Recent events and ideas inspired some criollos: independence and republicanism in the United States, the French Enlightenment, British liberalism.

ECONOMIST: Millennium issue: Freeing Spanish America

Economists in the French Enlightenment (like Jacques Turgot) and the Scottish Enlightenment (like Adam Smith) recognized that essential human institutions such as language, culture, legal customs, mutual aid societies and markets develop spontaneously when governments get out of the way.

FORBES: Class Warfare: The Mortal Enemy Of Economic Growth And Jobs

Over the centuries, its guests have included the Marquise de Sevigne, whose letters documented 17th-century French society, and Enlightenment thinker and encyclopedist Denis Diderot.

FORBES: Provencal Retreat

The origin of modern automata, though, came during the Enlightenment, inaugurated by French mechanician Jacques de Vaucanson in the 1730s.

FORBES