Modern History

(M. AAMIR SULTAN)

Modern history, or the modern era, describes the historical timeline after the Middle Ages. Modern history can be further broken down into the early modern period and the late modern period after the Great Divergence. Contemporary history describes the span of historic events that are immediately relevant to the present time. The beginning of the modern era started approximately in the 16th century. Many major events caused the Western world to change around the turn of the 16th century, starting with the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the fall of Muslim Spain and the discovery of the Americas in 1492, and Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation in 1517. Early modern European history is usually seen to span from the turn of the 15th century, through the Age of Reason and Age of Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries, until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century.

Postmodern and Contemporary

"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 post modernity was coined to describe the major changes in the 1950s and 1960s in economy, society, culture, and philosophy. Sometimes distinct from the modern periods themselves, the terms "modernity" and "modernism" refer to a new way of thinking, distinct from medieval thinking. "Contemporary" is applied to more recent events because it means "belonging to the same period" and "current".

Modern Era
Significant Developments
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 European powers and later their colonies, began a political, economic, and cultural colonization of the rest of the world. By the late 19th and 20th centuries, 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 west and globalization. The modern era is closely associated with the development of individualism, capitalism, urbanization and a belief in the possibilities of technological and political progress. The brutal wars and other problems 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 belief in constant progress has been most recently criticized by postmodernism while the dominance of Western Europe and North America over other continents has been criticized by postcolonial theory.

The "Early Modern Period"

The modern era includes the early period, sometimes called the early modern period, which lasted from c. AD 1500 to around c. AD 1800 (most often 1815). Particular facets of early modernity include: The Renaissance The Reformation and Counter Reformation. The Age of Discovery Rise of capitalism Important events in the development of early modernity period include: The Arrival of the Printing Press The English Civil War
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The "Late Modern Period" Modern Age Characteristics

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 activitypolitics, 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. Portions of the Modern world altered its relationship with the Biblical value system, revalued the monarchical government system, and abolished the feudal economic system, with new democratic and liberal ideas in the areas of politics, science, psychology, sociology, and economics. This combination of epoch events totally changed thinking and thought in the late modern period. The Modernism worldview's emergence and the industrialization of many nations was initiated with the industrialization of Britain. Particular facets of the late modernity period include:

Increasing role of science and technology Mass literacy and proliferation of mass media Spread of social movements Institution of representative democracy Individualism Industrialization Urbanization

Other important events in the development of the late modern period include: The Revolutions of 1848 The Russian Revolution The First World War and the Second World War Our most recent era Modern Times begins with the end of these revolutions in the 19th century, and includes the World Wars era (encompassing World War I and World War II) and the emergence of socialist countries that lead to the Cold War. The contemporary era follows shortly afterward with the explosion of research and increase of knowledge known as the Information Age in the latter 20th and the early 21st century. Today's Postmodern era is seen in widespread Digitality.

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