Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online

The great increase in life expectancy in Western Europe and North America from the late 18th century was accompanied by a fundamental shift in the pattern of cause of death. Many diseases vanished from the industrialized nations, while others changed their character, or became treatable, while others still grew in prevalence.However, the systematic historical analysis of this process of change in mortality is not a simple matter. Account must be taken of the fact that until the mid-19th century, a quite different nosology was in use, and that …

1. Transition to early modern period The legal killing of a delinquent for a committed crime is in principle found as the severest sanction in criminal law in all periods and cultures, but differing in form and frequency. For Europe, traditional legal history sought the medieval origins of the phenomenon in “Germanic” and Roman law. Motives cited here included magical or sacral considerations (penal sacrifice, defensive magic, blood vengeance), and the rational, calculated exercise of autho…

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As long as monetary value depended on precious metal content in the early modern period, there was a risk even for the smallest copper coins of debasement, that is, an erosion of precious metal content while the nominal value remained unchanged. Gresham's Law, named for (if not actually formulated by) the English merchant and founder of the London Stock Exchange, summed up the general trend in coin money: “Bad money drives out good” [5]. The chief reasons for the displacement of coins with high precious metal content by those of reduced purity were rising pr…

See Credit | Legal enforcement | Public finances

See Legal enforcement

See Public credit | Sovereign default

1. ConceptThe idea that empires and cultures, having risen to power and greatness, must necessarily undergo decline, commonplace among ancient historians after Polybius, was revisited and reformulated by the Humanists. Until around 1800, “decadence” (also “decline”; Latin   inclinatio, ruina, depravatio; Italian  decadenza, declino, caduta; French  déclin, décadence; German  Verfall, Dekadenz) was therefore a basic category of political, social, and aesthetic discourse. As a constitutive element of a cyclical view of history, the concept den…

The Decembrists (from Russian dekabr', “December”) were the mainly noble rebels who carried out an unsuccessful coup in St. Petersburg on December 14, 1825 (this and all subsequent dates according to the Old Style, i.e. the Julian Calendar). Some 3,000 officers and soldiers were ordered to muster in the Senate Square to swear an oath of allegiance to the new Tsar, Nicholas I. On this day, the Decembrists attempted to exploit confusion over the succession following the death of Tsar Alexander I (Nov…

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The term déchristianisation (German  Dechristianisierung) emerged in the late 18th century in the context of religious and political debates on the French Revolution (1789). It came into use there as a slogan denoting the initially spontaneous violence of groups of petite bourgeoisie against the Roman Catholic Church and its clergy, the sacking of church property, and the pillaging of churches, other ecclesiastical buildings, and art treasures (Iconoclasm). Supporters of the Revolution also used th…

See Legal literature

See Human/citizens' rights, declarations of

1. FormationThe official declaration of American independence by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776 was the end point of a long political and military confrontation with the British motherland (American Revolution). It was only in the spring of 1776, almost a year after the beginning of hostilities, that a broad discussion began, stimulated above all by Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, to contemplate political separation. However, the representatives of the individual North American colonies at the Continental Congress first had to be equippe…

See Decadence

See Social mobility

1. Concept Decolonization in general denotes the withdrawal of colonial powers from territories in which they formerly ruled over an indigenous population. From the perspective of the colonial powers, this is a process of dissolution in the sense of a setting free; from that of the colonized peoples, it is a process of release from the colonal power with the aim of liberation and state sovereignty. Decolonization thus also refers to the end of the European colonial empires that had beco…

See American Revolution | Latin American wars of independence

See Confessionalism

1. Rhetorical terminological traditionThe term decorum (Greek  prépon; Latin  aptum, decorum, convenientia; Italian  decoro, convenienza, convenevolezza; French  bienséance, convenance) originates in rhetoric, and denotes that which is seemly and appropriate for speech and conduct. Its range of application encompasses language and its stylistic theory, ethical and moral considerations of conduct in public and private life according to gender, age, and class, and aesthetic aspects of architecture and the fine art…