Modern era
The modern era or the modern period, also known as modern history or modern times, is the period of human history that follows the Middle Ages from about 1500 AD and continues into the present. It is a form of periodization that is applied primarily to European and Western history. From about the 1990s, it has been more common to referred to an early modern period from about 1500 to 1800 with "modern period" often reserved for events from about 1800 until today. The time from the end of World War II (1945) can also be described as being part of contemporary history.
"Modern age" redirects here. For other uses, see Modern age (disambiguation).
The modern period saw wide-ranging intellectual, political and economic change, with European influence spreading around the Earth. It began with the Age of Discovery (including European colonialism and the Atlantic slave trade) and the Protestant Reformation and Counter-Reformation, proceeding with absolutism and the Age of Enlightenment. The early modern period ended with Age of Revolutions and the French Revolution, later spreading to other countries, partly by the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The modern period involved the spread of the Industrial Revolution across the world, the transition to nationalism towards the rules-based international order, continuing to the present 21st century.
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 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 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 by American historians at the turn of the 20th century (around 1900).[2] It was long thought that the concept was invented either in the 1930s to distinguish the time between the Middle Ages and time of the late Enlightenment (1800),[3] or that "early modern" was not coined until the mid-20th century and only gained substantial traction in the 1960s and 1970s.[2] Nipperdey (2022) pointed to its widespread usage by American historians around 1900 already, adding: 'In the interwar years the term permeated all areas of professional activity from textbooks and graduate school seminars to conferences, research articles, and job descriptions.'[2] The difference between "early modern" and just "modern" was defined by the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution.[2]
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.[4] 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.[5]
Characteristics[edit]
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).
In the modern period, there came the rise of different countries across the globe.Here is where we stand now.