Modern World History

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Early modern Europe shifted from empire-building toward nation-states defined by ethnicity and religion, while simultaneously expanding capitalism, challenging religious authority through the Reformation and Enlightenment, and initiating the African slave trade that would reshape the Atlantic world.

📌 Key points (3–5)

Europe's political structure: Unlike Asian empires that unified diverse peoples, Europe fragmented into nations defined by ethnicity, language, and religion—empires like Napoleon's or Victoria's were exceptions.
Major empires setting the scene: Ottoman (controlling Mediterranean trade routes), Safavid (Shiite Persia), Mughal (India), and Russian empires shaped the early modern period and created incentives for Europeans to seek alternative trade routes.
Religious and intellectual upheaval: The Protestant Reformation (Luther challenging papal authority) and the Enlightenment (Newton's physics, Hume's skepticism) fundamentally altered European thought, moving from church-centered worldviews toward natural science and reason.
Common confusion—reform vs. revolution: Luther initially sought to reform the Catholic Church, not split from it; the printing press and political motives (nobles avoiding papal tribute) accelerated what became a full break.
Economic foundations: The African slave trade, driven by sugar cultivation and Portuguese exploration, created a racialized system of forced labor far harsher than earlier forms of slavery, with millions dying in the Middle Passage.

🏛️ Political structures: Nations vs. Empires

🗺️ Europe's fragmentation

Early modern Europe developed a "tendency toward nations rather than empires"—a pattern we take for granted today.
Nations were identified by ethnicity, language, customs, and religion; they often fought neighbors with different identities.
Contrast: Asian and Near Eastern empires (China, Mughal, Ottoman, Safavid, Russian) typically included "wide varieties of cultures and ethnicities within their borders."
Example: Napoleon, Queen Victoria, and Hitler tried to build European empires, but these were exceptions; Victoria's empire was outside Europe.

🕌 The Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire: A Muslim dynasty that rose on the borders of the Byzantine Empire in the 1300s and became a world power after Sultan Mehmed II captured Constantinople in 1453.

Strategic importance of Constantinople: Controlled the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits connecting the Mediterranean and Black Sea—"the gateway between Europe and Asia."
Mehmed II renamed the city Istanbul; allowed Christians and Jews to remain under Ottoman authority; Christian refugees fled to Venice and Florence, helping ignite the Renaissance.
Expansion and trade control: Under Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566), Ottomans nearly captured Vienna (1529, 1683); controlled western Mediterranean shipping and Silk Road markets (Cairo, Baghdad).
Why it matters: "The high cost of doing business in the Ottoman-controlled Middle East created an incentive for European merchants to seek other ways of reaching Asia."

🛡️ Ottoman tolerance and the Janissaries

The empire was "quite tolerant of ethnic, language, and religious diversity"—local languages, religions, and self-government allowed as long as people paid taxes and remained loyal.
Tax in people: In poor regions, the Ottomans took young boys as tribute from the Balkans, converted them to Islam, and trained them as the Janissaries—an elite fighting force loyal directly to the Sultan.
Political danger: Because Janissaries reported personally to one man, they became politically powerful; new sultans assassinated all their brothers to prevent the Janissaries from naming another heir.
The Janissaries were effective from 1363 to 1826, when the sultan disbanded them in favor of a modern military; they mutinied and were wiped out by artillery.
Don't confuse: The Janissaries' personal loyalty was both their strength (elite effectiveness) and a systemic weakness (succession violence).

🌙 The Safavid Empire

Shiite Muslim dynasty (1501–1736) controlling the region from the Ottoman border through Iran into Afghanistan, Georgia, Armenia, and Pakistan.
Shah Abbas the Great moved the capital to Isfahan, continuing the Persian tradition of settling refugees (hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the early 1600s).
After the Armenian genocide (1915), Isfahan's Armenian quarter became "one of the oldest and largest Armenian centers in the world."

