Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online

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In Germany in the early 19th century, the term Eilwagen (literally “rapid carriage”) denoted a specific organizational form in scheduled postal passenger transportation. Its basis was the principle of optimized conveyance at the greatest possible speed. This acceleration, which was achieved through organizational measures alone, long attracted no attention from scholars, who were preoccupied with the accomplishments of railroad-related industrialization. Yet the fact that horse power can only be accelera…

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1. IntroductionElasticity was one of the material phenomena that were newly subjected to a quantifying, mathematical treatment from the 17th century onwards. Its study was intertwined with a broad range of interests and applications, and its history is important for understanding developments in physics, technology, architecture, and mathematics. The elastic behavior of materials, typically the bending, and eventually the fracture of beams and columns, was a basic concern for architects and machine builders (Mechanics of materials).Niccolò Guicciardini2. Beginning…

1. Early modern period 1.1. Concept and introductionThe transfer of powers to authorities and officeholders on the basis of formalized voting procedures was known and practiced from Antiquity. In the Late Middle Ages and the first centuries of the early modern period, a plethora of different processes came under the category of  electio. The concept also included cooption, acclamation, and selection by lot (see below, 2.) [9]; [7]. In general, entitlement to vote was confined to a socially exclusive group, and even in district administration it was exceptional…

See Predestination

See Inheritance law | Will (testament)

1. Definition During the Middle Ages a fixed circle of princes emerged in the Holy Roman Empire (of the German Nation) that elected the German king, who could then be crowned emperor by the pope. In the early modern period, the elected king was already considered emperor. While scholars dispute the origins of the electoral college, by 1257 there was a clear group of seven princes; this group designated itself a college in 1298 and, with the Golden Bull, acquired a permanent legal form in 1356 [3]: the three archbishops of Mainz, Cologne, and Trier, as ecclesiastical electors, …

In the early modern period, a capitulation was generally a document with contractual content that was subdivided into chapters. By means of an electoral capitulation, an electoral body reached an agreement with a future ruler over the rights of his subjects or a special group of them “for the welfare of the empire” [1. 670]. Electoral capitulations were thus an example of a subject-ruler contract under the proto-constitutional states of the early modern period, particularly for European electoral monarchies. Upon the election of the monarch, a doc…

1. Introduction and Holy Roman EmpireThe European monarchies of the Late Middle Ages and early modern period included not only the great hereditary kingdoms, such as France and England/Great Britain (see below, 2), and Castile, but also many electoral monarchies. Here, the crown was assigned by a vote of either a small circle of ecclesiastical and secular dignitaries, or the estates of the realm as a whole, or sometimes the entire nobility.Without doubt, the most important electoral monarchy was the Empire (Holy Roman Empire [of the German Nation]). The proce…

The term electoral scrutiny describes the procedural review of the legality of a disputed election, especially to representative bodies or to a parliament. It first appears fully mature in the modern constitutional state, but primitive forms can be identified as early as the Estates General (Estates, assembly of) of the  Ancien Régime. The early modern procedure of examining the legitimacy of estates (Estates of the realm) or their delegates entitled to participate in a proto-parliamentary assembly (e.g. the  Reichstagor a regional diet - a  Landtag) may be viewed as a pred…

The phenomena of electricity, such as powerful discharges or long sparks, were not part of everyday experience in the early modern period and were first generated in experimental practice. From the outset, therefore, electrical science was wholly dependent on instruments. Before 1700, electricity was generated by rubbing together many different kinds of solid body. This, however, did not at first provide “stable” experimental conditions.The first to create those conditions, in London in the early 18th century, was the English scientist Francis Hauksbee, w…

As electricity became a “fashionable science” from the 1740s, it also began to be applied to the (afflicted) human body. Media of the day thenceforth report frequently on the successful treatment of paralyses in particular, but also epileptic conditions, blindness, gout, and many other complaints, by the application of electricity, usually in the form of discharges. Claims and expectations of therapeutic success played an important part in the legitimization of scientists' working more widely an…

Early modern discussions of telecommunications freed from all constraints of land transportation (Land transport), interest was long focused on systems for optical telegraphy. Introduced across France in the late 18th century, the semaphore line first conveyed an idea of the possibilities of high-speed information transfer. The  Elektrolyt-Telegraph built by Samuel Thomas von Soemmering in 1809 at Munich, on the other hand, was still impracticable, consisting as it did of many individual lines, corresponding to letters of the alphabet…

1. Electricity before 1700Of all the subjects of natural study, electricity has enjoyed a particularly striking career. Unlike chemistry (Chemical sciences), mechanics, astronomy, optics, and metallurgy, it has no long-standing tradition, and even in the 17th century, effects known as “electrical” were barely known. Yet by 1850, electricity was in the process of bringing wholesale changes to the human way of life. Its meteoric rise was the result of an unusual dynamic between research, technology, and society.It was already known in Antiquity that a piece of amber, whe…

