Modern Times (history)

The term Modern Times is recognized by historians as being the period of time
immediately following what is somewhat confusingly known as the Early Modern Times.

 The Early Modern Times lasted from the end of the 15th century to the end of the
18th century.
 The actual Modern Times began in the the end of the 18th century, going up to the
contemporary present.

Other 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

within the Late Middle Ages and continuing into the 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.

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 Earth 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.