prussia was a challenge to her own designs on Poland. This previously unimaginable reversal of alliances becomes known as the **Diplomatic Revolution**. With Austria's new alliances which included the offer of 80,000 Russian troops, a move to recover Silesia was clearly in preparation, when it was suddenly thwarted by the most decisive ruler in Europe.

    In terms of economic might and military manpower, the Triple Alliance was much stronger than Prussia, but Frederick II of Prussia was a brilliant military strategist who understood how to use different types of troops - infantry, cavalry, and artillery - very effectively. Just as he had in 1740, Frederick took the initiative, in August 1756 leading a Prussian army into neighbouring Saxony, on the way to Austria frontier. This sudden act of aggression began the **Seven Years’ War** (1756-73), the first truly world war, that would see warfare in Europe, North America, the Caribbean, India, and South America. Although Saxony and Austria were taken entirely unaware, Frederick failed to achieve the momentum he needed, with Austria putting up a surprising stiff defence at the attempted Siege of Prague (May 1757). Frederick soon found himself surrounded by powerful enemies on all sides; Sweden would join the alliance against Prussia in September 1757. Meanwhile, his only ally Britain was reluctant to provide anything more than financial assistance, while she poured her own resources into conflicts in her colonies. In summer, a French army occupied British Hanover on the Prussia's western border, and the Russians invaded East Prussia, defeating a smaller Prussian force in the fiercely contested Battle of Gross-Jägersdorf (August 1757). Yet fighting against great odd, Frederick the Great would cement his reputation as the greatest generals of his day. He defeated a French and Austrian army larger than his own at the Battle of Rossbach (November 1757), then wheeling around and defeated another Austrian army at the Battle of Leuthen (December 1757). Meanwhile, vast French armies were defeated at the Battles of Krefeld (June 1758) and Minden (August 1759). However, with Prussia stretched to her limits, she was decisively defeat by a Russian and Austrian army at the Battle of Kunersdorf (August 1759), losing some 18,000 men; about a third of her army. Prussia's war really should have been over, but for unclear reasons the allies failed to press their advantage and withdrew; something Frederick described in a letter as "*the miracle of the House of Brandenburg*." For the next three years, Prussian success seemed impossible, eventual exhaustion and defeat inevitable. Then in January 1762 the war was transformed overnight by the death of Russian empress Empress Elizabeth of Russia (1741-62). Within months, her successor, Peter III, a passionate admirer of Frederick the Great, made peace with Prussia; though he was usurped by his wife Catherine the Great just two months later, she did not renew the war against Frederick. The effect on the war was immediate, and Austria lost heart. Meanwhile, the other major conflict of the Seven Years' War, the separate quarrel between Britain and France in their respective colonies, was also coming to a conclusion.

In North America, after the string of French successes in the early phase of the French and Indian War, the changing fortunes of the British were largely due to the energy and skill of secretary-of-state, William Pitt the Elder. Pitt built-up Britain's navy, and selected talented commanders on both sea and land. His first success was the capture in July 1758 of the powerful Fort Louisburg, at the eastern extremity of French Canada. Four months later, a British army under young George Washington destroyed Fort Duquesne, the fort that had begun the war; it would later be rebuilt as Pittsburgh, in the secretary of state's honour. When Fort Niagara was taken in July 1759, the stage was set for an assault on the very heart of French Canada; Quebec. To command the expedition, a young officer who had distinguished himself in the capture of Fort Louisbourg was selected; James Wolfe. Wolfe spent nearly three months bombarding Quebec from across the river. He attempted various unsuccessful assaults, but the French were firmly entrenched on the only easy approaches to the city. In September, Wolfe boldly led his men quietly across the river at night and to the top of a 300 foot high cliff on the other side. The decisive British victory at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham (September 1759) was the deciding moment in the conflict in North America, though it claimed the lived of both Wolfe and his French opponent, the Marquis of Montcalm. Without Quebec, Montreal was isolated. Surrounded by British armies, the commander of the city surrendered in September 1760. The whole of French Canada was now in British hands.

