Early modern Europe

The early modern period is a term used by historians to refer to the period in Western Europe and its first colonies which spans the time between the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution that has created modern society. The early modern period is characterized by the rise to importance of science and increasingly rapid technological progress, secularized civic politics and the nation state. Capitalist economies began their rise, beginning in northern Italian republics such as Genoa. The early modern period also saw the rise and dominance of the economic theory of mercantilism. As such early modern period represents the diminution and abolition of Christian theocracy, feudalism, and serfdom.

In general, historians generally place the end of the Middle Ages at the beginning of the Reformation, in about 1517-1525 and the Industrial Revolution, beginning at about 1750. When the economic historian Fernand Braudel covered the early modern world in his book Civilization and Capitalism, the span of time he covered was the 15th to the 18th centuries.

The beginning of the early modern period receives differing conventional dates in different nations. Common start dates include 1453 — the fall of Constantinople, but Spain and Portugal entered the early modern age with the first documented European voyage to the Americas, by Christopher Columbus in 1492 and Vasco da Gama's voyage to India (1498) set off the Age of Discovery. The year 1492 also marked the end of the Reconquista with the capitulation of Moorish Granada; simultaneously the government of Spain expelled the Spanish Jews. In England, the early modern period opened decisively in 1485, when the last Plantagenet king, Richard III, was killed at Bosworth and the medieval civil wars of aristocratic factions gave way to early modern Tudor monarchy, in the person of Henry VII. France and Italy initiated one another to early modern politics and warfare in 1494, when the French king Charles VIII invaded Italy. Finally, Germany entered the new epoch in 1519, when Holy Roman Emperor Charles V united the imperial throne with the crown of Spain. However, by the time these events took place, the cultural Renaissance initiated in Florence had already moved from its early phase to what art historians term the High Renaissance, its culmination, cut short with the Sack of Rome by German troops in 1527. At that time, the early modern religious movement, the Reformation was well under way: its opening is conventionally dated from Martin Luther's act in nailing his ninety-five theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg in 1517.

Major works of political and social philosophy, such as Machiavelli's The Prince (1513) and Thomas More's Utopia (1515) are also regarded as significant markers of the beginning of the early modern period.

The end date of the early modern period is most often placed at 1789, the end of the Ancien Régime in France, with the Industrial Revolution already transforming British society. The Napoleonic Era forms a transitional cap at the end of the early modern era. When Europe emerged, it was to a world-economy becoming distinctly modern. There is no agreement and the early modern period can be said to start and stop in different parts of Europe at different times.

The expression "early modern" is sometimes, and incorrectly, used as a substitute for the term Renaissance. However, "Renaissance" is properly used in relation to a diverse series of cultural developments; which occurred over several hundred years in many different parts of Europe — especially central and northern Italy — and span the transition from late Medieval civilization and the opening of the early modern period.

Artistically the early modern is not a common designation as the Renaissance is clearly distinct from what came later. Only in the study of literature is the early modern period a standard period. Music is generally divided between Renaissance, Baroque. Similarly philosophy is divided between Renaissance philosophy and the Enlightenment. In other fields there is far more continuity through the period such as warfare and science.

The term early modern is most often applied to Europe, and its overseas empire. However, in Japan the Edo period from 1603 to 1867 is also sometimes referred to as the early modern period.

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Early modern Europe

See also