Early Modern Britain
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"Early Modern Britain" is a term used to define the period in the history of Great Britain roughly corresponding to the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Major historical events in Early Modern British history include the English Renaissance, the English Reformation and Scottish Reformation, the English Civil War, the Restoration of Charles II, the Glorious Revolution, and the Enlightenment.
[edit] English Renaissance
The term "English Renaissance" is used by many historians to refer to a cultural movement in England in the 1500s and 1600s that was heavily influenced by the Italian Renaissance. This movement is characterized by the flowering of English music (particularly the English adoption and development of the madrigal), notable achievements in drama (by William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson), and the development of English epic poetry (most famously Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene and John Milton's Paradise Lost).
The idea of the Renaissance has come under increased criticism by many cultural historians, and some have contended that the "English Renaissance" has no real tie with the artistic achievements and aims of the northern Italian artists (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello) who are closely identified with the Renaissance.
Other cultural historians have countered that, regardless of whether the name "renaissance" is apt, there was undeniably an artistic flowering in England under the Tudor monarchs, culminating in Shakespeare and his contemporaries.
[edit] The rise of the Tudors
Some scholars date the beginning of Early Modern Britain to the end of the Wars of the Roses and the crowning of Henry Tudor in 1485 after his victory at the battle of Bosworth Field. Henry VII's largely peaceful reign ended decades of civil war and brought the peace and stability to England that art and commerce need to thrive. A major war on English soil would not occur again until the English Civil War of the seventeenth century.
During this period Henry VII and his son Henry VIII greatly increased the power of the English monarch. A similar pattern was unfolding on the continent as new technologies, such as gunpowder, and social and ideological changes undermined the power of the feudal nobility and enhanced that of the sovereign. Henry VIII also made use of the Protestant Reformation to seize the power of the Catholic Church, confiscating the property of the monasteries and declaring himself the head of the new Anglican Church. Under the Tudors the English state was centralized and rationalized as a bureaucracy built up and the government became run and managed by educated functionaries. The most notable new institution was the Star Chamber.
The new power of the monarch was given a basis by the notion of the divine right of kings to rule over their subjects. James I was a major proponent of this idea and wrote extensively on it.
The same forces that had reduced the power of the traditional aristocracy also served to increase the power of the commercial classes. The rise of trade and the central importance of money to the operation of the government gave this new class great power, but power that was not reflected in the government structure. This would lead to a long contest during the seventeenth century between the forces of the monarch and parliament.
[edit] Exploration and the beginnings of empire
In 1497 Henry VII hired Italian navigator Giovanni Caboto to cross the Atlantic on behalf of the English crown. Cabot became the first European, of the era, to discover what is today Canada and he claimed it for the English Crown. Soon after, colonies would be founded in North America and trading posts and enclaves would be established in India and elsewhere around the world. Eventually English, and later British, overseas holdings would grow and the British Empire would span the globe.
See also: Elizabethan era