1. Prior historySpeculations about an interaction between electricity and magnetism were already being voiced in the 18th century, stimulated by reports of magnetic needles switching polarity during storms, or the magnetization of iron crosses on church towers. However, stable experimental conditions only became possible with the development of the voltaic pile around 1800 (the first electric battery; Galvanism), which delivered sustained electrical effects for the first time. Experiments in Parma…

1. Definition and ancient historyThe elegy is a form of lyric text (Poetry) that can be defined in terms of form, content, and discourse mode. The multifaceted development history of the genre, however, precludes a single, all-encompassing definition.Ancient Greek literature already had two traditions. Elegeía was a poem in elegiac distichs (distichon: a couplet, consisting of one hexameter followed by a pentameter), while  élegos was a lament with flute accompaniment, sung in any metrical form. This displays the proximity to the epigram, which was origin…

See Electromagnetism

See Galvanism

1. Definition; current researchWhile only a very small portion of the early modern population came into contact with academic or higher Bildung (including Latin, Greek, and rhetoric) at Latin schools, gymnasiums, and universities, the various forms of lower schools focused primarily on the middle and lower classes, providing basic knowledge of the cultural techniques of reading, writing, and arithmetic along with religious instruction. It is impossible to make a clear distinction between the variou…

1. Classical element theory 1.1. ConceptIn European cultural history, the term “elements” denotes the four basic substances, fire, water, earth, and air, which were together incorporated into a comprehensive theory of four elements in Antiquity. The etymological derivation of the term is from the Latin elementum, itself a translation of the Greek stoicheíon (“letter”, “sound”; first documented in the sense of “constituent component” or “basis” in Plato [8]).The doctrine of the four elements was not limited to Europe, but seems to be a fundamental structure …

1. Concept and definitionThe use of the term “elite” was long controversial in German historical studies, and even today it is not free from political implications. During the 1970s and 1980s in particular, it had a negative connotation, and there were only a very few studies examining political, social, and economic elites. The concept of elite only began to undergo rehabilitation from the mid-1980s in studies on the modern bourgeoisie and later on the early modern nobility. This situation differe…

See Rhetoric

1. General 1.1. OverviewThe term emancipation, which exists in all European languages, comes from Roman private law (Latin emancipatio), and originally meant release from the patria potestas (Parental rights and obligations). The concept had an extraordinary career from the dawn of the early modern period, though the original family law sense survived in jurisdiction long into the 19th century in Europe. While outside legal usage it initially had an overtone of moral egoism, it increasingly became a subject of reflection…

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1. ConceptEmblematics includes all emblems present in literature and visual art. The emblem (German Emblem or, from the 17th century,  Sinnbild), is a form of expression combining a text with an image. The type flourished between the 16th and 18th centuries (see below, 2.). Most frequently, the emblem in literature was threefold in structure, comprising a brief text motto (Latin  lemma, inscriptio) and a pictura (Latin also  icon) ideally in the form of a simple image, and the reciprocal references of these are then elucidated in a verse or prose epigram (Latin  subscriptio) usuall…

1. Terminological historyEmbryology is a subdiscipline of biology studying embryos, particularly their processes of development. The definition of an embryo (Greek  émbryon, “[unborn] young”) has been relatively constant since Antiquity: a body from which an independent living organism develops, but that is still located within a space sealed off from the outside world, for example the body of the mother, or the ovum. The historical origins of embryology as a scientific discipline lie in Antiquity. The Hippocrati…

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1. ConceptEmigration is a form of mobility that takes place by voluntary decision (unlike abduction [Slave abduction] or forced migration) and for primarily economic reasons (unlike conscientious refugee movements; cf. Refugees of conscience; Exile), and in which the migrant or emigré intends to settle elsewhere permanently (unlike occupational migration). Depending on destination, distinctions can be drawn between migrations from Europe to other continents (including colonial migration; Immigrat…

1. General 1.1. Problems of definitionEmotions are deeply rooted in human developmental history. As a fundamental phenomenon of subjective experience, they were common to humans and higher animals, and are based on a physiological state with measurable physical reactions (e.g. changes in pulse or breathing, motor expression in mime and gesture). However, they are characterized by cultural variation [4] in the expression and moral evaluation of emotions, as well as in their precise definition and frequency. To this extent, emotions are also subject …

1. Holy Roman Emperor 1.1. Term and developmentThe Holy Roman Emperor was the supreme head of the Holy Roman Empire, elected for life by the college of electors, in accordance with the majority principle laid down in the Golden Bull (1356). All emperors until 1806, with the exception of the Wittelsbach Karl Albrecht VII (1742-1745), were of the House of  Habsburg (or later Habsburg-Lorraine). The office stood in the tradition of the ancient Roman Empire, and thus gave rise to a claim to precedence in protocol over all other monarchs [8].The close association between the office of …

