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The modern era or the modern period, also known as modern historyormodern times, is the period of human history that follows the Middle Ages from about 1500 AD and continues into the present. It is a form of periodization that is applied primarily to European and Western history. From about the 1990s, it has been more common to referred to an early modern period from about 1500 to 1800 with "modern period" often reserved for events from about 1800 until today. The time from the end of World War II (1945) can also be described as being part of contemporary history.
The modern period saw wide-ranging intellectual, political and economic change, with European influence spreading around the Earth. It began with the Age of Discovery (including European colonialism and the Atlantic slave trade) and the Protestant Reformation and Counter-Reformation, proceeding with absolutism and the Age of Enlightenment. The early modern period ended with Age of Revolutions and the French Revolution, later spreading to other countries, partly by the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The modern period involved the spread of the Industrial Revolution across the world, the transition to nationalism towards the rules-based international order, continuing to the present 21st century.
The modern period has been a period of significant development in the fields of science, politics, warfare, and technology. It has also been an Age of Discovery and globalization. During this time, the European powers and later their colonies, began a political, economic, and cultural colonization of the rest of the world. (Full article...)
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Muammar Gaddafi became the de facto leader of Libya on 1 September 1969 after leading a group of young Libyan Army officers against King Idris I in a bloodless coup d'état. After the king had fled the country, the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) headed by Gaddafi abolished the monarchy and the old constitution and established the Libyan Arab Republic, with the motto "freedom, socialism and unity". The name of Libya was changed several times during Gaddafi's tenure as leader. From 1969 to 1977, the name was the Libyan Arab Republic. In 1977, the name was changed to Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. Jamahiriya was a term coined by Gaddafi, usually translated as "state of the masses". The country was renamed again in 1986 as the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, after the United States bombing that year.
After coming to power, the RCC government initiated a process of directing funds toward providing education, health care and housing for all. Public education in the country became free and primary education compulsory for both sexes. Medical care became available to the public at no cost, but providing housing for all was a task the RCC government was unable to complete. Under Gaddafi, per capita income in the country rose to more than US$11,000 in nominal terms, and to over US$30,000 in PPP terms, the 5th highest in Africa. The increase in prosperity was accompanied by a controversial foreign policy, and increased domestic political repression.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Gaddafi, in alliance with the Eastern Bloc and Fidel Castro's Cuba, openly supported rebel movements like Nelson Mandela's African National Congress, Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, the Provisional Irish Republican Army and the Polisario Front. Gaddafi's government was either known to be or suspected of participating in or aiding attacks by these and other proxy forces. Additionally, Gaddafi undertook several invasions of neighboring states in Africa, notably Chad in the 1970s and 1980s. All of his actions led to a deterioration of Libya's foreign relations with several countries, mostly Western states, and culminated in the 1986 United States bombing of Libya. Gaddafi defended his government's actions by citing the need to support anti-imperialist and anti-colonial movements around the world. Notably, Gaddafi supported anti-Zionist, pan-Arab, pan-Africanist, Arab and black civil rights movements. Gaddafi's behavior, often erratic, led some outsiders to conclude that he was not mentally sound, a claim disputed by the Libyan authorities and other observers close to Gaddafi. Despite receiving extensive aid and technical assistance from the Soviet Union and its allies, Gaddafi retained close ties to pro-American governments in Western Europe, largely by courting Western oil companies with promises of access to the lucrative Libyan energy sector. After the 9/11 attacks, strained relations between Libya and NATO countries were mostly normalised, and sanctions against the country relaxed, in exchange for nuclear disarmament. (Full article...)
Contemporary archaeology is a field of archaeological research that focuses on the most recent (20th and 21st century) past, and also increasingly explores the application of archaeological thinking to the contemporary world. It has also been referred to as the archaeology of the 'contemporary past'. The use of this term in the United Kingdom is particularly associated with the Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory (CHAT) conference group. The field forms part of historical archaeology, or the archaeology of the modern period. Unlike ethnoarchaeology, contemporary archaeology studies the recent and contemporary past in its own right, rather than to develop models that can inform the study of the more distant past. (Full article...)
In the history of France, the period from 1789 to 1914, dubbed the "long 19th century" by the historian Eric Hobsbawm, extends from the French Revolution's aftermath to the brink of World War I.
