What do you like about the 18th century, Veeky Forums?
Personally, I don't understand the 18th century. I have no idea what happened and what the main themes and processes of the century were, and what makes it stand out as a distinct period.
If we're talking about 1600s, we have the advent of modernity, adoption of empiricism and the scientific method, creation and solidification of nation states, baroque.
In the 1800s we have nationalism, the industrial revolution, empires, romanticism.
The only things I can think of within the 18th century are Kant, the elevation of masonic societies and enlightenment and of course, the revolutions in France and America. But I don't see how they fit into the natural historical dialectic of the previous centuries. Enlightened monarchies were failed experiments, which didn't really work in this century either.
If we're talking about European high culture, to me it seems like a century of bland formalism and soul-killing pretensions of class and refinement which seem simply crass and tacky to me (vis. the pretty, anodyne colors and airbrushed feel of Rococo.) Even music of the classical period sounds a little too constrained and formalised to me.
In the East, we have the decomposition and decline of all the great Asian powers and the beginning of their fall to European colonialism (Ottoman Empire, China, etc)
We have Russia losing its old cultural identity to the Eurocentric whims of Peter I.
it seems like it was only Japan where this century was more or less stable and interesting.
Also I don't get the whacky, colorful military uniforms all the European powers adopted. It just looks stupid and impractical to me.
I am hoping someone can prove my stupid, uneducated self wrong on this subject.