Modern era (history)

The broad historical period following the Middle Ages, commonly dated from around 1500 to the present. It encompasses the rise of global connections, modern states, industrial societies, and contemporary political systems.

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Atlantic slave trade: The forced transportation of millions of Africans across the Atlantic for enslavement in the Americas. It linked European empires, African societies, and American plantation economies through mass coercion.
Renaissance: A European cultural movement beginning in the fourteenth century that renewed interest in classical learning and art. Its humanism and artistic innovations helped shape later European intellectual life.
Martin Luther: A German theologian whose challenge to Catholic practice helped initiate the Protestant Reformation. His conflict with the Church exemplifies the religious upheavals that transformed early modern Europe.
Middle Ages: The European historical period between the end of classical antiquity and the emergence of early modern societies. The modern era is conventionally defined as the period following this earlier age.
Industrial Revolution: The transition to mechanized production that began in Britain in the eighteenth century and spread worldwide. Industrialization transformed production, urban life, and the balance of global power.
Age of Discovery: The period of European oceanic exploration and expansion from the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. Overseas exploration expanded European power and connected continents through conquest and trade.
Isaac Newton: An English mathematician and physicist whose laws of motion and universal gravitation shaped classical physics. His synthesis became a model of systematic scientific explanation.
Postmodernity: A debated cultural and historical condition associated with skepticism toward modernity's universal claims and narratives. It names a proposed condition beyond modernity, rather than a settled new historical period.
Capitalism: An economic system organized around private ownership, markets, wage labor, and investment for profit. Expanding markets and capital investment helped drive modern economic change.
Reformation: A sixteenth-century movement that divided Western Christianity and established Protestant churches. Religious fragmentation weakened older forms of European unity and authority.