Early Modern Europe, 1450–1789

The title of this book, and perhaps also of the course for which you are reading it, is Early Modern Europe. The dates in the title inform you about the chronological span covered (1450–1789), but they do not explain the designation “early modern.” That term was developed by historians seeking to refine an intellectual model first devised during this very period, when scholars divided European history into three parts: ancient (to the end of the Roman Empire in the west in the fifth century), medieval (from the fifth century to the fifteenth), and modern (from the fifteenth century to their own time). In this model, the break between the Middle Ages and the modern era was marked by the first voyage of Columbus (1492) and the beginning of the Protestant Reformation (1517), though some scholars, especially those who focused on Italy, set the break somewhat earlier with the Italian Renaissance. This three-part periodization became extremely influential, and as the modern era grew longer and longer, historians began to divide it into “early modern” – from the Renaissance or Columbus to the French Revolution in 1789 – and what we might call “truly modern” – from the French Revolution to whenever they happened to be writing.