Proto-globalization
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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- This categorical era spans the two centuries between the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution that has created modern society.
The early modern period is a term initially used by historians to refer mainly to the post Late Middle Ages period in Western Europe (Early modern Europe), its first colonies marked by the rise of strong centralized governments and the beginnings of recognizable nation states that are the direct antecedents of todays states in what is called Modern times. This categorical era spans the two centuries between the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution that has created modern society, and in subsequent years the term "Early modern" has evolved to be less euro-centric and more generally a semi-calendar era useful for tracking related historical events across vast regions, as the cultural influences and dynamics from one region impacting on distant others has become more appreciated.
The early modern period is characterized by the rise to importance of science, the shrinkage of relative distances through improvements in transportation and communications and increasingly rapid technological progress, secularized civic politics and the early authoritarian nation states.
Further, capitalist economies and institutions began their rise and development, beginning in northern Italian republics such as Genoa, and the oligarchy in Venice. The early modern period also saw the rise and beginning of the dominance of the economic theory of mercantilism.
As such, the early modern period represents the decline and eventual disappearance, in much of the European sphere, of Christian theocracy, feudalism and serfdom.
The period includes the Reformation, the disastrous Thirty Years' War, the European colonization of the Americas and the peak of the European witch-hunt craze.
See also
- General concepts
- Renaissance, Early Modern English, Early Modern warfare, Periodization, Proto-globalization, Atlantic history
- Political powers
- Habsburg Spain, Habsburg Monarchy, Portuguese Empire, Dutch Republic, Early Modern Britain, Early Modern France, Early Modern Italy, Early Modern Romania, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Ottoman Empire, Mughal Empire, Safavid Empire