🕌 The Mughal Empire

Established 1526 by a Persian-speaking dynasty tracing authority to Genghis Khan's son Chagatai; formed in a region conquered by Tamerlane (who died 1405 en route to invade Ming China).
Religious fusion: Sikhism developed in the Punjab (15th century) by combining Hinduism and Islam; Sikhs opposed India's caste system and became legendary warriors.
Golden age under Akbar the Great (r. 1556–): Expanded territory but allowed subjects to keep their languages and religions; Hinduism (polytheistic, ancient, rarely divided by practice differences) remained dominant.
Shah Jahan (r. 1628–1658) remembered for architecture, including the Taj Mahal (tomb for his wife Mumtaz Mahal).
At its peak, the Mughal Empire ruled over 150 million people; lasted until 1857.

🐻 The Russian Empire

Grew out of resistance to Mongol rule and the fall of Constantinople.
Ivan III (Ivan the Great, r. 1462–1505): Refused tribute to the Golden Horde; after the last Greek Orthodox emperor died, decided Moscow would become "the new Rome"; tripled his state's size, rebuilt the Kremlin.
Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible, r. 1547–1584): First to declare himself Tsar (Russian for "Caesar") of all the Russias; annexed khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, and Siberia; recruited Cossacks to colonize Siberia.
Russia became the world's largest kingdom (Black Sea to Pacific) but much was "unoccupied and primitive."
Peter I (Peter the Great, r. 1672–1725): Visited Europe in disguise for 18 months to study shipbuilding and administration; used these techniques to modernize Russia and establish the Russian Empire.

⛪ Religious upheaval: Reformation and its consequences

📜 Context: The Black Death and church crisis

Europe's Dark Ages ended in the 15th century after the Black Death (1347–1353) killed two-thirds of Europe's population.
Harsh winters and rainy summers (starting ~1310) caused famine; feudal lords squeezed peasants; several million died before the plague arrived.
Depopulation threatened power: Surviving peasants became less patient with taxes and labor demands; peasant revolts in France and England (late 14th century) showed feudalism was ending.
The Catholic Church (Europe's largest landowner) was unable to exercise secular and spiritual power; pulled into regional power contests.

🇫🇷 The Papal Schism

1309: A French-born Pope moved to Avignon under French king's control; seven popes resided in France until 1378.
1378: Another French-born Pope moved back to Rome, but French rulers and cardinals were unwilling to give up power—two competing Papal Courts (Rome and Avignon) for sixty years.
The Avignon Popes are called "Anti-Popes," but the conflict was "primarily about political power rather than about theology or religious doctrine."

📖 The printing press and Renaissance

Printing press: A Chinese invention improved by Johannes Gutenberg, a German goldsmith who understood that moveable type was much more useful for an alphabet-based language than for a character-based system like Chinese.

Printing spread classical Greek and Roman texts carried by refugees from Constantinople, helping ignite the Renaissance (literally "rebirth").
Humanism: A new philosophy focused on learning not contained in Scripture or church-approved sources; skepticism toward religious authorities.
Some geniuses (Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo) did not directly challenge authorities; others (Machiavelli, Galileo) did.
The encounter with the Americas upset traditional understanding of the world's origin and history.

✝️ Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation

Martin Luther (1483–1546): An Augustinian monk who began the Protestant Reformation as a reaction against the wealthy and self-indulgent Catholic Church.

Luther received a Doctorate in Theology (1512) and joined the University of Wittenberg faculty.
1516: The Catholic Church began selling indulgences (tickets for "time off" in purgatory) to raise money for St. Peter's Basilica.
Luther objected on theological grounds and criticized the wealthy Pope for taxing the poor to build an unnecessary monument.
Luther's radical idea: The Catholic Church and Papacy were so corrupt that Christianity needed to be reestablished, not reformed.

📜 Luther's 95 Theses and aftermath

Luther's 95 Theses were translated from Latin to German; his criticism and new theology caught on.
Tried for heresy (Czech reformer Jan Hus had been burned at the stake in 1415); excommunicated in 1521; his books banned.
Luther was a "prolific writer" who published scores of works condemning the Roman church using the printing press.
Translated the Bible into German; wrote a hymnal so Germans could worship in their own language and understand what they were saying (Latin was the official church language until 1965).