### East India Company Rule in India

    The British were neither the first European power to arrive in India, nor the last to leave; both of those "honours" go to the Portuguese. In 1600, Queen Elizabeth I granted a charter to the East India Company that gave it a monopoly on British trade with India. After beating a Portuguese squadron, they won their first west-coast trading post at Surat in Gujarat in 1613. Then, in 1639, with the permission of the local ruler, they founded at Madras the first permanent settlement of British India, Fort St. George. The headstones over their graves in its little cemetery still commemorate the first English who lived and died in India, as would thousands more for over three centuries. Further stations followed at Bombay and Calcutta before the end of the century, but a new European rival was also in sight by then. A French East India Company had been founded in 1664 and soon established its own settlements at Pondicherry in 1674, Chandernagore in 1690, and Karaikal in 1739. A century of conflict lay ahead, but not only between each other. With the fragmentation of the Mughal Empire from 1707, France and Britain were having to make difficult political choices between allying with Indian regional rules. The stage was set for a clash between the British and French for control of Indian trade. It was the War of Austrian Succession (1740-48) in Europe that precipitated an Anglo-French struggle in India.

little changed in India, but the stage was set for a clash between the British and French for control of Indian trade. It was the War of Austrian Succession (1740-48) in Europe that precipitated an Anglo-French struggle in India. Then the French appeared to hold the upper hand. They took Madras from the British in 1746, only to hand it back in 1748, and successfully placed their favoured candidate on the throne of Hyderabad. This augured well for the future, but serious damage was done to French aspirations in 1750. The French East India Company had remained under the close supervision of the government, unlike the British equivalent, and they decided that key representatives were playing too much politics and doing too little trading. In 1750, the French company’s senior leadership was restructured, just on the eve of the decisive Anglo-French clash during the **Seven Years' War**.

Then the French appeared to hold the upper hand. They took Madras from the British in 1746, only to hand it back in 1748, and successfully placed their favoured candidate on the throne of Hyderabad. This augured well for the future, but serious damage was done to French aspirations in 1750. The French East India Company had remained under the close supervision of the government, unlike the British equivalent, and they decided that key representatives were playing too much politics and doing too little trading. In 1750, the French company’s senior leadership was restructured, just on the eve of the decisive Anglo-French clash during the **Seven Years' War**.

The Seven Years' War simply escalated the ongoing military skirmishes and political intrigues between French and British commercial interests in India. Both offered military support in dynastic struggles within Indian principalities in order to open new markets. For a time, the French appeared to hold the upper hand under Joseph François Dupleix, the governor of French India from 1741. They took Madras from the British in 1746 during the War of the Austrian Succession, only to hand it back in 1748, and successfully placed their preferred candidate on the throne of Hyderabad. The British had their successes too, with their favourite prevailed in the Carnatic in 1751, thanks to the intervention of British adventurer Robert Clive or *Clive of India*. However, the balance would change significantly in Britain's favour, though it started with a disaster. In June 1756, the French backed prince of Bengal overwhelmed the British settlement in Calcutta. According to the much quoted legend, some 146 British survivors were locked in a small windowless jail that came to be known as the **Black Hole of Calcutta**, and by the morning in the intense heat of the Indian summer there were only 23 survivors. The numbers were dramatically exaggerated by the British press in order to drum-up support for the war in India, and all we can say for sure is that an accident did occur in which some British lives were lost. By January 1757, Calcutta was back in British hands, but Clive now decided to intervene further in the politics of Bengal. He defeated the prince of Bengal at the Battle of Plassey (June 1757), and placed a political puppet on the throne. For the next three years, Clive virtually ruled the rich province of Bengal, until he returned to England vastly wealthy from plundering the province. In doing so, he established the pattern by which British control would gradually spread throughout India, as well as the rapacious greed of many who administered British Indian affairs.

