The Early Modern Period

The early modern period runs conventionally from the fall of Constantinople in 1453, or sometimes from Columbus's first Atlantic crossing in 1492, to the French Revolution in 1789, a roughly three century span in which Europe's Atlantic states built overseas empires, the printing press transformed the spread of ideas, the Protestant Reformation permanently split western Christianity, and the Scientific Revolution reshaped how educated Europeans understood the natural world. Overseas, European contact with the Americas, sustained maritime trade routes to Asia, and the growth of the Atlantic slave trade connected the world's regions more directly, and more violently, than ever before, while in Europe itself the period saw the rise of centralized, increasingly bureaucratic monarchies and, by its end, the first stirrings of Enlightenment political thought that would challenge them. Beyond Europe, this was also the era of the Ottoman Empire's greatest reach into southeastern Europe, the Mughal Empire in India, and Ming and Qing China, all major powers in their own right whose histories only partially intersected with European expansion during this period.