👑 Political motivations for the Reformation

Many nobles, particularly in northern Germany and Scandinavia, embraced Luther's ideas for political reasons: they would no longer need to pay tribute or pledge submission to the Pope in Rome.
Don't confuse: Theological reform and political independence were intertwined—the Reformation was not purely about doctrine.

🔭 Galileo and the challenge of science

Galileo used a telescope to prove Copernicus's theories extending understanding of planetary motion beyond Ptolemy's second-century theories.
The Catholic Church (not the ancient Greeks) put Galileo under house arrest for the rest of his life and nearly burned him as a heretic.
Why the reaction?: Copernicus and Galileo were rejecting a human-centered world founded by God; the idea that new data should challenge centuries of tradition was as radical as heliocentrism itself.
European society sought "eternal and unchanging answers"; the idea that new information could reorganize understanding was not part of the early modern worldview.

🔥 Resistance and persecution

As challenges became more frequent, authorities resisted by force: the Inquisition and persecution of witches flourished.
Papal infallibility: The doctrine did not exist until the First Vatican Council (1868) when science had gained a substantial lead over faith—the Church never needed to declare infallibility until it was challenged.
The Papacy has only used that authority once (1950, concerning doctrines about Mary).

💡 The Enlightenment and natural science

🌍 Muslim contributions to European knowledge

During Europe's intellectual "Dark Age" after the fall of Rome, the embrace of Islam in North Africa, the Middle East, and beyond created stability that encouraged trade routes to China and an exchange of ideas and technology.

While medieval European monks copied illuminated Latin Bibles, Muslim scholars made original contributions:
- Al-Khwarizmi (780–850): Inventor of algebra
- Al-Kindi (801–873): Philosopher and musician
- Al-Zahrawi (936–1013): Father of surgery
- Ibn Al-Haytham (965–1040): Physicist and father of optics
- Al-Biruni (973–1050): Historian and scientist
- Ibn Sina (980–1037): Astronomer and physician
- Ibn Rushd (1126–1198): Philosopher and scientist
Arab mathematicians adopted the Indian number system, which included zero—western Europeans began changing from Roman numerals (no zero) to Arabic numerals in the 1200s.
"There would be no computers without this revolutionary change in mathematics…try dividing using Roman numerals."
Arab scholars "helped trigger the Renaissance which led to both the European Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution."

🌙 Muslim tolerance in Iberia

In most kingdoms and caliphates, Muslim sovereigns respected Jews and Christians as "people of the book."
Especially important in the Iberian Peninsula (present-day Portugal and Spain), dominated by Muslim rulers from 711 to 1492.
Introduction of ideas in astronomy, navigation, and mathematics in Iberia spread to other parts of Europe.
1492: Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World partly because of Arab naval and navigation technology.

🔬 Isaac Newton and the Enlightenment

European Enlightenment philosophers and scientists were dominated by Isaac Newton (1643–1727): co-invented calculus, produced the first unified theory of nature.
Principia Mathematica (1687) created a foundation for all physics and engineering that followed; theories basically undisputed until Einstein and quantum physics (early 20th century).
Other important thinkers: Émilie du Châtelet (French aristocrat who studied and translated Newton and Leibniz), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (other inventor of calculus; the version we use is based more on his notation).
These scholars called their field "natural science" and tried to find natural laws for society, politics, and the economy to parallel Newton's discoveries.
John Locke, Adam Smith, Voltaire: Formulated ideas about natural rights and society.
Immanuel Kant: Called it aufklärung (literally "clearing up")—"humanity's emergence from its self-imposed adolescence."

⏰ The watchmaker metaphor and religious crisis

One consequence of Newton's physics was a crisis in religion: the universe he described did not require a personal deity to be actively engaged in making things happen.

