Modern era
The modern era or the modern period, also known as modern history or modern times, is the period of human history that succeeds the post-classical era (also known, particularly with reference to Europe, as the Middle Ages), which ended around 1500 AD, up to the present. This terminology is a historical periodization that is applied primarily to European and Western history.
"Modern age" redirects here. For other uses, see Modern age (disambiguation).
The modern era can be further divided as follows:
The modern period has been a period of significant development in the fields of science, politics, warfare, and technology. It has also been an Age of Discovery and globalization. During this time, the European powers and later their colonies, began a political, economic, and cultural colonization of the rest of the world.
By the late 19th and early 20th century, modernist art, politics, science, and culture has come to dominate not only Western Europe and North America, but almost every civilized area on the globe, including movements thought of as opposed to the western world and globalization. The modern era is closely associated with the development of individualism, capitalism, urbanization, and a belief in the positive possibilities of technological and political progress.
The brutal wars and other conflicts of this era, many of which come from the effects of rapid change, and the connected loss of strength of traditional religious and ethical norms, have led to many reactions against modern development. Optimism and the belief in constant progress have been most recently criticized by postmodernism, while the dominance of Western Europe and North America over the rest of the world has been criticized by postcolonial theory.
Terminology[edit]
Eras can not easily be defined. 1500 is an approximate starting period for the modern era because many major events caused the Western world to change around that time: from the Fall of Constantinople (1453), Gutenberg's moveable type printing press (1450s), completion of the Reconquista (1492) and Christopher Columbus's voyage to the Americas (also 1492), to the Protestant Reformation begun with Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses (1517).
The term "modern" was coined shortly before 1585 to describe the beginning of a new era.[1]
The term "Early Modern" was introduced in the English language in the 1930s[2] to distinguish the time between what we call Middle Ages and time of the late Enlightenment (1800) (when the meaning of the term Modern Ages was developing its contemporary form).
Sometimes distinct from the modern periods themselves, the terms "modernity" and "modernism" refer to a new way of thinking, distinct, from previous ways of thinking such as medieval thinking.
The European Renaissance (about 1420–1630) is an important transition period beginning between the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, which started in Italy.
"Postmodernism", coined 1949, on the other hand, would describe rather a movement in art than a period of history, and is usually applied to arts, but not to any events of the very recent history.[3] This changed, when postmodernity was coined to describe the major changes in the 1950s and 1960s in economy, society, culture, and philosophy.
These terms stem from European History; in worldwide usage, such as in China, India, and Islam, the terms are applied in a very different way, but often in the context with their contact with European culture in the Age of Discoveries.[4]
Characteristics[edit]
The concept of the modern world as distinct from an ancient or medieval world rests on a sense that the modern world is not just another era in history, but rather the result of a new type of change. This is usually conceived of as progress driven by deliberate human efforts to better their situation.
Advances in all areas of human activity—politics, industry, society, economics, commerce, transport, communication, mechanization, automation, science, medicine, technology, and culture—appear to have transformed an Old World into the Modern or New World. In each case, the identification of the old Revolutionary change can be used to demarcate the old and old-fashioned from the modern.
Starting in western countries the modern world has seen a systematic re-evaluation of value systems, monarchical regimes, and feudal economic systems. These have often been replaced by democratic and liberal ideas in the areas of politics, science, psychology, sociology, and economics.
Some events of modern history, though born out of context not entirely new, show a new way of perceiving the world. The concept of modernity interprets the general meaning of these events and seeks explanations for major developments. Historians analyse the events taking place in Modern Times, since the so-called "Middle Ages" (between Modern and Ancient Times).