Summary: Early Modern History

Read the summary and the most important questions on Early Modern History

• 1 Week 1

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• What are the key debates surrounding the concept of 'Early Modern' Europe?

  1. Periodization: Beginnings & Endings
     
     • How do historians define the starting and ending points of the 'Early Modern' period, and what criteria do they use to establish these boundaries?
  2. Continuity or Change?
     
     • To what extent did the early modern period represent a break from the medieval world, and how much continuity existed between the two periods?
  3. Modernity?
     
     • Was the early modern period truly the beginning of the modern world, or were the foundations of modernity laid earlier?
  4. Eurocentrism
     
     • How does the concept of 'Early Modern' Europe reflect a Eurocentric view of history, and what are the implications of this perspective for understanding global history?

• 1.1.1 Approaching our period

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• Why were people living in exciting times, from a historical perspective?

  • Mediterranean sailors explored waters well beyond familiar coastlines, while scholars rediscovered works from antiquity which challenged the medieval worldview in fundamental respects. 
    
  • Benefiting from population losses caused by plague, most dramatically the Black Death in the late 1340s, labourers and smallholders found opportunities to earn better wages and to cultivate larger holdings. 
  • The recent invention of the printing press, furthermore, offered Europe its first medium of mass communication. 

• What makes periodization a difficult task? What are common criteria of periodization?

  • A complex blend of continuity and change, of course, characterizes any point of the historical process, and periodization - a useful tool to structure information from the past - is a notoriously difficult task. 
    
  • Common criteria are changes in ruling dynasties, technological breakthroughs, demographic crises and the emergence of new cultural movements. 
  • These rarely coincide, however, and the identification of actual transition dates depends very much on regional context, socio-economic variables and the observer's perspective. 

• What are some historiographical starting points of the early modern period?

  • The accession of the Tudors in 1485 and the late seventeenth century serve as period boundaries in English historiography, the Reformation from the early 1500s and the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 in the German-speaking world.
  • Other interpretations locate its beginnings in the Renaissance (starting in late medieval Italian city-states) or Columbus's first transatlantic voyage in 1492.

• How did the modernity change over time? What distinguishes early modernity from modernity?

  • The 'early' form of modernity is a period with 'advanced' features such as rival confessions, print media, growing mobility.and expanding state power, but persisting elements of medieval culture like political inequality, religious intolerance and the predominance of agricultural revolution.
  • Modernity is an era shaped by individual rights, mechanization and the expansion of mass communication. 

• Name some examples that explain the major developments between 1500-1800?

  Examples include perceived early modern tendencies towards centralization (of political power), bureaucratization (of rule), codification (of laws), confessionalization (of religious beliefs) and disciplining (of human behaviour).

• What do Max Weber and Marxist historians say about early modernity?

  • German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920), one of the most influential voices in these debates, related long-term processes of rationalization and disenchantment to the relatively ascetic and 'this-worldly' character of Protestantism, i.e ultimately religious causes,
  • while Marxist historians interpreted the early modern period as a transitional stage between Feudalism and Capitalism, thus placing the main emphasis on material and socio-economic factors.  

• 1.1.2 The spatial setting

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• What key climatic variable is there regarding the early modern period?

  • Historians usually reject environmental determinism, but human agency was framed by (and interacted with) natural conditions. 
  • One key variable, the prevailing climate, posed particular challenges from the sixteenth century, when wetter summers and colder winters reduced harvest yields and caused widespread hardship.  

• What constituted Europe as an entity geographically?

  Closer contact with other cultures in the wake of voyages of discovery, furthermore, sharpened the awareness of Europe as a meaningful entity, also in a geographical sense, even though the readiness to engage with these societies remained limited and overshadowed by almost universal notions of European superiority.

• What representatives were there within Europe?

  • Jews had lived in many towns from the High Middle Ages, carving out livelihoods in a generally hostile climate, with periodic bouts of persecution and (sometimes repeated) expulsions, most famously from Spain in 1492.
  • In the south-east of the Continent, the Ottoman Empire expanded ever further, and its armies besieged the Habsburg capital of Vienna on two occasions, in 1529 and 1683. Trade links and diplomatic contacts notwithstanding, 'fear of the Turk' was another, recurring reason for reflection on European identity.