Newton's universe seemed like one of the new mechanical clocks—might require a watchmaker to design and build, but once made and wound, could be left to itself.
Many Enlightenment thinkers rejected the popular religious vision of an activist God who rewarded the righteous, punished sinners, or chose sides in history.
The Protestant idea of predestination suggested no free will; Newton and others challenged that notion.
Many began to doubt traditional stories of the deity's interference in history, including the Christian story of Jesus.

🤔 David Hume on miracles

Scottish philosopher David Hume wrote an essay on miracles (1748) that is still a required text for philosophy students.
Hume did not argue miracles could not happen, but that people who believed in miracles were "usually not talking about events they had witnessed themselves, but only retelling stories of miracles they had heard or read about."
The issue: Not miracles themselves, but testimony about miracles reported to have happened years, decades, or centuries ago.
Contrast: Laws of nature could be deduced right now because they continued to operate and their effects could be seen every day.
Hume left this essay out of the first edition of An Enquiry into Human Understanding to avoid antagonizing the faithful, but it found its way into print.

💰 Economic foundations: Capitalism and the slave trade

🏦 The development of capitalism

Capitalism: The idea that invested wealth can be an engine for economic, social, and technological development, most famously explained by Adam Smith.

An agricultural revolution (1400s) contributed to increased crop production and population growth; surplus population gathered in towns and cities to engage in artisanal activities.
Metropolises, once mainly centers of commerce, government, and church administration, began to produce goods for trade.
People specialized in particular trades, making products for customers beyond their own families and neighborhoods.
Example: Blacksmiths became increasingly specialized, focusing on products with broader markets (guns, carriage-springs) rather than just local needs (horseshoes, nails, hinges).

🏛️ Banks and financial networks

Banks in Europe (Italy, Low Countries, Baltic coast) formed financial networks that standardized prices across larger regions.
When transportation and communication are poor, there are many opportunities for arbitrage: buying cheap where products are abundant, selling for profit where they are scarce.
As networks improved, these opportunities decreased—or were pushed farther away.

🤝 Politics and finance intertwined

Capitalism did not develop in a vacuum; politics and finance were connected.
Although Adam Smith described the "Invisible Hand" of market forces (1776), merchants were heavily involved in government, influencing policies and regulations to favor their own goals.
Imperial expansion and colonial armies were indispensable for the spread of capitalism throughout the world.
Don't confuse: The stories we tell about capitalism focus on the "Invisible Hand" and stress freedom, despite close ties between business and government power.

🌍 The Reconquista and Portuguese exploration

Reconquista: A centuries-long effort (beginning 711, completed ~1492) by Portuguese and Spanish to push the Muslim Moors back to Africa.

Portuguese Christians "reconquered" more quickly because Portugal does not extend as far south; Spanish kings had to contend with fortified cities (Seville, Granada).
1415: Portugal captured Ceuta, a Moroccan fortress in North Africa, giving them control over the western Mediterranean and Atlantic.
After a brief war with Castile, Portugal turned to exploring and acquiring territory along the African coast (1430s–1440s) under Prince Henry the Navigator.
Portuguese mariners (Bartolomeu Dias, 1488; Vasco de Gama, 1497) began sailing to Asia around southern Africa.

⚓ Portuguese trade and the search for gold

Portuguese conquered coastal east African city-states, established colonies in Angola and Mozambique, took advantage of a slave-trading network.
Portuguese control of the African coast was one reason Lisbon showed little interest in Columbus's proposal to sail west to India; it is why the Spanish were eager to take Columbus up on his plan.
In the wake of the Black Death, peasants and artisans demanded better pay, leading to increased commercial activity (late 1300s).
Economic expansion limited by gold and silver coins (used in exchange since the sixth century BCE in Greece and Persia).
Portuguese merchants interested in spice and silk trade to Asia, but pleased to find trade in sub-Saharan Africa.
The story of Mansa Musa (Muslim ruler of Mali) and his enormous gold reserves were well known to Europeans after his pilgrimage to Mecca (1327).
Present-day Ghana (West Africa) was known as the "gold coast"; still second only to South Africa in gold production.

