Modern era


The modern era or the modern period is considered the current historical period of human history. It was originally applied to the history of Europe and Western history for events that came after the Classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, often from around the year 1500, like the Reformation in Germany giving rise to Protestantism. Since the 1990s, it has been more common among historians to refer to the period after the Middle Ages and up to the 19th century as the early modern period. The modern period is today more often used for events from the 19th century until today. The time from the end of World War II can also be described as being part of contemporary history. The common definition of the modern period today is often associated with events like the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and the transition from nationalism toward the liberal international order.
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, strengthened their political, economic, and cultural colonization of the rest of the world. It also created a new modern lifestyle and has permanently changed the way people around the world live.
In the 19th and early 20th century, modernist art, politics, science, and culture have 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, socialism, 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

Eras cannot easily be defined for periodization. 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, Gutenberg's moveable type printing press, completion of the Reconquista and Christopher Columbus's voyage to the Americas, to the Reformation begun with Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses.
The term "modern" was coined shortly before 1585 to describe the beginning of a new era.
The term "early modern" was introduced in the English language by American historians at the turn of the 20th century. 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, or that "early modern" was not coined until the mid-20th century and only gained substantial traction in the 1960s and 1970s. Nipperdey 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.' The difference between "early modern" and just "modern" was defined by the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution.
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 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. 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.

Characteristics

Changes, mostly seen as advances, in all areas of human activity—politics, industry, society, economics, commerce, transport, communication, mechanization, automation, science, medicine, technology, religion, the arts, and other aspects of culture—appear to have transformed an Old World into the Modern or New World. In each case, the identification of the change over time 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 analyze the events taking place in Modern Times, since the so-called "Middle Ages".

Early modern period

Late 15th to 17th century

Renaissance and early Reformation (c. 1450–1600)

Age of Enlightenment and Revolution (c. 1700–1800)

Historians sometimes define a nineteenth century historical era from 1815 to 1914. Alternatively, Eric Hobsbawm defined the "long nineteenth century" as spanning from the French Revolution in 1789, to 1914.
During this century, the Spanish, Portuguese, and Ottoman Empires began to decline. The Ottoman Empire suffered territorial losses in the eastern Mediterranean and Balkans. The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved in 1806 by Emperor Francis II. The Mughal Empire effectively ended after the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Napoleonic era (1799–1815)

The Napoleonic era, regarded as the fourth phase of the French Revolution, began with Napoleon's coup in 1799 and ended with his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The subsequent Congress of Vienna sought to restore the pre-Revolutionary balance of power across Europe.

Spreading of the Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was the major technological, socioeconomic, and cultural change in late 18th and early 19th century that began in Britain and spread throughout the world. During that time, an economy based on manual labour was replaced by one dominated by industry and the manufacture of machinery. It began with the mechanisation of the textile industries and the development of iron-making techniques, and trade expansion was enabled by the introduction of canals, improved roads, and then railways. The introduction of steam power and powered machinery underpinned the dramatic increases in production capacity. The development of all-metal machine tools in the first two decades of the 19th century facilitated the manufacture of more production machines for manufacturing in other industries.
The date of the Industrial Revolution is not exact. Eric Hobsbawm held that it "broke out" in the 1780s and was not fully felt until the 1830s or 1840s, while T. S. Ashton held that it occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830.
The effects spread throughout Western Europe and North America during the 19th century, eventually affecting the majority of the world. The impact of this change on society was enormous and is often compared to the Neolithic Revolution, when mankind developed agriculture and gave up its nomadic lifestyle.
The First Industrial Revolution gave way to the Second Industrial Revolution around 1850, when technological and economic progress gained momentum with the development of steam-powered ships and railways, and later in the nineteenth century with the internal combustion engine and electric power generation.