The Enlightenment Movement: Atlantic Ocean To North And Latin America

The Enlightenment was a new concept that emerged in Europe during the late 18th century. The enlightenment movement shed some light on matters that had become debateable during the century, and that certain individuals had come to question with reasoning. The Enlightenment was a movement that ultimately had been developed by the likes of European philosophers and the ideas had spread throughout much of Europe. However, more recently, historians such as Sebastian Conrad, have made claims that the Enlightenment was a global movement in its origin, suggesting that the movement was not a European phenomenon. It is true, that the Enlightenment had spread across the Atlantic Ocean to North and Latin America, however this is a result of the movement

The Enlightenment was indeed a movement which dominated most European states during the late 17th and early 18th century. However, there is evidence to support the idea that the movement was not confined to Europe alone as its ideas had spread to the United States, and later Latin America. Despite this, most of the argument remains on the origins of the Enlightenment and where the enlightened movement had developed. Most notably is Sebastian Conrad, who claims that ‘the eighteenth-century cultural dynamics conventionally rendered as ‘Enlightenment’ cannot be understood as the sovereign and autonomous accomplishment of European intellectuals alone; it had many authors in many places’. This point made by Conrad is interesting because he makes such a statement without any reference to Enlightenment writers outside of Europe. I think that it should be noted that the majority of the Enlightenment thinkers of whom we associate with bringing the new ideas to light were originated in Europe, including Voltaire, Hume, Kant, Diderot, and many more. Therefore, historians are aware of no other enlightened thinkers outside of Europe who developed their own ideas during the 18th century, suggesting that the Enlightened movement had originated within Europe. Although, there were some individuals within America, such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, who were intrigued by the new concepts of the European philosophes and used these new developments within the United States. This is not to say that they were essentially creators of the enlightened ideas but rather consumers of these European philosophes. This is also suggested by Federico De Onfs, a co-writer of Latin America and the Enlightenment, who wrote ‘without prejudice or partiality toward any European