⛓️ The African slave trade: origins and differences

In most world societies in the 1400s, slavery was a traditional element; captives were usually acquired through war or as payment of debts, enslaved for a period of time or for life.

Traditional African slavery: Enslaved captives often gained positions in the societies that captured them; their children were generally born free.
African traders were willing to include human cargo in commerce with the Portuguese and other Europeans, who accepted them as enslaved laborers and domestic servants.
Earlier European slavery: Trade of enslaved people from eastern Europe had been important; Vikings sold captives from Britain to the Middle East; Frankish kings enslaved Slavic prisoners-of-war (as had the Romans).
Demand for enslaved labor was less in Europe than in the more economically-developed Muslim world.

🌑 Racialized slavery

Human cargo from Africa became "much more highly favored" than that of eastern Europe:
- Dark-skinned people were more exotic for service in royal courts.
- They could not escape by blending in with the local population.
"One can easily imagine how this would lead to ideas of superior and inferior races—within a few generations, slave-owning 'whites' would consider 'blacks' to be only suited for enslavement."

🍬 Sugar and the Atlantic slave trade

What made the African slave trade "so lucrative by the 1500s and into the beginning of the 1800s" was not demand for labor in Europe, but on sugar plantations on Atlantic islands, later in Brazil and the Caribbean.
The vast majority of enslaved Africans were used as forced labor in the "back-breaking cultivation and processing of sugar cane."
Sugar cane origins: First developed in Southeast Asia; Arab traders brought it to the Middle East; Europeans discovered sugar during the crusades.
Sugar was at first an exotic medicinal; once Portuguese and Spanish cultivated cane on the Madeiras and Canary Islands, a European addiction began—replacing honey as the region's main sweetener.

⚰️ The brutality of sugar cultivation

More than two-thirds of all enslaved Africans in the Western Hemisphere were involved in cultivating, harvesting, and processing sugar cane in Brazil and the Caribbean.
Sugar was such a lucrative cash crop that plantation owners would import enslaved Africans, work them to death in three to five years, and bring in more.
Example: Conditions on sugar plantations were so harsh that slaves typically only survived a few years.

👑 King Afonso I and the Kongo

1575: Portuguese established the first European colony in sub-Saharan Africa (Angola), south of the powerful Kongo kingdom.
The Kongolese royal family converted to Christianity; King Afonso I tried to negotiate as a peer with Portuguese rulers.
Afonso was not able to prevent Portuguese slave traders from indiscriminately taking people with high social status in his kingdom as slaves.
Generally only criminals and war captives were sold to foreign slavers, not sons of noblemen and the king's relatives.
Unclear whether Afonso tried to ban all trade in slaves or compromised to avoid antagonizing European allies; either way, his ban was ineffective.

📊 The scale of the Atlantic slave trade

Occasionally Iberians claimed they were doing Africans a favor by Christianizing them, but conditions were so harsh that slaves typically only survived a few years—conversions were to save their souls when they perished from overwork and malnutrition.
Over the next several centuries, nearly six times more Africans were forcibly sent to the Americas than Europeans who went willingly.
In all, about 16 million Africans were shipped to the Americas in chains.
About 4 million died on the way and were thrown overboard into the Atlantic.

📜 Primary sources: King Afonso I's letters

✉️ Letter of July 6, 1526

Afonso writes that the kingdom is "being lost in so many ways" due to "excessive freedom given by your agents and officials to the men and merchants."
Merchants spread prohibited goods "throughout our kingdoms and domains in such an abundance that many of our vassals, whom we had in obedience, do not comply."
The core complaint: "The mentioned merchants are taking every day our natives, sons of the land and the sons of our noblemen and vassals and our relatives, because the thieves and men of bad conscience grab them wishing to have the things and wares of this kingdom."
Afonso begs the Portuguese king to help, commanding factors "that they should not send here either merchants or wares, because it is our will that in these kingdoms there should not be any trade of slaves nor outlet for them."

