The modern era or the modern period, also known as modern history or modern times, is the period of human history that follows the Middle Ages from about 1500 AD and continues into the present. It is a form of periodization that is applied primarily to European and Western history. From about the 1990s, it has been more common to referred to an early modern period from about 1500 to 1800 with "modern period" often reserved for events from about 1800 until today. The time from the end of World War II (1945) can also be described as being part of contemporary history.
The term "modern" was coined shortly before 1585 to describe the beginning of a new era.[1]
The term "early modern" was introduced in the English language by American historians at the turn of the 20th century (around 1900).[2] It was long thought that the concept was invented either in the 1930s to distinguish the time between the Middle Ages and time of the late Enlightenment (1800),[3] or that "early modern" was not coined until the mid-20th century and only gained substantial traction in the 1960s and 1970s.[2] Nipperdey (2022) pointed to its widespread usage by American historians around 1900 already, adding: 'In the interwar years the term permeated all areas of professional activity from textbooks and graduate school seminars to conferences, research articles, and job descriptions.'[2] The difference between "early modern" and just "modern" was defined by the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution.[2]
Sometimes distinct from the modern periods themselves, the terms "modernity" and "modernism" refer to a new way of thinking, distinct, from previous ways of thinking such as medieval thinking.
The EuropeanRenaissance (about 1420–1630) is an important transition period beginning between the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, which started in Italy.
"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.[4] This changed, when postmodernity was coined to describe the major changes in the 1950s and 1960s in economy, society, culture, and philosophy.
These terms stem from European History; in worldwide usage, such as in China, India, and Islam, the terms are applied in a very different way, but often in the context with their contact with European culture in the Age of Discoveries.[5]
Some events of modern history, though born out of context not entirely new, show a new way of perceiving the world. The concept of modernity interprets the general meaning of these events and seeks explanations for major developments. Historians analyse the events taking place in Modern Times, since the so-called "Middle Ages" (between Modern and Ancient Times).
In the modern period, there came the rise of different countries across the globe.Here is where we stand now.
Historians sometimes define a nineteenth century historical era stretching from 1815 (the Congress of Vienna) to 1914 (the outbreak of the First World War); alternatively, Eric Hobsbawm defined the "long nineteenth century" as spanning the years 1789 to 1914.
The Industrial Revolution was the major technological, socioeconomic, and cultural change in late 18th and early 19th century that began in Britain and spread throughout the world. During that time, an economy based on manual labour was replaced by one dominated by industry and the manufacture of machinery. It began with the mechanisation of the textile industries and the development of iron-making techniques, and trade expansion was enabled by the introduction of canals, improved roads, and then railways. The introduction of steam power (fuelled primarily by coal) and powered machinery (mainly in textile manufacturing) underpinned the dramatic increases in production capacity.[6] The development of all-metal machine tools in the first two decades of the 19th century facilitated the manufacture of more production machines for manufacturing in other industries.
The date of the Industrial Revolution is not exact. Eric Hobsbawm held that it "broke out" in the 1780s and was not fully felt until the 1830s or 1840s,[7] while T. S. Ashton held that it occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830 (in effect the reigns of George III, The Regency, and George IV).[8]
The effects spread throughout Western Europe and North America during the 19th century, eventually affecting the majority of the world. The impact of this change on society was enormous and is often compared to the Neolithic Revolution, when mankind developed agriculture and gave up its nomadic lifestyle.[9]
The First Industrial Revolution gave way to the Second Industrial Revolution around 1850, when technological and economic progress gained momentum with the development of steam-powered ships and railways, and later in the nineteenth century with the internal combustion engine and electric power generation.
It has been argued that GDP per capita was much more stable and progressed at a much slower rate until the industrial revolution and the emergence of the modern capitalist economy, and that it has since increased rapidly in capitalist countries.[10]
Late 19th century
Following the Napoleonic Wars, the British Empire became the world's leading power, controlling one quarter of the World's population and one third of the land area. It enforced a Pax Britannica, encouraged trade, and battled rampant piracy.
