Page 244 - Encyclopedia Of World History

594 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

economies. A functionalist understanding of modernity, from the Portuguese capture of Ceuta, a port on the
of the sort theorized by the German sociologist Max Moroccan side of the Strait of Gibraltar (1415), until the
Weber, the U.S. sociologist Talcott Parsons, or the French development of quinine and steamships in the nine-
sociologist Emile Durkheim, explains social phenomena teenth century. The first Niger steamship expedition re-
in terms of their ability to fulfill social needs and broad- turned without casualties in 1854. An early modern
ens this base beyond the mode of production. Here the America might stretch from the encounters of 1492 until
critical shifts would be from belief in miracles to belief in the period of independence movements, from 1776 to
science, from household-based craft production pow- the independence of Brazil in 1822.
ered by muscle, dung, water, and wood to factory-based An early modern India might begin with the fifth-
mass production powered by electricity and fossil fuels, generation descendant of Timur, Zahir-ud-Din Muham-
and from government justified by tradition to govern- mad Babur, whose ancestry inspired him to conquer
ment consciously invented. northern India.The Mughal dynasty he founded (1526)
Even in the context of early modern Europe critics would rule effectively for two centuries; the British would
challenge the effectiveness of a deductive approach by take charge of its Delhi nucleus in 1803.An early modern
condemning its implication of an inevitable progress Japan stretches from the unification efforts of Oda
from premodernity to modernity. A deductive approach Nobunaga (1534–1582) to the end of theTokugawa sho-
takes little cognizance of the possibilities of various start- gunate (the dictatorship of a Japanese military governor)
ing points, different destinations, and particular paths. In in 1867.Other regional historiographies fit less naturally.
some twentieth-century cases the transition to modernity Although the Ottomans’ 1453 conquest of Constantino-
was less a progression than a violently dramatic change. ple (modern Istanbul, Turkey) was timely, the Chinese
When expanded to a global context this approach Ming dynasty began too early (1368) and ended incon-
becomes not only teleological (assuming a design or pur- veniently in the middle of our early modern period
pose in history), but also artificially Eurocentric. (1644).Worse,key modernizing revolutions came late rel-
ative to the western European timetable—the Chinese
Inductive Approach Revolution in 1911, the Russian Bolshevik revolution in
Rather than specify theoretical factors to be sought in the 1917,and the Kemalist (relating to theTurkish soldier and
time period, an inductive approach examines what hap- statesman Kemal Ataturk) revolution inTurkey in 1923.
pened in different places and extracts from what hap- The actual use of the phrase early modern in the peri-
pened a set of common features. Although such an odization of regional histories varies. Outside of Europe,
approach removes the theoretical obstacle of a modern- it is most commonly used in Asia, especially in works on
izing trajectory, the historian is left with the Herculean China, Japan, and, to a lesser extent, India. Historians of
task of specifying processes that united all, most, or many China sometimes extend the period into the twentieth
of the world’s peoples. Such an approach need not focus century. Far fewer historians write of an “early modern
on Europe, nor need it measure the success of various Africa” or an “early modern Brazil.” This fact is due in part
regions in terms of their progress along Europe’s path. to the power of the word colonial to identify these time
How closely do the rough chronological parameters periods. Latin American periodization is so consistently
suggested here match the conventional historiographies divided into pre-Columbian, colonial, and national peri-
(the writings of history) of the various regions outside ods that there is no need for the phrase early modern,
Europe? Traditional periodizations in African and Amer- which should correspond to the middle, colonial period.
ican history are directly linked to European expansion. In fact, the phrase early modern Mexico sometimes refers
Marked by a European presence that could not yet dom- to the period immediately after independence.
inate the continent, an early modern Africa might last The divergence of these traditional periodizations of