✉️ Letter of October 18, 1526

Afonso describes "another great inconvenience": many people, "keenly desirous as they are of the wares and things of your kingdoms," seize "many of our people, freed and exempt men, and very often…even noblemen and the sons of noblemen, and our relatives."
They are taken to be sold to white men; "as soon as they are taken by the white men they are immediately ironed and branded with fire."
When caught by guards, whites allege they bought them but cannot say from whom.
Afonso passed a law requiring white men to inform three noblemen who should investigate if the goods are captives or free men; if whites do not comply, they will lose the goods.
Afonso also requests physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries because many people "perish and die" from diseases, and "the rest of the people in their majority cure themselves with herbs and breads and other ancient methods."

📜 Primary sources: Luther's Address to the Christian Nobility

🧱 The three walls

Luther describes three walls the Romanists have drawn around themselves "with great adroitness":
1. Temporal vs. spiritual power: Claimed the spiritual power is above the temporal.
2. Interpreting Scripture: Objected that no one may interpret the Scriptures but the Pope.
3. Calling a council: Invented the notion that no one may call a council but the Pope.
"Thus they have privily stolen from us our three sticks, so that they may not be beaten."

⛪ Attacking the first wall

Luther argues there is a "fiction" that Pope, bishops, priests, and monks are the "spiritual estate" while princes, lords, artisans, and peasants are the "temporal estate."
"All Christians are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them, save of office."
"We have one baptism, one Gospel, one faith, and are all Christians alike; for baptism, Gospel, and faith, these alone make spiritual and Christian people."
Unction, tonsure, ordination, consecration, and special clothes "may make a hypocrite or an anointed puppet, but never a Christian or a spiritual man."
"Thus we are all consecrated as priests by baptism."

🤝 Equal power, different function

Luther uses an analogy: if ten brothers (co-heirs as king's sons) choose one to rule over their inheritance, "they would all of them still remain kings and have equal power, although one is appointed to govern."
Example: If a company of pious Christian laymen were taken prisoner in a desert without a priest, and elected one to baptize, celebrate mass, absolve, and preach, "this man would as truly be a priest, as if all the bishops and all the popes had consecrated him."
"In cases of necessity, every man can baptize and absolve, which would not be possible if we were not all priests."

👑 Temporal power and the spiritual estate

"Since then the 'temporal power' is as much baptized as we, and has the same faith and Gospel, we must allow it to be a priest and bishop."
"Whatever has undergone baptism may boast that it has been consecrated priest, bishop, and pope, although it does not beseem every one to exercise these offices."
"Between laymen and priests, princes and bishops…the only real difference is one of office and function, and not of estate."

📜 Attacking the second wall

Luther argues the claim to be "masters of the Scriptures" is weak.
"If the article of our faith is right, 'I believe in the holy Christian Church,' the Pope cannot alone be right; else we must say, 'I believe in the Pope of Rome,' and reduce the Christian Church to one man, which is a devilish and damnable heresy."
"We are all priests…and have all one faith, one Gospel, one Sacrament; how then should we not have the power of discerning and judging what is right or wrong in matters of faith?"

🏛️ Attacking the third wall

"The third wall falls of itself, as soon as the first two have fallen."
"If the Pope acts contrary to the Scriptures, we are bound to stand by the Scriptures to punish and to constrain him, according to Christ's commandment…'tell it unto the Church.'"
"If then I am to accuse him before the Church, I must collect the Church together…Therefore when need requires, and the Pope is a cause of offense to Christendom…whoever can best do so, as a faithful member of the whole body, must do what he can to procure a true free council."

🇩🇪 German grievances

"Poor Germans that we are–we have been deceived! We were born to be masters, and we have been compelled to bow the head beneath the yoke of our tyrants, and to become slaves."
"Name, title, outward signs of royalty, we possess all these; force, power, right, liberty, all these have gone over to the popes, who have robbed us of them."
"It is time the glorious Teutonic people should cease to be the puppet of the Roman pontiff."
"Because the pope crowns the emperor, it does not follow that the pope is superior to the emperor."