‘Modernity’ refers to the modern world, which we are still in and which is held to have begun in the early 1500s. The prior period is known as the Middle Ages or the Medieval period. Modernity is coincident with and partially a consequence of the rise of Britain and the establishment of the British Empire.
The thesis of the Modernity section of The National CVpedia is that Britain launched the modern world. Historian Niall Ferguson has gone further and subtitled his book Empire (2003) with How Britain Made the Modern World.
Britain launched the modern world, technologically and economically, through revolutions in science, agriculture and industry and through engendering the first era of globalisation in the second half of the 1800s. Britain has also given the world great ideas on representative democracy, liberal economics and finance. A humanitarian revolution occurred in Britain in the early 1800s, especially associated with Britain’s unique and altruistic global stance against slavery, an evil trade from which she had previously profited. There have been many medical breakthroughs on these islands, including vaccination and the first antibiotic (penicillin). Britain has influenced people to the four corners of the Earth through six great wars won, the amassing of the greatest empire in history and through the English language – the first-ever world tongue – and her culture (e.g. William Shakespeare). Britain largely invented modern-day sport and has been a hot spot for firsts in any number of other fields of human endeavour over many generations.
British contributions to the second era of globalisation, which started in the 1990s, have included pioneering contributions in computing, the invention of packet-switching and the invention of the World Wide Web. The language of the second globalisation, like that of the first, is English.
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