All of these theories emerged during the Enlightenment except for the Divine Right of Kings, which had its origins in the autocratic monarchies of the centuries that preceded the Enlightenment. The Divine Right of Kings stated that the right of the king to rule was divinely ordained by God and that to resist the king was therefore to resist the will of God.

During the Renaissance, the status of upper- and middle-class women suffered dramatically. Women’s minds were considered inadequate for higher learning, and women’s bodies were considered to be owned by their father or husband. Noticeably, the standard punishment for rape across Europe changed dramatically from the Medieval period (castration or death) to the Renaissance period (a fine payable to the father or husband). The status of peasant women remained relatively stable during the transition from the Medieval period to the Renaissance period.

Deism is the belief in a “watchmaker god,” a god who created the universe with a series of natural laws and then sat back and allowed the development of the universe to unfold. Deism emerged during the Enlightenment as a theocratic application of Enlightenment theories on natural law. It was widely embraced by Enlightenment thinkers, including Newton, Thomas Jefferson, and Voltaire and involved the rejection of the established Christian order in Europe.

The Nuremburg Laws were passed by the Nazi government in 1935. They stripped German Jews of their citizenship and prohibited marriages or other relationships between Jews and other Germans.

During the Renaissance period, the Spanish government enforced a strict religious orthodoxy that prevented the spread of Renaissance ideals like individualism and faith in the ability of humans. Furthermore, the Jews and the Muslims, who made up much of Spain's middle classes, were forced to leave the country, taking with them the resources and inclination that might have spread Renaissance values in Spain.

William Wilberforce (1759 - 1833) was an early leader of the movement to end slavery in the British empire. He became a politician early in his life and would go on to campaign tirelessly against the practice of slavery.

His actions in part led to the Slave Trade Act of 1807 abolishing the Atlantic slave trade, and later on the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, abolishing slavery in most of the British empire. He died only days after the Act was passed.

After the Reconquista, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella issued royal decrees declaring that Jews and Muslims had to convert to Christianity or leave Spain. The original purpose of the Spanish Inquisition was to enforce religious orthodoxy among these new converts.

Genocide, sometimes called "Ethnic cleansing," is the attempt to cause the extinction of a particular group of people.

During World War I, Turkish soldiers slaughtered more than half the population of Armenians in the country.

Auschwitz was the most notorious of the Nazi death camps in what was known as the Holocaust, the systematic slaughter of more than 11 million civilians, half of whom were Jewish, during World War II.

Milosevic was the president of Yugoslavia in the 1990's and but was deposed and convicted of genocide and other war crimes against his own people by the United Nations.

Throughout 1848, revolutions spread through France, the German States, Poland, Austria, Hungary, and Denmark. While all stemming from different internal causes, the revolutionaries were largely arguing for universal suffrage, liberal governments, and widespread democratic ideals. The revolutions ended a number of monarchies and enacted some reforms, but were largely reversed by reactionary movements within just a few years.

Thomas Hobbes argued that the state should allow for only one religion to be practiced uniformly throughout it. He believed this was necessary to encourage order and stability and to prevent revolution.