What is Early Modern History?: An Origin Story

Abstract

What Is Early Modern History?, a volume in the Polity Press “What Is History?” series, is an origin story of the ways historians and those in other fields have seen – and contested – the roots of the modern world and have seen – and contested – whether the period between 1450 and 1800 forms some sort of coherent whole. This essay explains the book’s conceptualization and organization into various subfields, including economic, social, intellectual, cultural, gender, Atlantic world, and environmental history, and responds to the other essays in this forum. The essay and the book discuss the marks of an emerging modernity that have been advanced in different subfields, and ways these have been questioned, nuanced, and rethought. No matter what aspect of life historians investigate, they are likely to see the roots of modernity there, or of multiple modernities, varied and contingent on culture and historical circumstances.