Modern era

68 languages
 Article
 Talk
 Read
 Edit
 View history
Tools

















Appearance
hide
Text

Small
Standard

Large
Width

Standard
Wide
Color (beta)


Automatic
Light

Dark
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Modern history)
"Modern age" redirects here. For other uses, see Modern age (disambiguation).
hideThis article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or
discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove
these messages)

The examples and perspective in this article may not represent

a worldwide view of the subject. (September 2023)
This article may lend undue weight to personal views on
historiography. The specific problem is: The article does not
reflect actual historical research relating to the modern period. (July
2024)

Part of a series on

Human history

↑ Prehistory (Stone Age) (Pleistocene epoch)

show

Holocene

show

Ancient

show

Postclassical
 show

Modern

↓ Future

 v
 t
 e

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 Middle Ages, often from
around the year 1500. From the 1990s, it is 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 (1945) 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 to nationalism towards 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 its 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.[1][2]

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, 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).[further explanation needed]

The term "modern" was coined shortly before 1585 to describe the beginning of a
new era.[3]

The term "early modern" was introduced in the English language by American
historians at the turn of the 20th century (around 1900).[4] 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),[5] or that "early modern"
was not coined until the mid-20th century and only gained substantial traction in
the 1960s and 1970s.[4] 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.'[4] The difference
between "early modern" and just "modern" was defined by the French
Revolution and the Industrial Revolution.[4]

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.[6] 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.[7]