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 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" (especially dominant from the 1960s to the early 1980s) is widely misunderstood, and there is scholarly disagreement about how to describe very recent history.

1 Characteristics
2 Politics
3 Science and technology
- 3.1 Inventions
- 3.2 Industry
4 Warfare
5 Culture
- 5.1 The Arts
6 Universality
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] Characteristics

The concept of the modern world as distinct from an ancient 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 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.

[edit] Politics

Controversially, Leo Strauss believed that modernism generally started with the first modern political writer^{quote needed}, Niccolò Machiavelli. It is indeed interesting that in his works, all the elements of modernism are present:

The positive attitude towards change, and attempts to make progress in technology, economics and military power, despite the obvious dangers involved in revolutions of all types.
The positive attitude towards experimentation with new forms of democracy or republicanism combined with a disdain for medieval institutions.
A positive attitude towards larger states, despite an appreciation of the superiority of small communities in most respects.

What is particularly interesting is the clarity with which an argument is made for this revolutionary approach, versus the approach of classical political thinking with which Machiavelli was clearly in great agreement. The revolution is needed, according to Machiavelli, because of unpleasant necessity which had reached a head in his time. All communities must take into account not only what is best for them in isolation, but also the threat of outsiders, concerning whom the most dangerous are often large imperialist states and/or innovators rather traditionalist. (For example gun powder was becoming widely used in the European military in his time.) In other words, according to Strauss' understanding, the first type of modernism was political, and concerned with the constant threat of an arms race. The famous modern concerns with economics and natural science, developed from this in following generations, especially under René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes and Francis Bacon.

Less controversially, many would agree that the first signs of modernity were certainly in Machiavelli's lifetime, which was also the time of Martin Luther, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, the Borgia popes, Amerigo Vespucci, Leonardo da Vinci, and Henrys VII and VIII of England. Machiavelli's political writings are surprisingly open in their criticism of the traditional division of power which existed in Europe, especially Italy, between the Roman Catholic Church and secular government, which was still centered around the Holy Roman Emperor. His writings are startling in their encouragement to all parties to try to take control - including the Church, the Empire or even democratic reformists such as those found in his home Florence and in Switzerland. (Nevertheless most commentators argue that he shows a marked preference for Republics.)

Far from creating peace, the transition from feudal institutions to modern institutions was 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. After a first revolution which temporarily ended the monarchy in Britain and Ireland, creating a "Commonwealth" the English "Glorious" Revolution (1688) marked the final days 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 English, American and French Revolutions limited the powers of monarchs and all traditional rulers. Eventually, Democracy, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity became the new standards of government and of the rules of society which in turn aim themselves more at material wealth, and avoidance of death, and less at, for example, salvation or honor than most other societies in history.

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.

[edit] Science and technology

One of the most important aspects of modernity is the encouragement of advance or progress in useful sciences and arts. Politically, this demanded an end to caution in allowing radical ideas to be made public, which radically changed religion and education in European society. See Enlightenment and Humanism.

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.

From the time of Newton, or perhaps even Descartes, many branches of modern science (perhaps the most extreme example being economics) have been increasingly accused of losing perspective due to their over-stretched efforts to find explanations of nature which are easily analysed in terms of easily measured and easily mathematicised terms.

[edit] Inventions

What is now called technology is the most obvious success of modernity. Mechanical and scientific invention has changed human health and all aspects of human society: economic, religious, social, and theoretical.

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 travelled. Newly discovered energy sources such as petroleum and nuclear power could power the new machines. 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, and later the US, Europe and Japan all used to their advantage.

Progress continued as science saw 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 various medications made further progress in medical care, hospitals, and nursing. New theories such as evolution and psychoanalysis changed humanity's "old fashioned" views of itself.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

As a conclusion, homosexual relationships were accepted while the women's rights were trying to gain power.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

Japan: The Japanese call the dynasties previous to the Tokugawa dynasty as medieval, and the Meiji Restoration of 1866-1869 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 during the "New Imperialism" 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.