Modern Times (history)
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- See related article Modernity.
The term Modern Times is used by historians to describe the period of time immediately following what is somewhat confusingly known as the Early Modern Times.
- Early Modern Times lasted from the end of the 15th century to the end of the 18th century.
- Modern Times began in the end of the 18th century, continuing to the present.
Other similar terms, such as Modern Period, Modern Age, or Modern Era, are also commonly used.
The European Renaissance (about 1420-1630) is an important transition period beginning between the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Times.
The movement known as "Postmodernism" (dominant from the 1960s to the early 1980s) must be seen as a public relations term, for the term "modern times" – by definition – always includes the present.
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Characteristics
The concept of the modern world as distinct from an ancient world of historical and outmoded artifacts rests on a sense that the modern world is primarily the product of relatively recent and revolutionary change. Advances in all areas of human activity -- politics, 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 a Revolutionary change can be used to demarcate the old and old-fashioned from the modern.
Much of the Modern world replaced the Biblically-oriented value system, the monarchical government system, and the feudal economic system, with new democratic and liberal ideas in the areas of politics, science, psychology, sociology, and economics.
Politics
In European politics, the transition from feudal institutions to modern institutions has been marked by a series of Revolutions and military conflicts, beginning with the Eighty Years' War, which resulted in Dutch independence, confirmed in the Peace of Westphalia. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) established the modern international system of independent nation-states, ending feudalism in international relations. The English Glorious Revolution (1688) marked the end of feudalism in Great Britain, creating a modern constitutional monarchy. The French Revolution of 1789 overthrew the Ancien Régime in France, and as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, served to introduce political modernity in much of Western Europe.
The American and French Revolutions limited the powers of the absolute monarchs. Henceforth the world would become a "Modern" place where Democracy, and Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity became the new standards of government and of the rules of society.
Men such as the Emperor Napoleon introduced new codes of law in Europe based on merit and achievement, rather than on a class system rooted in Feudalism. The modern political system of Liberalism (derived from the word "Liberty" which means "Freedom") empowered members of the disenfranchised Third Estate. The power of elected bodies supplanted traditional rule by royal decree. A new attachment to one's nation, culture and language produced the powerful forces of Nationalism. This in turn ultimately contributed to new ideologies such as the ideology of Fascism, Socialism and Communism.
Taken to an extreme, the desire to demolish all vestiges of the past and create a classless society, resulted in the abuses of Communism following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, which executed the Tsar and his family, created the Soviet Union, transformed serfdom, and forcibly modernized Mother Russia. In Germany, once the Kaiser had abdicated in 1918, chaos ensued, paving the way for the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism.
The new republic of the United States of America granted the vote to white, male citizens, and placed reins on government based on the new Constitution and created a system of checks and balances between the three different branches of government, the legislature, judiciary, and executive headed by a President who was elected via a national election.
In Indian politics, Mughal (1526-1857) and then the British (1857-1947) invasion and skillful organization gradually brought unification for the first time to a subcontinent of separate states and kingdoms into a strongly united federalist system, and culminating in the world's largest democracy (1947-Present). The European Union is now beginning the equivalent process that the Indian Union has completed over the last 500 years, of a continent becoming a federalist union, with the difference being the willingness of the European states to unite, versus the union being imposed on the Indian states by invaders.
Science and technology
Revolutions in science and technology have been no less influential than political revolutions in changing the shape of the modern world. The Scientific revolution, beginning with the discoveries of Kepler and Galileo, and culminating with Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), changed the way in which educated people looked at the natural world.
Inventions
The mechanical and scientific inventions that were discovered, studied and implemented changed the way in which goods were produced and marketed. For example, modern machines in Britain sped up the manufacture of commodities such as cloth and iron. The horse and ox were no longer needed as beasts of burden. The newly invented engine powered the car, train, ship, and eventually the plane, revolutionizing the way people traveled. Artificially created energy powered any motor that drove any machine that was invented. Raw goods could be transported in huge quantities over vast distances; products could be manufactured quickly and then marketed all over the world, a situation that Britain used to its advantage.
Progress continued as science saw so many new scientific discoveries. The telephone, radio, X-rays, microscopes, electricity all contributed to rapid changes in life-styles and societies. Discoveries of antibiotics such as penicillin brought new ways of combating diseases. Surgery and medications kept on making progressive improvements in medical care, hospitals, and nursing. New theories such as evolution and psychoanalysis changed humanity's "old fashioned" views of itself.
