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A Bookseller's Route, 1765: Enlightenment Ideas Across Europe

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A Bookseller's Route, 1765: Enlightenment Ideas Across Europe

Follow a described map and a book agent's journey from London to Berlin.

The map and the journey

Read the map description and the journey of Hendrik Vos, a made-up agent for an Amsterdam bookshop. Then answer the questions.

A Map of Europe in 1765 (described in words)
1. London is a port on the River Thames in Britain.
2. Amsterdam, in the Dutch Republic, lies east of London across the North Sea.
3. Paris, in France, lies south of Amsterdam and southeast of London.
4. Geneva, a small city-republic, lies southeast of Paris at the end of a long lake near the Alps.
5. Milan, in northern Italy, lies east of Geneva on the far side of the Alps.
6. Berlin, capital of the kingdom of Prussia, lies far to the northeast of Milan.

The Journey of Hendrik Vos, 1765

1London. Hendrik buys copies of a new book by William Blackstone, an English law professor. Blackstone wrote that every English person has rights to personal security, personal liberty and property, and that the law exists to protect them. In Britain, Parliament made the laws, the king's ministers carried them out, and since 1701 judges could not be removed just because the king disliked their rulings. The French writer Montesquieu had praised this kind of divided power.

2Amsterdam. The Dutch Republic had no king. Councils of wealthy townsmen ran much of its government, and printers faced fewer limits than in France. Many books banned in France were printed here and carried south in secret. Hendrik loads crates of French books printed in Amsterdam.

3Paris. Louis XV ruled France as an absolute monarch. Royal censors had to approve books before they were printed. A sealed letter from the king could send a person to prison with no trial. In 1759 the government banned the Encyclopédie, a huge set of volumes edited by Denis Diderot that aimed to gather all knowledge and often questioned the authority of kings and church leaders. Its writers kept working, and the last ten volumes of articles came out in 1765. In private homes called salons, often hosted by women, educated people met to discuss such books.

4Geneva. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in this small republic in 1712. His book The Social Contract (1762) begins, "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." Rousseau argued that the people as a whole hold the highest power and that laws are fair only when they express the general will of the people. In 1762 Geneva's council ordered the book burned, and it was banned in Paris as well.

5Milan. Milan was then ruled by the Austrian Habsburgs. In 1764 a young writer there, Cesare Beccaria, published On Crimes and Punishments. He argued that torture should end, that laws should be clear and written so everyone could know them, and that punishments should fit the crime. The book was soon translated into French and English.

6Berlin. King Frederick II of Prussia read the new books and wrote letters to French thinkers. He ended most use of torture and called himself "the first servant of the state." Yet he alone made the laws, led the army and named the judges, and no elected assembly could check him.

1.
Hendrik travels from Geneva to Milan. Using the map, which description of this part of the trip is correct?
Question 1 options
2.
French books that were banned in Paris were printed in Amsterdam. Using the map and the journey, why did this route work for the books' sellers?
Question 2 options
3.
Underline the sentence from the Paris stop that best shows a person in France could lose their freedom without a trial.

4.
Use the Paris stop.

The last volumes of the Encyclopédie came out years after the government banned it.

5.
Sort each government Hendrik passes through in 1765.

Weigh the ideas

Use the map and the journey to answer.

6.
Match each new proposal to the writer or book on Hendrik's route who would most likely support it.
7.
A judge in Berlin rules against a friend of King Frederick. A judge in London rules against a friend of the British king. Based on the journey, what risk does the Berlin judge face that the London judge does not?
Question 7 options
8.
Why would the rulers of both Geneva and Paris most likely ban The Social Contract?
Question 8 options
9.
Frederick II read Enlightenment books and ended most use of torture. Which statement best describes his rule?
Question 9 options
10.
Which stop on Hendrik's route shows the strongest challenge to absolute rule? State your claim, give two details from the map or the journey, and explain your reasoning. Compare your stop with Paris or Berlin.