In 1762, Spain joined in on the side of France, launched an invasion of Portugal, nominally allied with Britain. Thus far in the war, Portugal had remained essentially neutral, as it was recovering from a devastating earthquake that had all but destroyed Lisbon in 1755. This war would be dubbed the Fantastic War, as despite being vastly outnumbered, there were no major battles were fought. The Portuguese used scorched earth tactics and offered bribes to deserters, and the Spanish forces succumbed to hunger, disease and low-moral. Inevitably the war also expanded to Portuguese Brazil and Spanish Latin America. Although the Portuguese lost some territory, it was nowhere near as much as the Spanish had been counting on. The British meanwhile captured both Spanish and French colonies, including Spanish Cuba, the Spanish Philippines, French islands in the Caribbean, and French forts in Africa and India.

By 1763, with all sides financially exhausted, the Sever Years’ War would take four separate treaties to end. In Europe, boundaries were returned to their pre-war states. This meant that Frederick the Great, twice the aggressor, was again allowed to keep Silesia, and no one could deny that Prussia was now a great power. Meanwhile after her resounding defeat in North America, the French lost all her territory to the British, except for New Orleans and the region west of the Mississippi; initially ceded to the Spanish in the peace of 1763, reacquired by Napoleon in 1803, and then sold to the infant United States of America in the Louisiana Purchase. In India, the peace required all the French trading ports to maintain minimal garrisons, making way for British hegemony and eventual control of the subcontinent. Ultimately, the Sever Years’ War was one of the major turning points of history. It ended France’s position as the leading power in Europe, and set Britain well on the way to establishing the British Empire, the largest empire in history. It's from this point on that Britain's role as the "*holder of the balance*" in the European Balance of Power truly began; having reached a position of colonial predominance, her policy was now to keep the continent divided. The treaties of  1763, however, were no more successful than the Peace of Westphalia in ending hostilities for very long. Prussia and Austria went to war again in 1778 over who would inherit the throne of Bavaria. In the same year France entered the American War of Independence on the side of the colonists, and later Spain and the Dutch Netherlands did as well. Just a few years later, the French Revolution and its aftermath would once again set most of the powers of Europe against each other.

### Age of Enlightenment

    The **Age of Enlightenment** (1650-1800) was a pivotal period in the development of modern Western political and intellectual culture, but defining it is very difficult. Like similar terms - the Renaissance, Reformation, Scientific Revolution - the Enlightenment characterised what men felt distinguished their own intellectual age from what had gone before. At its broadest, the Enlightenment was a sprawling intellectual, philosophical, and cultural movement that challenged some of the basic foundations of traditional society, including the role of government, sources of authority, nature of religion, ideas like human liberty and equality, and all aspects of societal structure. The individual Enlightenment thinkers differed greatly from one another, but emerged out of the common themes of the power of reason over tradition and belief in progress through questioning and dialogue. They sought to analyze and reform society, and ultimately paved the way for the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries, from the American Revolution to the French Revolution, and beyond. The roots of Enlightenment are confused. The dramatic success of the Scientific Revolution in overturned many old systems of thinking of the Church and classical antiquity, made it possible for philosophers to begin applying the new Scientific Method to the study of humanity itself. Perhaps the most immediate catalysts were as a response to the preceding century of political and religious conflict in Europe, especially the Thirty Years’ War in Germany, and the English Civil War and Glorious Revolution in Britain. With the former, the atrocities that the German public endured inspired leading European thinkers such as Hugo Grotius (d. 1645) to question the indiscriminate slaughter of war, arguing that individuals had natural rights that transcend a states pursuit of national interests. The latter conflict in Britain effectively ended the idea of divine monarchy, that a king's right to rule derived directly from the will of God. Englishman John Locke (d. 1704) was one of the most influential early Enlightenment thinkers, providing the philosophical toolkit for its major advances. Following in the tradition of Francis Bacon (d. 1626) and René Descartes (d. 1650), Locke pioneered an approach to philosophy modeled on the rigorous methods of experimental science, emphasising the role of sensory experience, along with rationalism and skepticism. He was the first to define the modern concept of identity and the self. Arguing against the prevailing view that all humans were born with innate ideas or beliefs, Locke suggested the mind is a blank slate at birth, which is then shaped by experience, and can be improve through education, reflection, and conscious effort. His writing on politics was highly influential, particularly that societies form governments for the betterment of the whole, and its legitimacy lies in the consent of the governed, later developed by Rousseau into the theory of the Social Contract. On religion, Locke suggested that governments should respect religious freedom except when it threatened public order, though he excluded Catholics who owed allegiance to an external ruler. Perhaps Locke's most famous contribution was that man has three natural rights: life, liberty and property.