1. ConceptThe term  Empire, deliberately echoing the  Empire Romain, denotes the brief lifespan of the French Empire under Napoleon I (1804-1815). In art, the term relates to an extremely historicist mode of the classicism that had dominated since the second half of the 18th century, emanating from Paris and manifesting itself primarily in interior decoration, furnishing (Domestic culture), and other artisanal objects. The rapid spread of the style was a consequence of the expanding zone of Napoleonic c…

See Chinese world | Colonial empire | Incas | Maya | Mughal Empire | Ottoman Empire | Russian Empire | State formation beyond Europe

See Holy Roman Empire (of the German Nation)

See Trading empire

1. DefinitionThe philosophical approach of empiricism – in contrast to rationalism – assumes that knowledge is acquired by through experience and hence through the human senses (Epistemology). It is closely associated historically with the development of the experimental method (Experiment), in which knowledge is the result of a specially developed, specific practical procedures; this method has been considered a basic characterizing feature of the new natural philosophy of the 17th-century scientific revolution and of modern natural science ever since.John Hen…

Employment law consists of the regulations that apply to the performance of work for others in return for wages (Wage labor). The key criterion is that the work is not performed independently, that is, the employee must follow the instructions of the employer. Regulations may concern legal relations between the employer and individual employees. The terms of the employment contract are crucial for this relationship. Rules concerning unions of employers or employees and their ability to influence…

See Port | Trading empire | World economic centers

1. DefinitionThe term  enclosure denotes the allocation of agricultural land formerly worked in common to individual property owners and the associated transformation of the English countryside by the erection of fences, walls, and hedges, along with the layout of new roads and paths. Enclosure also superseded tithes;  the beneficiaries were compensated with land.Mark Häberlein2. HistoryIn England enclosure began in the late Midle Ages; in the southern Midlands, by the late 17th century a third of the agricultural land had already been enclosed.…

See American indigenous peoples, policy towards

1. Introduction The aspect of encrypted communication that was most relevant in the early modern period was cryptography. For centuries, confidential letters and dispatches were written in secret scripts that denied third parties access to their content. Encryption was first done using numerals, then quickly with ordinary letters and invented symbols. Competent cryptoanalysts were increasingly sought-after in absolutist territories and states, and became figures of high renown at courts…

1. IntroductionAn encyclopedia is as far as possible a complete survey of a branch of knowledge, with content arranged in a certain order of presentation. As a concise form of presenting expert knowledge and the current state of knowledge, it lies between didactics and scholarly theory, and between the popularization and the functionalization of knowledge. As an ongoing attempt at defining individual elements of a whole and so aligning knowledge and the world, it was a guiding principle of early modern knowledge culture.Martin Gierl2. ConceptThe Neolatin composite term  encyclopaed…

1. Definition and functionAn endorsement is a signature written on the back (Italian, in dosso or in dorso) of a bill of exchange that entitles a person not previously involved in the bill to present it for payment. The endorsement effectively transferred the demand for payment derived from the bill to another person, which the signature written  in dosso confirmed. By means of endorsement, bills of exchange became a circulable form of paper currency. Like the bill of exchange itself (at the latest since the early 15th century), the endorsement devel…

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The sense of living in the end time because “this world” was coming to an end was a prevailing belief of the early modern period until the 18th century (World view). Its religious basis was the assumption in Christian apocalypticism that Jesus Christ heralded the end of the history of salvation. The time “after Christ,” that is, between his coming and his return for the Last Judgment and the universal establishment of the Kingdom of God in a new world (Eschatology), was accordingly seen as a fin…

1. Types, functions, mechanisms 1.1. Definition and identificationEnemy stereotypes have always been vital to historical processes of identity formation, as the “enemies” against whom a definition is to be drawn are cast in constructs of theological polemic, prejudice, and self-assertion to reinforce the cohesion of the “in-group” (Exclusion). Such stereotypes have thus served the negative integration of a community in its encounter with neighbors and rivals. They display contradictions, differences, a…

1. ConceptEnergy (from the Greek enérgeia, “activity”, “actuality”) today describes the capacity of a body or a physical system to do work. Energy being a conserved quantity that, while appearing in different forms (mechanical, electrical, thermal, chemical, etc.), remains constant in total in isolated systems is one of the most fundamental principles of natural science, applying equally to and thus connecting the physical and chemical sciences and biology. Mechanics was already approaching an unders…

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1. TerminologyEngineering did not emerge as a distinct profession with formalized training, rules based on scientific technology, and its own class consciousness until the 19th century. The earlier centuries of the early modern period can be considered a formative phase of the individual elements constituting engineering.In the early modern period, the European languages used the term  engineer unsystematically for technical experts in various fields of activity. Since the high Middle Ages, Old French and Latin documents had used derivatives of Latin  ingenium (“talent,” …