Following the abolition of the slave trade, and propelled by economic exploitation, the Scramble for Africa was initiated formally at the Berlin West Africa Conference in 1884–1885. All the major European powers laid claim to the areas of Africa where they could exhibit a sphere of influence over the area. These claims did not have to have any substantial land holdings or treaties to be legitimate. The French gained major ground in West Africa, the British in East Africa, and the Portuguese and Spanish at various points throughout the continent, while Leopold II of Belgium was able to retain his personal fiefdom, Congo.
Above all, the 20th century is distinguished from most of human history in that its most significant changes were directly or indirectly economic and technological in nature.
Economic development was the force behind vast changes in everyday life, to a degree which was unprecedented in human history. The great changes of centuries before the 19th were more connected with ideas, religion or military conquest, and technological advance had only made small changes in the material wealth of ordinary people. Over the course of the 20th century, the world's per-capita gross domestic product grew by a factor of five [1], much more than all earlier centuries combined (including the 19th with its Industrial Revolution). Many economists make the case that this understates the magnitude of growth, as many of the goods and services consumed at the end of the century, such as improved medicine (causing world life expectancy to increase by more than two decades) and communications technologies, were not available at any price at its beginning. However, the gulf between the world's rich and poor grew much wider than it had ever been in the past, and the majority of the global population remained in the poor side of the divide[citation needed].
Still, advancing technology and medicine has had a great impact even in the Global South. Large-scale industry and more centralized media made brutal dictatorships possible on an unprecedented scale in the middle of the century, leading to wars that were also unprecedented. However, the increased communications contributed to democratization.
Major political developments included the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, two world wars, and the Cold War. It also saw the former British Empire lose most of its remaining political power over commonwealth countries, most notably by ways of the dividing of the British crown into several sovereignties by the Statute of Westminster, the patriation of constitutions by the Canada Act 1982 and the Australia Act 1986, and by the independence of countries like India, Pakistan, South Africa, and Ireland.
Much of the fighting in World War I took place along the Western Front, within a system of opposing manned trenches and fortifications (separated by a "no man's land") running from the North Sea to the border of Switzerland. On the Eastern Front, the vast eastern plains and limited rail network prevented a trench warfare stalemate from developing, although the scale of the conflict was just as large. Hostilities also occurred on and under the sea and — for the first time — from the air. More than 9 million soldiers died on the various battlefields, and nearly that many more in the participating countries' home fronts on account of food shortages and genocide committed under the cover of various civil wars and internal conflicts. Notably, more people died of the worldwide influenza outbreak at the end of the war and shortly after than died in the hostilities. The unsanitary conditions engendered by the war, severe overcrowding in barracks, wartime propaganda interfering with public health warnings, and migration of so many soldiers around the world helped the outbreak become a pandemic.[11]
Ultimately, World War I created a decisive break with the old world order that had emerged after the Napoleonic Wars, which was modified by the mid-19th century's nationalistic revolutions. The results of World War I would be important factors in the development of World War II approximately 20 years later.
Interwar period
The Interwar period was the period between the end of World War I in 1918 and the beginning of World War II in 1939. It included the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and the rise of communism in Russia and fascism in Italy and Germany.
World War II
World War II was a globalmilitary conflict that took place in 1939–1945. It was the largest and deadliest war in history, culminating in the Holocaust and ending with the dropping of the atom bomb.
Although Japan had invaded China in 1937, the conventional view is that the World War II began on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Within two days the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany, even though the fighting was confined to Poland. Pursuant to a then-secret provision of its non-aggression Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union joined Germany on September 17, 1939 to conquer Poland and divide Eastern Europe. The Allies were initially made up of Poland, the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, as well as British Commonwealth countries which were controlled directly by the UK, such as the Indian Empire. All of these countries declared war on Germany in September 1939.
Following the lull in fighting, known as the "Phoney War", Germany invaded western Europe in May 1940. Six weeks later, France, in the meantime, attacked by Italy as well, surrendered to Germany, which then tried unsuccessfully to conquer Britain. On September 27, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed a mutual defense agreement, the Tripartite Pact, and were known as the Axis Powers. Nine months later, on June 22, 1941, Germany launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union, which prompt it to join the Allies. Germany was now engaged in fighting a war on two fronts.
