HIST446

An exploration of the demographic patterns of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Examination of arguments that the population was governed by Malthusian constraints; the social structure of the time; the nature of the elites; the debate over the phrase "rise of the bourgeoisie"; the Enlightenment both as an intellectual phenomenon and as a social agent; and arguments that Enlightenment led to the desacralization of the monarchy.