    Although the first major figures of the Enlightenment came from Germany and Britain, the movement truly exploded in France, which became a hotbed of political and intellectual thought in the 1700s. The roots of this French Enlightenment lay largely in resentment at the decadent French monarchy under the “*Sun King*” Louis XIV (d. 1715). Wealthy intellectual elites began to gather regularly in Parisian coffeehouses, to complain about the state of their country. These gatherings only grew in popularity when the far less formidable and competent Louis XV took over. Gradually, idle whining turned into constructive political thought, especially after the works of John Locke became widespread. The High Enlightenment was perhaps best summed up by French literary critic, Émile Faguet; "*a chaos of clear ideas*". It centered on the dialogues and publications of the giants of the Englightenment; Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Buffon and Diderot. These Enlightenment thinkers would advance such ideas as civil rights that transcend the authority of any government, constitutional government, the separation of church and state, the separation of powers within a government, individual liberty and equality, religious tolerance, and secularism; concepts that were most obviously and enthusiastically adopted by the authors of the United States Constitution.

In the midst of the Seven Years' War, Europe was also a chaos of Enlightenment ideas. Foremost among these dialogues and publications were those of the French philosophers of the **High Enlightenment** (1730-80). Building on the works of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, **Montesquieu** (d. 1755) articulated the theory of separation of powers within government between the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary, as a check on each others powers. **Jean-Jacques Rousseau** (d. 1778) argued against the idea of monarchy’s divine right to rule, stating that true political authority lay with the people. He argued that government is a "social contract" between the state and its people to protect our basic rights of life, liberty, and property. **Voltaire** (d. 1778) advocated many idea including freedom of speech, but one of his major focuses was the separation of church and state. He argued that government should be separate from any kind of religious practice, in order to allow greater religious tolerance. Just as the ideas of the Reformation eroded the authority of the Church as sparked a European conflagration in the 16th and 17th century, so the Enlightenment ideas undermined the authority of the monarchy. It paved the way for a wave of revolution throughout the Western world, beginning with the American War of Independence and French Revolution, and continuing with the Latin American Wars of Independence. The Enlightenment vision of throwing the old authorities to remake society along rational lines reached its zenith in the chaotic Year of Revolutions of 1848. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson closely followed European ideas and later incorporated some of the ideals of the Enlightenment into the Declaration of Independence (1776). One of his peers, James Madison, incorporated these ideals into the United States Constitution (1787).

Not all the ideas of the Enlightenment were directly political. One of most impressive works of the time was Encyclopédie (1751), an encyclopedia of the most advanced view on a wide range of topics, co-written and co-edited by Denis Diderot (d. 1784) and Jean le Rond d'Alembert (d. 1783) for almost twenty years. Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (d. 1788) rejected the biblical chronology of the past, in favour of the Earth being far older; he also flirted with the idea of evolution. Although begun with the best of intentions, the Enlightenment began to run out of steam as the French Revolution degraded into chaos and violence. The enormously influential Prussian sceptic philosopher Immanuel Kant (d. 1804) is widely considered the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment. Kant effectively undermined the whole basis of the Enlightenment by denouncing reason as an approach to thought, instead arguing that reality is in the eyes of the beholder. He thus inaugurated a new era in the development of philosophical thought.