The Early Modern Age: Social, Economic, and Political Changes

The early modern age began in 1453 with the fall of Constantinople and ended with the French Revolution in 1789. However, by the end of the previous era, many important social, economic, political, and cultural changes were already taking place.

Monarchs had more resources, so they became more powerful and were able to reform existing institutions and create new ones. Their main objectives were to consolidate their authority, control the power of the nobility, and administer the kingdom's resources more effectively.

They formed powerful armies of mercenaries to subdue the nobles who confronted them. They strengthened bureaucracy, which was composed of officials directly under their control who supervised the kingdom's affairs. They centralized power by creating new institutions to serve them. The monarchs established a court for these new institutions to function well.

At the beginning of the early modern age, there were also significant developments in thinking and science. Ideas spread rapidly due to an extremely important invention, the printing press.

Prosperity resulted in transformations in the ways of thinking. A new intellectual movement, called humanism, emerged in Italy and spread throughout Europe. Its main characteristics were:

• A renewed interest in classical culture: classical Greek and Roman culture and philosophy became the point of reference for intellectual and artistic activity.
• Anthropocentrism: human beings became the center of philosophical reflection and artistic creation. Although the humanists continued being Christians, they abandoned the theocentrism of the Middle Ages and tried to explain reality without religion.
• Optimism and creativity: religious beliefs that caused fear were replaced with the belief in a better life in this world. Creativity was oriented towards obtaining better techniques, resulting in numerous inventions.
• The desire for knowledge: the humanists possessed great intellectual curiosity. They did not limit their knowledge to one special area. They wanted to know about everything and be the Renaissance man.
• Critical thinking: knowledge was based on tradition, great scholars, or sacred texts. Humanism questioned all this previous knowledge and tried to explain natural phenomena through reason, research, and experimentation.

Astronomer Copernicus proposed a revolutionary theory: the heliocentric hypothesis. Discoveries were also made about the human body thanks to the anatomical studies of the movable-type printing press by Gutenberg.

At the end of the 15th century, the Catholic Monarchs Isabel I of Castilla and Fernando II of Aragon established an authoritarian monarchy on the Iberian Peninsula. In 1469, Isabel, the half-sister of Enrique IV of Castilla, married Fernando, the Crown Prince of Aragon. When the King of Castilla died in 1474, a civil war broke out between the followers of his daughter, Juana la Beltraneja, who had the support of Portugal, and those of Isabel, who had the support of Aragon. The conflict ended in 1479 with the victory of Isabel.