Editing Age of Enlightenment (section)

==Notes==
* This period in military history has been called "the Age of Lace Trimmed Warfare". Between muskets and field [[cannon]]s, armor was gradually abolished due to the immense cost of the new standing armies that gradually replaced the mercenary armies of former periods, while the idea of giving every soldier in your army clothes that are all the same gradually caught on. The fancier the better, since an army which still looked well dressed after a month on campaign was obviously disciplined and professional; iconic examples included the French musketeers and the English redcoats. Big blocky formations gave way to lines of soldiers two or three ranks deep at most which could bring as many muskets to bear as possible, supported by cavalry with sabers, lances, and pistols. 
** The way armies were fielded also changed dramatically. The Thirty Years War, while mostly fought on German soil, showed every participant how difficult it was to keep mercenaries in line, especially when the money dried up or there was nothing left to plunder. The big mercenary and levy armies of prior centuries gave way to the standing army, sworn to serve King and Country as a cadre of professionally trained and drilled soldiers and officers. Improvements in bureaucracy, more effective taxation and a population boom also made conscription a viable option, although it would be some time until that idea truly caught on. The military organization reforms introduced in these times also persist to this day, with terms like lieutenant, platoon, and division coming into common use for the first time. 
* Newspapers! Technically they started up in the mid 1550s in Italy and there were periodical government publications for the Imperial Chinese bureaucracy before that, but from the late 17th century onward in Europe every major city had a print shop which regularly stamped out broadsheet newspapers for general consumption by those who had a few spare farthing, allowing them to keep track of events both at home and abroad. In particular, newspapers used the story of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hole_of_Calcutta Black Hole of Calcutta] to gather public support in England for the gradual conquest of India and later played a role in both the American and French revolutions.
* The Seven Years' War was fought during this period. This was the first truly global conflict in human history, as it saw fighting on every continent save Australia and Antarctica.
* Pretty much everywhere in the world would be affected in some way by the European powers by end of the Age of Enlightenment. India would fall under the control of the British East India Company, China's economy would become reliant on Western silver, Africa would be affected by the slave trade and the Americas and eventually Australia would be colonized and settled. Even the still-isolationist Japanese adopted a surprising amount of Western ideas through the Dutch, in what's known as Rangaku.
* Speaking of the British East India Company, corporate warfare and piracy were rife in this era, and the line between the two was vanishingly thin. The distinction between pirate and privateer was often a matter of one's point of view, and even the proper navies were down for a bit of prize-taking. The various trading companies were practically real-life [[Rogue Trader]] dynasties, with the power to raise armies and wage war in the name of profit. For example, in 621.M2 the VoC executed [[Exterminatus]] on the Banda Islands so they could import more [[Grimdark|cooperative slaves]].
* In England and France at this time a few engineers were looking into more effective ways of producing thread, making cloth, casting iron for cannons and sowing seeds with various mechanical contrivances. One particular issue they had to deal with in England in particular was the matter of fuel. Wood was becoming scarce during the Enlightenment as more people were burning it and more ships were being built. To save on wood, people began burning coal in large quantities instead, but their mines had a nasty tendency to flood and kill everyone who was down the pit. In 1712 Thomas Newcomen invented a machine which burned coal to pump the water out, which James Watt would refine and improve on fifty years later. These were developments which were easily overlooked at this stage, but gradually the stage was set for revolutionary change.
** Speaking of coal, the development of the process of turning coal into coke in 1714 was also a pretty big game-changer. Coke is coal that has been refined by heating it up to 1000°C and freeing it of sulphur, water and other substances that would contaminate raw iron. Coke quickly replaced charcoal as the primary fuel for furnaces (on the merit that it is far more efficient; you need a tenth of the amount of charcoal required to melt any given quantity of iron) which made the large-scale production of iron and later steel possible. 
* Crops that originated in the New World included potatoes, tomatoes, corn, pineapple, pumpkins, peppers, tobacco, vanilla, and chocolate ([[Wikipedia:New World crops|among others]]). While not a crop, all but [[Wikipedia:Rhipsalis baccifera|one species of cactus]] (which doesn't even look like a cactus) are native to the New World. If you see any of these in a European setting prior to this era or a cactus in a European/Asian/African desert, feel free to call whoever wrote/designed/programmed it a fucking hack.
* In this period you had the rise of our conception of an Artist. Beforehand you had artists who did what their clients/masters wanted and aristocrats which took up painting and writing to pass the time. By the 18th century, you had a few men and women which were not wealthy but reasonably well educated who had enough of a reputation that they could make their art their own way and sell it to a general audience. 
* Our modern methods of Vaccination were invented in this era. Some enterprising English Doctors had noticed that dairy farmers that had contact with a form of cow pox seemed to be immune against the Smallpox pandemics of the early 1720s that were ravaging England and the Thirteen Colonies. Although they couldn't explain why, they advocated for people to rub some pus or necrotic tissue taken from the sick into small incisions on their body, with the result being that the people first got somewhat ill, but retained an immunity against Smallpox for the rest of their lifes. The methods of inoculation would be refined over the coming decades and significantly increased the life expectancy of large swathes of the world population.