15世纪末以来，以地理大发现、宗教改革、民族国家的崛起为标志，欧洲进入近代时期。 。近代包括从中世纪到工业革命为止的三个世纪，大约从1500至1800年，或者从1492年发现新世界到1789年法国大革命为止。
这个时期的特点是科学的重要性上升，技术进步突飞猛进，世俗公民政治和民族国家异军突起。资本主义经济从意大利北部诸共和政体如热那亚等开始萌芽发展。近代也见证了重商主义经济理论的发展及占据主导。自然，近代也代表了在大部分欧洲地区封建社会、农奴制以及罗马天主教会的权威的衰落与最终消失。这一时期也包括了新教改革、灾难性的三十年战争、欧洲对美洲殖民和欧洲猎杀女巫活动。
The Early Modern period spans the centuries between the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution, roughly from 1500 to 1800, or from the discovery of the New World in 1492 to the French Revolution in 1789. The period is characterized by the rise to importance of science and increasingly rapid technological progress, secularized civic politics and the nation state. Capitalist economies began their rise, beginning in northern Italian republics such as Genoa. The early modern period also saw the rise and dominance of the economic theory of mercantilism. As such, the early modern period represents the decline and eventual disappearance, in much of the European sphere, of feudalism, serfdom and the power of the Catholic Church. The period includes the Protestant Reformation, the disastrous Thirty Years' War, the European colonization of the Americas and the European witch-hunts.