Late modern period

The late modern period is the era of world history that follows the early modern period, usually reckoned from about 1800 or from the late eighteenth century to the present. It is characterised by the Industrial Revolution, the political revolutions in America and France, the rise of nation states and the spread of democratic ideas, and the growth of European empires and, in the twentieth century, their collapse. It also includes the two world wars, the Cold War, decolonisation, and an accelerating technological change, from railways and electricity to computers and the internet. Historians disagree on exactly where the period begins, and some prefer to talk of the contemporary period for recent decades.

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