Throughout this period, France underwent significant transformations that reshaped its geography, demographics, language, and economic landscape, marking a period of profound change and development. The French Revolution and Napoleonic eras fundamentally altered French society, promoting centralization, administrative uniformity across departments, and a standardized legal code. Education also centralized, emphasizing technical training and meritocracy, despite growing conservatism among the aristocracy and the church. Wealth concentration saw the richest 10 percent owning most of the nation's wealth. The 19th century saw France expanding to nearly its modern territorial limits through annexations and overseas imperialism, notably in Algeria, Indochina, and Africa. Despite territorial gains, France faced challenges, including a slow population growth, compared to its European neighbors, and a late industrialization that saw a shift from rural to urban living and the rise of an industrial workforce. The loss of Alsace and Lorraine to Germany in the Franco-Prussian War further fueled nationalistic sentiments and set the stage for future conflicts.
The period was also marked by significant linguistic and educational reforms, which sought to unify the country through language and secular education, contributing to a stronger national identity. Economically, France struggled to match the industrial growth rates of other advanced nations, maintaining a more traditional economy longer than its counterparts. Politically, the century was characterized by the end of the ancien régime, the rise and fall of the First and Second Empires, the tumultuous establishment of the Third Republic, and the radical experiment of the Paris Commune, reflecting the ongoing struggle between revolutionary ideals and conservative restoration. The Third Republic embarked on modernizing France, with educational reforms and attempts to create a unified national identity. Foreign policy focused on isolation of Germany and forming alliances, leading to the Triple Entente. Domestically, issues like the Dreyfus affair highlighted the nation's divisions, while laws aimed at reducing the Catholic Church's influence sparked further controversy. (Full article...)
The Kingdom of Spain (Spanish: Reino de España) entered a new era with the death of Charles II, the last Spanish Habsburg monarch, who died childless in 1700. The War of the Spanish Succession was fought between proponents of a Bourbon prince, Philip of Anjou, and the Austrian Habsburg claimant, Archduke Charles. After the wars were ended with the Peace of Utrecht, Philip V's rule began in 1715, although he had to renounce his place in the succession of the French throne.
Spain entered a period of reform and renewal, as well as continued decline. Ideas of the Age of Enlightenment entered Spain and Spanish America during the eighteenth century. The invasion of the Iberian PeninsulabyNapoleon Bonaparte in the Peninsular War upended the stability of the Spanish state and empire and although France was defeated, the turmoil in Spain led to the Spanish American wars of independence.
The 18th century in Spanish historiography is often referred to as Bourbon Spain, but the Spanish Bourbons continued to reign from 1814 to 1868 (following the restorationofFerdinand VII), from 1874 to 1931, and since 1975. (Full article...)
Amodern language is any human language that is currently in use as a native language. The term is used in language education to distinguish between languages which are used for day-to-day communication (such as French and German) and dead classical languages such as Latin and Classical Chinese, which are studied for their cultural and linguistic value. SIL Ethnologue defines a living language as "one that has at least one speaker for whom it is their first language" (see also Language § Linguistic diversity). (Full article...)
Ukraine emerged as the concept of a nation, and Ukrainians as a nationality, with the Ukrainian National Revival which began in the late 18th and early 19th century. The first wave of national revival is traditionally connected with the publication of the first part of "Eneyida" by Ivan Kotlyarevsky (1798). In 1846, in Moscow the "Istoriya Rusov ili Maloi Rossii" (History of Ruthenians or Little Russia) was published. During the Spring of Nations, in 1848 in Lemberg (Lviv) the Supreme Ruthenian Council was created which declared that Galician Ruthenians were part of the bigger Ukrainian nation. The council adopted the yellow and blue flag, the current Ukrainian flag.
Ukraine first declared its independence with the invasion of Bolsheviks in late 1917. Following the conclusion of World War I and with the Peace of Riga, Ukraine was partitioned once again between Poland and the Bolshevik Russia. The Bolshevik-occupied portion of the territory became the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, with some boundary adjustments.
In 1922, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, together with the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, became the founding members of the Soviet Union. The Soviet famine of 1932–33orHolodomor killed an estimated 6 to 8 million people in the Soviet Union, the majority of them in Ukraine. (Full article...)
