Early modern

How it is used

Very common in course titles and book series: early modern Europe, early modern history, the early modern Ottoman Empire. The noun phrase is the early modern period. Historians increasingly apply it beyond Europe, to the Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal and Chinese states.

Example sentences

1. The course covers early modern Europe from the Reformation to the French Revolution.

2. Coffeehouses became an important part of early modern Istanbul in the sixteenth century.

Common collocations

• the early modern period
• early modern Europe
• early modern history
• early modern empires

Related terms

• RenaissanceThe cultural movement in Europe from about the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, starting in Italy, marked by renewed interest in ancient Greek and Roman learning and art.
• ReformationThe sixteenth-century religious movement in Western Europe that challenged the authority and practices of the Catholic Church and led to the founding of Protestant churches.
• Middle AgesThe period of European history between the end of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century and roughly the late fifteenth century.
• periodizationThe dividing of the past into named periods, such as antiquity and the Middle Ages, and the debate about where the boundaries between them should fall.

More terms: Periods and Eras

• period
• era
• century
• BC
• AD
• civilization
• ancient
• chronology
• Enlightenment
• prehistory
• Bronze Age
• Neolithic