What’s the Significance?
Protestant Reformation, 721–25
Catholic Counter-Reformation, 723
Taki Onqoy, 730–31
Úrsula de Jesús, 730–31
Jesuits in China, 732–34
Wahhabi Islam, 736–37
kaozheng, 738
Mirabai, 738–39
Sikhism, 739
Copernicus, 742
Newton, 743–44
European Enlightenment, 745–48
Voltaire, 746
Condorcet and the idea of progress, 746–48
Big Picture Questions
Next Steps: For Further Study
Natana J. Delong-Bas, Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad (2004). A careful study of the origins of Wahhabi Islam and its subsequent development.
Patricia B. Ebrey et al., East Asia: A Cultural, Social, and Political History (2005). A broad survey by major scholars in the field.
Geoffrey C. Gunn, First Globalization: The Eurasian Exchange, 1500–1800 (2003). Explores the two-way exchange of ideas between Europe and Asia in the early modern era.
Toby E. Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science (2003). A fascinating and controversial explanation as to why modern science arose in the West rather than in China or the Islamic world.
Úrsula de Jesús, The Souls of Purgatory: The Spiritual Diary of a Seventeenth-Century Afro-Peruvian Mystic (2004). A scholarly introduction by Nancy E. van Deusen places Úrsula in a broader context.
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009). A masterful exploration of global Christianity with extensive coverage of the early modern era.
Deva Sobel, A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos (2011). A fascinating account of a major breakthrough in the Scientific Revolution.
Internet Modern History Sourcebook, “The Scientific Revolution,” http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook09.html. A collection of primary-source documents dealing with the breakthrough to modern science in Europe.