The Journal of Modern History is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering European intellectual, political, and cultural history, published by the University of Chicago Press. Established in 1929, the journal covers events from approximately 1500 to the present, with a geographical scope extending from the United Kingdom through the European continent, including Russia and the Balkans. (Full article...)
The French Fourth Republic (French: Quatrième république française) was the republican governmentofFrance from 27 October 1946 to 4 October 1958, governed by the fourth republican constitution of 13 October 1946. Essentially a reestablishment and continuation of the Third Republic which governed from 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War to 1940 during World War II, it suffered many of the same problems which led to its end.
Despite political dysfunction, the Fourth Republic saw an era of great economic growth in France and the rebuilding of the nation's social institutions and industry after World War II, with assistance from the United States through the Marshall Plan. It also saw the beginning of the rapprochement with France's longtime enemy Germany, which led to Franco-German co-operation and eventually to the European Union.
The new constitution made some attempts to strengthen the executive branch of government to prevent the unstable situation before the war, but instability remained and the Fourth Republic saw frequent changes of government – there were 21 administrations in its 12-year history. Moreover, the government proved unable to make effective decisions regarding decolonization of the numerous remaining French colonies. After a series of crises culminating in the Algerian crisis of 1958, the Fourth Republic collapsed. Wartime leader Charles de Gaulle returned from retirement to preside over a transitional administration empowered to design a new French constitution. The Fourth Republic was dissolved on 5 October 1958 following a public referendum which established the current Fifth Republic with a strengthened presidency. (Full article...)
The modern era or the modern period, also known as modern historyormodern times, is the period of human history that follows the Middle Ages from about 1500 AD and continues into the present. It is a form of periodization that is applied primarily to European and Western history. From about the 1990s, it has been more common to referred to an early modern period from about 1500 to 1800 with "modern period" often reserved for events from about 1800 until today. The time from the end of World War II (1945) can also be described as being part of contemporary history.
The modern period saw wide-ranging intellectual, political and economic change, with European influence spreading around the Earth. It began with the Age of Discovery (including European colonialism and the Atlantic slave trade) and the Protestant Reformation and Counter-Reformation, proceeding with absolutism and the Age of Enlightenment. The early modern period ended with Age of Revolutions and the French Revolution, later spreading to other countries, partly by the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The modern period involved the spread of the Industrial Revolution across the world, the transition to nationalism towards the rules-based international order, continuing to the present 21st century.
The modern period has been a period of significant development in the fields of science, politics, warfare, and technology. It has also been an Age of Discovery and globalization. During this time, the European powers and later their colonies, began a political, economic, and cultural colonization of the rest of the world. (Full article...)
Spain in the 19th century was a country in turmoil. Occupied by Napoleon from 1808 to 1814, a massively destructive "liberation war" ensued. Following the Spanish Constitution of 1812, Spain was divided between the 1812 constitution's liberal principles and the absolutism personified by the rule of Ferdinand VII, who repealed the 1812 Constitution for the first time in 1814, only to be forced to swear over the constitution again in 1820 after a liberal pronunciamiento, giving way to the brief Trienio Liberal (1820–1823).
Economic transformations throughout the century included the privatisation of communal municipal lands—not interrupted but actually intensified and legitimised during the Fernandine absolutist restorations —as well as the confiscation of Church properties. The early century saw the loss of the bulk of the Spanish colonies in the New World in the 1810s and 1820s, except for Cuba and Puerto Rico.
The regency of Maria Christina and the reign of Isabella II brought reforms repelling the extremes of the absolutist Ominous Decade (1823–1833). Civil wars broke out in the country—the so-called Carlist Wars—pitting the government forces against the reactionary Carlists, a legitimist movement in favour of the ancien régime. Disaffection with Isabella's government from many quarters led to repeated military intervention in political affairs and to several revolutionary attempts against the government, including the 1854 revolution. The 1868 Glorious revolution deposed Isabella and installed a provisional government, leading up to the election of a constituent assembly under universal manhood suffrage that elaborated the 1869 constitution. The brief spell of Amadeo of Savoy as constitutional monarch was followed after his abdication by the proclamation of the First Spanish Republic, which was replaced after a 1874 coup by the reign of Alfonso XII, bringing the Bourbon dynasty back to power. (Full article...)
