Europe
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In addition to the changes wrought by incipient capitalism and colonialism, early modern Europeans also experienced an increase in the power of the state.[1] Absolute monarchs in France, Russia, the Habsburg lands, and Prussia produced powerful centralized states, with strong armies and efficient bureaucracies, all under the control of the king.[2] In Russia, Ivan the Terrible was crowned in 1547 as the first tsar of Russia, and by annexing the Turkic khanates in the east, transformed Russia into a regional power, eventually replacing the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a major power in Eastern Europe.[3] The countries of Western Europe, while expanding prodigiously through technological advances and colonial conquest, competed with each other economically and militarily in a state of almost constant war.[4] Wars of particular note included the Thirty Years' War, the War of the Spanish Succession, the Seven Years' War, and the French Revolutionary Wars.[5] Napoleon Bonaparte became First Consul of France in 1799, concluding the French Revolution. Bonaparte's rise to power led to the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century.[6]
These political developments were accompanied by a period of intense intellectual ferment. The Renaissance – the "rebirth" of classical culture, beginning in Italy in the 14th century and extending into the 16th[a] – comprised the rediscovery of the classical world's cultural, scientific, and technological achievements, and the economic and social rise of Europe.[8] After the Renaissance came the Reformation, an anti-clerical theological and social movement that resulted in the creation of Protestant Christianity.[9] The Renaissance also engendered a culture of inquisitiveness which ultimately led to humanism[10] and the Scientific Revolution, an effort to understand the natural world through direct observation and experiment.[11] The success of the new scientific techniques inspired attempts to apply them to political and social affairs, known as the Enlightenment.[12] Johannes Gutenberg's invention of movable type printing in 1453[b] helped spread the ideas of the new intellectual movements.[14]
- ^ Bulliet et al. 2015b, p. 452
- ^ Bulliet et al. 2015b, pp. 455, 535, 591, 670
- ^
- ^ Bulliet et al. 2015b, p. 455. "As a result, the major European nations were nearly always at war somewhere."
- ^ Bentley, Subrahmanyam & Wiesner-Hanks 2015b, pp. 41, 44, 47, 343
- ^ McNeill & Pomeranz 2015a, p. 529. "The French Revolution ended in the rule of Napoleon in 1799, and his attempts to conquer Europe began in 1803."
- ^ Carter & Butt 2005, p. 4
- ^ Bulliet et al. 2015a, pp. 363, 368
- ^ Bentley, Subrahmanyam & Wiesner-Hanks 2015b, pp. 338–339, 345
- ^ Tignor et al. 2014, pp. 426–427
- ^
- Roberts & Westad 2013, pp. 683–685
- Bulliet et al. 2015b, p. 436
- ^ Bulliet et al. 2015b, p. 444
- ^ Headrick 2009, p. 85
- ^
- Headrick 2009, p. 85
- Bulliet et al. 2015b, p. 436
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