The Baron de Montesquieu rose to prominence in France as a governmental scholar and philosopher. He championed the idea that government should be broken into different divisions, each holding different powers, so that no one part of government could become too powerful, and therefore be tempted to violate the rights of its citizens.

Voltaire thought that all people should be guaranteed the right to practice their own religion, trade freely with anyone, and express themselves openly. He believed that government should not regulate people's to partake, or not take part in, any of these parts of life.

The social contract stated that monarchs who claimed they were given the right to legislate by God were wrong. Rousseau claimed only the people were sovereign, and therefore only they had the right to legislate and determine the will of the nation.

An extreme pride in ones nation or culture is known as nationalism. This trend began to sweep Europe and the world in the era between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and World War I. This Nationalism would help lead the nations of the world to seek out combat between each other.

In the late fifteenth century, Italian scholars developed a new form of education that they branded "humanism," which quickly spread across all of Europe and helped ignite both the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. The start of humanism began with the rediscovery of Latin and Greek texts, which prompted new ideas and focuses, including a Christian neoplatonism, a focus on the individual, and a challenge to traditional religion.

Under the Spanish system of Encomienda, Spanish colonial administrators were granted by the Spanish crown specific percentages of the native population of their territory to work in slave-like conditions. In exchange, the Spanish colonial administrators were expected to educate the overworked and suffering native people in the Christian faith.

Miguel Cervantes wrote the (arguably) most famous piece of Spanish literature, Don Quixote, in the early seventeenth century. Cervantes' influence on the Spanish language can be compared to that of Shakespeare on the English language—modern-day Spanish would be near-unrecognizable without his impact.  

Adolf Hitler wrote the manifesto, Mein Kampf, or "My Struggle," in which he outlined his political ideology and vision for Germany. The second of two volumes was published in 1926.

Scottish economist Adam Smith advocated private enterprise, free trade, and lassiez-faire economics in his classic work popularly known as The Wealth of Nations (1776).

The Reformer Martin Luther was not the first person to try and create a Bible in a vernacular language instead of the Latin Vulgate used by the Catholic Church. Luther's translation was more successful, though, because he had the advantage of having printing presses that could produce more and more versions for easier access by parishioners. The German in Luther's Bible was a regional Saxon dialect, but over time Luther's Bible translation helped standardize modern German.