The 16th century is regarded by historians as the century which saw the rise of Western civilization.
The Renaissance in Italy and Europe saw the emergence of important artists, authors and scientists, and led to the foundation of important subjects which include accounting and political science. Copernicus proposed the heliocentric universe, which was met with strong resistance, and Tycho Brahe refuted the theory of celestial spheres through observational measurement of the 1572 appearance of a Milky Way supernova. These events directly challenged the long-held notion of an immutable universe supported by Ptolemy and Aristotle, and led to major revolutions in astronomy and science. Galileo Galilei became a champion of the new sciences, invented the first thermometer and made substantial contributions in the fields of physics and astronomy, becoming a major figure in the Scientific Revolution in Europe. (Full article...)
Libya (Italian: Libia; Arabic: ليبيا الايطالية, romanized: Lībyā al-Īṭālīya) was a colony of Fascist Italy located in North Africa, in what is now modern Libya, between 1934 and 1943. It was formed from the unification of the colonies of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, which had been Italian possessions since 1911.
From 1911 until the establishment of a unified colony in 1934, the territory of the two colonies was sometimes referred to as "Italian Libya" or Italian North Africa (Africa Settentrionale Italiana, or ASI). Both names were also used after the unification, with Italian Libya becoming the official name of the newly combined colony. It had a population of around 150,000 Italians.
The Italian colonies of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were taken by Italy from the Ottoman Empire during the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–1912, and run by Italian governors. In 1923, indigenous rebels associated with the Senussi Order organized the Libyan resistance movement against Italian settlement in Libya, mainly in Cyrenaica. The rebellion was put down by Italian forces in 1932, after the pacification campaign, which resulted in the deaths of a quarter of Cyrenaica's population. In 1934, the colonies were unified by governor Italo Balbo, with Tripoli as the capital. (Full article...)
Modern reenactmentishistorical reenactment of events of the modern period, most commonly events from the 18th century to the present.
The period starts with events such as the Seven Years' War, the Napoleonic Wars, and the peak of the Royal Navy's power.
The Victorian era is included, although not as well covered in terms of events as the major battles before and after it, with the notable exception of the American Civil War, which has a large and active community of reenactors. (Full article...)
The Spanish Republic (Spanish: República Española), commonly known as the Second Spanish Republic (Spanish: Segunda República Española), was the form of democratic government in Spain from 1931 to 1939. The Republic was proclaimed on 14 April 1931 after the deposition of King Alfonso XIII. It was dissolved on 1 April 1939 after surrendering in the Spanish Civil War to the Nationalists led by General Francisco Franco.
After the proclamation of the Republic, a provisional government was established until December 1931, at which time the 1931 Constitution was approved. During this time and the subsequent two years of constitutional government, known as the Reformist Biennium, Manuel Azaña's executive initiated numerous reforms to what in their view would modernize the country. In 1932 religious orders were forbidden control of schools, while the government began a large-scale school-building project. A moderate agrarian reform was carried out. Home rule was granted to Catalonia, with a local parliament and a president of its own.
Soon, Azaña lost parliamentary support and President Alcalá-Zamora forced his resignation in September 1933. The subsequent 1933 election was won by the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (CEDA). However the President declined to invite its leader, Gil Robles, to form a government, fearing CEDA's monarchist sympathies. Instead, he invited the Radical Republican Party's Alejandro Lerroux to do so. CEDA was denied cabinet positions for nearly a year. In October 1934, CEDA was finally successful in forcing the acceptance of three ministries. The Socialists triggered an insurrection that they had been preparing for nine months. A general strike was called by the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) and the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) in the name of the Alianza Obrera. The rebellion developed into a bloody revolutionary uprising, aiming to overthrow the republican government. Armed revolutionaries managed to take the whole province of Asturias, killing policemen, clerics, and businessmen and destroying religious buildings and part of the University of Oviedo. In the occupied areas, the rebels officially declared a proletarian revolution and abolished regular money. The rebellion was crushed by the Spanish Navy and the Spanish Republican Army, the latter using mainly Moorish colonial troops from Spanish Morocco. (Full article...)
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