When asked to name a famous person who changed America, the obvious is usually stated: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln ; some would even go back to the founding of the country and say Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin. These are the people who were inspired to create America based on the principles of a just government that treated its citizens fairly, but they did not create these ideas alone. They themselves have been influenced by a number of different people. Perhaps one of the most popular among these characters was called Montesquieu. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayMontesquieu was born on January 18, 1689 in a castle called Château de la Bréde in France. His birth name was Charles-Louis de Secondat. He would be many things throughout his life, a lawyer, a political philosopher and an author. His parents both came from a noble family. His father, Jacques de Secondat, was a soldier and his mother, Marie Françoise de Pensel, was an heiress. He died when he was only seven years old and after his death Montesquieu was sent by his father to the Catholic College of Jully. The school was created specifically for the French nobility and he remained there for 5 years from 1700 to 1705. He then moved to Bordeaux in 1705 to study and practice law at the city's university. When he finished his studies, he was twenty-two years old. When his father died two years later, in 1713, he was left in the care of his uncle, the Baron de Montesquieu, and became his ward and eventually councilor of the Parliament of Bordeaux. His early childhood was filled with many significant events that would later influence his works. Some examples of these were when England joined Scotland to unite and become the Kingdom of Great Britain, when Louis XV came to the throne, and the French Revolution. These events sparked his lifelong interest in politics and social laws. He married Jeanne de Lartigue, a Protestant, in 1715 and together they had a daughter and two sons. During this period he was also elected to the Bordeaux Academy. When his uncle died in 1716, he left Montesquieu with a large sum of money, the title Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, and an important post in the French government, the Président à Mortier of the Parliament of Bordeaux. He would eventually abandon his career in law and move to Paris to become a writer and scholar instead. He studied geology, biology, physics and Roman politics. He published many popular books criticizing French society of the time and won much praise from Britain and the rest of Europe. He often used the word "despotism" in his works and was known to have played an important role in introducing the word into politics. He successfully published his first book, The Persian Letters in 1721. Although it was published anonymously, people soon discovered the true meaning of the author and Montesquieu became a very popular figure. The book was a satirical fiction about two Persian merchants who traveled around Europe and mocked and criticized its imperfect society and government. Probably his most famous work was De I'esprit des loix, published in 1748. The book challenged the power of the monarchy and the church and presented ideas such as constitutional government, the separation of powers, and the end of the slave trade. The book also divided French society into three classes, the aristocracy, the monarchy and the communes and introduced the ideas of the three branches of government, the judicial, the legislative and the executive. Furthermore, he believed that the three branches of government should depend on each other so that there would never be one with more.