Modern capitalist theory is traditionally traced to the 18th-century treatise An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Scottish political economist Adam Smith, and the origins of capitalism as an economic system can be placed in the 16th century.

The history of socialism has its origins in the Age of Enlightenment and the 1789 French Revolution along with the changes that it brought, although it has precedents in earlier movements and ideas.

An egalitarian is someone who subscribes to this philosophy in some form. Scholars believe that egalitarianism originated with the earliest humans but that the philosopher John Locke further established it during the Enlightenment period.

The word “imperialism” was originally coined in the 19th century to decry Napoleon's despotic militarism and became common in the current sense in Great Britain during the 1870s, when it was used with a negative connotation.

In European history, nationalism is the movement of people, often of the same ethnic group, to determine political boundaries and government. This began in France with the French Revolution, following the Enlightenment, in which people were demanding an end to monarchies and a voice in government

Charles Darwin proposed the theory of natural selection in 1859 as a way to explain adaptation and speciation. His theory helped in removing all the conventional old beliefs which said that the formation of various species was a supernatural phenomenon or act of God. Darwinism has a long tradition of scholarship.

Chartism was a working-class movement that emerged in 1836 in London. It expanded rapidly across the country and was most active between 1838 and 1848. The Chartists aimed to gain political rights and influence for the working classes. Their demands were widely publicised through their meetings and pamphlets