On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, bringing it too into the war on the side of the Allies. China also joined the Allies, as did most of the rest of the world. China was in turmoil at the time, and attacked Japanese armies through guerilla-type warfare. By the beginning of 1942, the alignment of the major combatants were as follows: the British Commonwealth, the Soviet Union and the United States were fighting Germany and Italy; China, the British Commonwealth, and the United States were fighting Japan. The United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union and China were referred as a "trusteeship of the powerful" during the World War II[12] and were recognized as the Allied "Big Four" in Declaration by United Nations[13] These four countries were considered as the "Four Policemen" or "Four Sheriffs" of the Allies power and primary victors of World War II.[14] Battles raged across all of Europe, in the North Atlantic Ocean, across North Africa, throughout Southeast Asia, throughout China, across the Pacific Ocean and in the air over Japan. Italy surrendered in September 1943 and was split into a northern Germany-occupied puppet state and an Allies-friendly state in the South; Germany surrendered in May 1945. Following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered, marking the end of the war on September 2, 1945.
It is possible that around 62 million people died in the war; estimates vary greatly. About 60% of all casualties were civilians, who died as a result of disease, starvation, genocide (in particular, the Holocaust), and aerial bombing. The former Soviet Union and China suffered the most casualties. Estimates place deaths in the Soviet Union at around 23 million, while China suffered about 10 million. No country lost a greater portion of its population than Poland: approximately 5.6 million, or 16%, of its pre-war population of 34.8 million died.
The Holocaust (which roughly means "burnt whole") was the deliberate and systematic murder of millions of Jews and other "unwanted" during World War II by the Nazi regime in Germany. Several differing views exist regarding whether it was intended to occur from the war's beginning, or if the plans for it came about later. Regardless, persecution of Jews extended well before the war even started, such as in the Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). The Nazis used propaganda to great effect to stir up anti-Semitic feelings within ordinary Germans.
The Cold War between the "West" (the United States, Western Europe, and Japan) and the "East" (the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China) dominated politics from the end of World War II in 1945 until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, at which point the Cold War ended and the post–Cold War era began (which includes most of the 1990s, the last decade of the 20th century).
At the end of the twentieth century, the world was at a major crossroads. Throughout the century, more technological advances had been made than in all of preceding history. Computers, the Internet, and other technology radically altered daily lives. However, several problems faced the world during the Cold War period and the 1990s that followed.
First of all, the gap between rich and poor nations continued to widen. Some said that this problem could not be fixed, that there were a set amount of wealth and it could only be shared by so many. Others said that the powerful nations with large economies were not doing enough to help improve the rapidly evolving economies of the Third World. However, developing countries faced many challenges, including the scale of the task to be surmounted, rapidly growing populations, and the need to protect the environment, and the cost that goes along with it.
Secondly, disease threatened to destabilize many regions of the world. Viruses such as West Nile and Avian influenza continued to spread quickly and easily. In poor nations, malaria and other diseases affected the majority of the population. Millions were infected with HIV, the virus which causes AIDS, which was becoming an epidemic in southern Africa and around the world.
Increased globalization, specifically Americanization, was also occurring. While not necessarily a threat, it was causing anti-Western and anti-American feelings in parts of the world, especially the Middle East. English was quickly becoming the global language, with people who did not speak it becoming increasingly disadvantaged.
Terrorism, dictatorship, and the spread of nuclear weapons were also issues requiring immediate attention. Dictators such as Kim Jong-il in North Korea continued to lead their nations toward the development of nuclear weapons. The fear existed that not only are terrorists already attempting to get nuclear weapons, but that they have already obtained them.
21st century
2000s
The 2000s decade refers to the years from 2000 to 2009 inclusively. The 2000s were marked generally with an escalation of the social issues of the 1990s, which included the rise of terrorism, stress, the rapid, exponential expansion of economic globalization on an unprecedented scale,[citation needed] the rapid expansion of communications and telecommunications with mobile phones and the Internet and international pop culture.
In North America and the Middle East, most major political developments in the 2000s revolved around the War on Terrorism and the Iraq War. Elsewhere, the major theme was the rapid development of Asia's economic and political potential, with China, experiencing immense economic growth, moving toward the status of a regional power and billion-consumer market. India, along with many other developing countries, were also growing rapidly, and began integrating themselves into the world economy.