Industry
An Industrial Revolution initiated by mechanical automation of the manufacture of cotton cloth and the use of steam engines, commenced in the 18th century in Great Britain, followed in the 19th century by a later series of developments, which saw modern systems of communication and transportation introduced in the form of steamships, railroads and the telegraph. In the late 19th century, a Second Industrial Revolution, prompted by developments in the chemical, petroleum, steel and electrical industries, furthered transformed the modern world.
Warfare
Warfare was changed with the advent of new varieties of rifle, cannon, gun, machine gun, armor, tank, plane, jet, and missile. Weapons such as the atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb, known along with chemical weapons and biological weapons as weapons of mass destruction, actually made the devastation of the entire planet possible in minutes. All these are among the markings of the Modern World.
Culture
New attitudes towards religion, with the church diminished, and a desire for personal freedoms, induced desires for sexual freedoms, which were ultimately accepted by large sectors of the Western World. Theories of "free love" and uninhibited sex were touted by radicals in the 1960s.
Equality of the sexes in politics and economics, women's liberation movement, gay rights for homosexuals and the freedom afforded by contraception allowed for greater personal choices in these intimate areas of personal life.
In Indian culture, caste divisions continued, but lost its affiliation with occupations, as competitive exams became universal.
The Arts
The Modern Age, when used in reference to the arts, is the period from around the beginning of the 20th century, up to the present day. While some art may be described as post-modern, in reality this is just a continuation of the characteristics of modern art. Modern art is typified by self-awareness, and by the manipulation of form or medium as an integral part of the work itself. Whereas pre-modern (Western) art merely sought to represent a form of reality, modern art tends to encourage the audience to question its perceptions, and thereby the fundamental nature, of art itself. Key movements in modern art include cubist painting, typified by Pablo Picasso, modernist literature such as that written by James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein, and the 'new poetry' headed by Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot.
Modern music saw the beginning of a fusion movement of different styles and cultures. John Coltrane for example fused jazz with Carnatic music to develop his album India. Elvis Presley popularized rock and roll, fusing country-western and blues.
Universality
The partisan use of the term "worldwide" gives tremendous emotional appeal, and is used in various countries not only by persons from professional historians to self-taught curmudgeons but by political groups which want to impose their view of reality upon their countrymen and even the whole world. The easiest way to do this is to establish a benchmark year and leave the particulars to specialists.
Britain: The Glorious Revolution of 1688 established a king selected by parliament, ending the troubles in that country in the seventeenth century. This was primarily done by the faction called the Whigs, who used the term "modern" for generations thereafter to gain credit. Later generations and political parties did not consider this a sufficient change to merit the term.
France: Although the French still glory in the magnificence of King Louis XIV, the end of his reign in 1715 is considered by them as a handy spot from which to tout the next phase of French glory, the Enlightenment, which they call « l'Age des lumières ». In other words, what happened in Britain does not concern them. After the French Revolution of 1789, they declared that the modern age had been surpassed by the contemporary age.
Russia: It took some time for the European socialists to conceive that the next great revolution would start someplace other than in France. But the Russians have always compared themselves to the French. After the October revolution, the Communist party of the Soviet Union declared that the "modern age" began with Peter the Great and the "contemporary age" began with this Bolshevik revolution.
Other countries do not use the terms the same as the French and Russians, especially if their languages are non-Indo-European. The Japanese call the dynasties previous to the Tokugawa dynasty as medieval, and the Meiji Restoration of 1858 is considered equivalent to the French Revolution of 1789, but haven't assimilated a form of the word modern for Tokugawa. As for the Third World, the obvious benchmarks are colonization by European imperial powers and the subsequent decolonization in the twentieth century. But "modern" and "contemporary" are not used for this purpose.
The United States of America: A seemingly natural dividing point as far as Spain and the new world are concerned is the voyage of Columbus in 1492. But the need for such an undertaking was underscored by the taking of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire of the Turks in 1453, so historians once took this as their benchmark.
See also
External links
cs:Novověk da:Nyere tid (historisk periode) de:Neuzeit es:Edad Moderna fr:Époque moderne hr:Novi vijek he:העת החדשה hu:Újkor nl:Nieuwe Tijd ja:近代 nds:Nutiet sk:Novovek sl:Novi vek fi:Uusi aika zh:現代