The Middle Period of European History, From the Break-Up of the Roman Empire to the Opening of the Eighteenth Century (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

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Excerpt from The Middle Period of European History, From the Break-Up of the Roman Empire to the Opening of the Eighteenth Century

In order to enable teachers to adjust their historical instruction with greater freedom than would otherwise be possible, it seems wise to issue as a separate volume that portion of Mdkval and Modern Times which deals with the period extending from the dissolution of the Roman Emmre to the opening of the eighteenth century. This division does not correspond to that usually called the Middle Ages but is extended to comprise the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There are, however, a number of cogent reasons for viewing these two centuries as more medieval than modern. To cite a single striking example, it was not until after the year I 700 that the intelligent people of Europe finally gave up their belief in witchcraft, which seems to us now a delusion appropriate only to savages. Those social conditions and modes of thought produced by scientific discov eries and inventions, by democracy and world commerce which are characteristic of our day only begin to emerge on a large scale in the eighteenth century. It was at the opening of the eighteenth century that the Prussian army entered upon those preparations which are proving so disastrous for the world to-day. So it will be quite proper to include the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the Middle Period and regard them as belonging rather to an introduction to our own times than as forming a definite part of the period in which we live.

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