Your Favorite Period of European History from 1300-1900

What is your favorite period of European History from 1300-1900?

  • Renaissance (14th to 16th Centuries)

    Votes: 21 19.1%
  • Age of Discovery (15th to 17th Centuries)

    Votes: 15 13.6%
  • Protestan Reformation (16th Century)

    Votes: 5 4.5%
  • Age of Enlightenment (18th Century)

    Votes: 11 10.0%
  • Industrial Revolution (18th and 19th Centuries)

    Votes: 10 9.1%
  • French Revolution and Napoleon (1789-1815)

    Votes: 13 11.8%
  • Victorian Era (1815-1900)

    Votes: 34 30.9%
  • Other

    Votes: 1 0.9%

  • Total voters
    110
I guess. Overlaps considerably with the Renaissance as defined by this thread, though.

I note that there seems American (?) usage, Renaissance is used to define a very large timeframe that basically covers everything from the end of the Middle Ages say in 1400 according to this approach) to, well, Enlightenment or so. it is always very estranging to me when I see, well, Gutenberg or Descartes wrapped into this label.
I usually consider Renaissance in the proper sense a very short period, maybe a couple of generations or little more. I recognize my approach is Italocentric :eek:(ends with the sack of Rome) but, well, Renaissance in this sense was really centered here after all. :cool:
 
I note that there seems American (?) usage, Renaissance is used to define a very large timeframe that basically covers everything from the end of the Middle Ages say in 1400 according to this approach) to, well, Enlightenment or so. it is always very estranging to me when I see, well, Gutenberg or Descartes wrapped into this label.
I usually consider Renaissance in the proper sense a very short period, maybe a couple of generations or little more. I recognize my approach is Italocentric :eek:(ends with the sack of Rome) but, well, Renaissance in this sense was really centered here after all. :cool:

That seems like the American approach, yeah.

Not sure what's wrong with being Italocentric here. But what do we call the period from Gutenberg to . . . whenever we move on to the next era?

Age of Italian Imitation? Or does that sound too much like Italy is doing the imitating?
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
I note that there seems American (?) usage, Renaissance is used to define a very large timeframe that basically covers everything from the end of the Middle Ages say in 1400 according to this approach) to, well, Enlightenment or so. it is always very estranging to me when I see, well, Gutenberg or Descartes wrapped into this label.
I usually consider Renaissance in the proper sense a very short period, maybe a couple of generations or little more. I recognize my approach is Italocentric :eek:(ends with the sack of Rome) but, well, Renaissance in this sense was really centered here after all. :cool:

I would say that the Renaissance was from the late 1300s to the early 1500s. When I think Enlightenment, I think 1700-1775.
 
That seems like the American approach, yeah.

Not sure what's wrong with being Italocentric here. But what do we call the period from Gutenberg to . . . whenever we move on to the next era?

Age of Italian Imitation? Or does that sound too much like Italy is doing the imitating?

To my mind, it starts a bit later than Gutenberg. Let's say, around 1480 or so.
Now, I think you can call it "Renaissance" until the mid of the following century or a bit later.
But in Italy we tend to split it into smaller units ("Umanesimo", "Rinascimento", "Manierismo" and so on) based essentially on trends of art history.
A point is that different places, even within Italy, knew this kind of process in different times. Manueline Portugal was contemporary to the climax of Italian Renaissance, but its architecture was fully and clearly Gothic. And my hometown, barely one hundred kilometres from Urbino, had a basically "medieval" figurative tradition in early 1500s when Urbino, Rome, Venice and other centres were Renaissance in full swing with Piero della Francesca, Raffaello, etc.
I am no art historian, but provincial cities in Italy (not mention northern Europe) are really striking in this. You can see mixes of late Gothic and Renaissance everywhere, and even very late.
Similar things happened in philosophy, though here things are more complicated.
Places like Poland started being influenced by Italian styles when that stuff was already in relative decline in Italy (in the main centres at least).
 
I would say that the Renaissance was from the late 1300s to the early 1500s. When I think Enlightenment, I think 1700-1775.

Well, another approach. :)
Problem is, most of 1400s were culturally "Middle Ages" in most places of Europe outside Italy, and even in many parts of our beloved peninsula.
Printing press was a great change, sure, but it did not really became a gamechanger until the last decades of the century, when Venice became more or less the publisher of half Europe.
Of course, the seeds were there since a century before, if not earlier.
Fall of Byzantium was a tipping point. Colombus' travel to America was another, probably more important for world history, but of relatively minor immediate impact in Europe (Vasco da Gama's travel had more, short term).
So, it's complicated, in any way you take it.
 
It has been interesting reading y'all's responses, I had no idea the popularity of some of these points in History. I do apologize for restricting it to 600 years in Europe, but that is how the cookie crumbles.
 
The Napoleonic Wars. That is the period I know the best and I like the central character of that period, which is Napoleon of course. Plus, it's the last times War was still a "gentlemen's sport": by this, I mean the casualties hadn't yet reached the scales of modern warfare, you had pretty classy uniforms (that were kept for most of the XIXth Century), cavalry was still around and rules of war were more or less well followed. The Victorian Era probably follows the same criterias but it was far longer, there wasn't nearly constant fighting and, around the 1860s, War became more industrial and thus bloodier.

Second favorite period would be the Middle Ages, followed in the third place by the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries.
 
Renaissance definitely. Joan of Arc, Columbus, Constantine XI, Vlad Dracula, Galileo, Henry VIII, and the whole Habsburg family. All the fun of the middle ages with the added bonus of progress in feilds other than warfare. Plus (shameless promotion) that's when my TL is set:D
I think that...you are heavily influenced.:D
 
My personal preference is 17th-18th centuries in terms of military history,The wars in Europe for the great diversity of topics and the concentration of some of the finest military commanders in history,but unfortunately it doesn't fall within the above range!
 
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