The first attempts to establish social acceleration as a “historical epistemological category” cited the years around 1800, understood by many historians as an “axial age” [4. 368 f.]. Since then the entire early modern period has come to be viewed as a period in which the tempo of life increased. At the outset, the fast-moving 1520s might come to mind (the period of the wars of religion [Religion, wars of]), the revolutionary 1640s, or the “Atlantic” revolutions of the late 18th century, in which the rapid change in conditions gave contemporaries the impression that time was accel…