After the failure of universalist models of Christianity and the challenge to Empire by the wars of religion, the various movements referred to as the Enlightenment contributed to a legal, cultural, and civilizational redefinition of Europe. Universal peace, scientific discoveries, circles of scholars and persons of letters, as well as the rise of colonial empires and consumption, helped to forge a new way of life and relation to the world. In a Europe still subject to the absolutist order, the simultaneous coming of philosophical individualism and European “civilization” foreshadowed political revolutions as the calling of the new global empires of the ensuing century.