A trend connecting economic and political events in North America, Asia, and the Middle East was the rapidly increasing demand for fossil fuels, which, along with fewer new petroleum finds, greater extraction costs (see peak oil), and political turmoil, saw the price of gas and oil soar ~500% between 2000 and 2005. In some places, especially in Europe, gas could be $5 a gallon, depending on the currency.
Google, YouTube, Ask.com, and Wikipedia emerged as popular websites, becoming the 2nd, 3rd, 7th and 9th most popular websites by the end of the decade respectively. Amazon overtook eBay as the most-visited e-commerce site in 2008. AOL significantly declined in popularity throughout the decade, falling from being the most popular website to no longer being within the top 10. Excite and Lycos fell outside the top 10, and MSN fell from the second to sixth most popular site, though it quadrupled its monthly visits (going from 325 to 1.2 billion monthly visits). Yahoo maintained relatively stable popularity, remaining the most popular website for most of the decade.[18]
Telecommunications in the early 21st century are much more advanced and universal than they were in the late 20th century. Only a few percent of the world's population were Internet users and cellular phone owners in the late 1990s; as of 2023, 64.4% of the world's population is online, and as of 2019, an estimated 67% own a cell phone.[20] In the 2010s, artificial intelligence, mainly in the form of deep learning and machine learning, became more prevalent and is prominently used in Gmail and Google's search engine, in banking, with the military and other areas. In 2020, 9% of the world's population still lacked access to electricity.[21]
The violence in Iraq, even after democratic elections in January 2005, caused much political stir in countries occupying the country (US, Britain, Australia, etc.). Political debates in these countries in 2006-07 were highly influenced by the unstable situation in the Near East, especially Iraq and the discussion over Iran's nuclear weapons program. Less influential, but omnipresent, was the debate on Turkey's participation in the European Union.
New virus strains, such as SARS and swine flu, emerged and spread during the 2000s.
Some territories and states have gained independence during the 21st century. These are Timor-Leste, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo, Crimea, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Donetsk People's Republic, Kherson Oblast, Luhansk People's Republic, and Zaporizhzhia Oblast. However, some have only been recognized by some UN member states.[further explanation needed]
2010s
The 2010s featured several major events in the Middle East which had effects elsewhere in the world. These events included the Arab Spring, the Syrian civil war, and the expansion of the extremist terrorist group ISIL. Beginning in 2015, Europe was affected by a migrant crisis. Several terrorist attacks occurred in Europe during the 2010s, including the November 2015 Paris attacks.
Information technology progressed, with smartphones becoming widespread. Internet coverage grew from 29% to 54% of the world population, and also saw advancements in wireless networking devices, mobile telephony, and cloud computing. Advancements in data processing and the rollout of 4G broadband allowed data, metadata, and information to be collected and dispersed among domains at paces never before seen while online resources such as social media facilitated phenomena such as the Me Too movement, the rise of slacktivism, and online cancel culture. WikiLeaks gained international attention for publishing classified information on topics related to Guantánamo Bay, Syria, the Afghan and Iraq wars, and United States diplomacy. Edward Snowden blew the whistle on global surveillance, raising awareness on the role governments and private entities play in global surveillance and information privacy. Baidu (4th), Twitter (6th), and Instagram (8th) emerged to become among the top 10 most visited websites, while Wikipedia went from the 9th to the 5th most popular website, almost sextupling its monthly visits. Yahoo significantly declined in popularity, descending from being the 1st to the 9th most popular site, with monthly visits declining by two-thirds. Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Yandex maintained relatively consistent popularity and remained within the top 10 throughout the 2010s.
In 2020, an outbreak of the COVID-19 disease, first documented in late 2019 in Wuhan, China, spread to other countries becoming a global pandemic, which caused a major socio-economic disruption all over the world. Many countries ordered mandatory lockdowns on movement and closures of non-essential businesses.[27] The threat of the disease caused the COVID-19 recession, although the distribution of vaccines has since eased the economic impact in many countries.
More generally, COVID-19 has been held up as an example of a global catastrophic risk unique to the modern era's ease of travel. New diseases can spread far faster and further in the contemporary era than any previous era of human history; pandemic prevention is one resulting field to ensure that if this happens with a sufficiently deadly virus, humanity can take measures to stop its spread.
On 15 November 2022, the world population grew to over 8 billion people, and in 2023, India overtook China as the most populous country in the world.[29][30]