Summary of Robert B. Marks' The Origins of the Modern World

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The world in 1400 was made up of social, economic, political, and cultural structures that were not of our choosing, and we were born and raised under these circumstances. We must understand these structures in order to understand the changes that occurred during the origins of the modern world.

#2 The fifteenth century was a time of major social and economic changes, as well as a transition to a more settled way of life. The material world in which people lived was basically the same, regardless of where they lived or what civilization they belonged to.

#3 There have been three major waves of population increase and decrease over the past one thousand years. The first began about 900–1000 CE, and lasted until about 1300, when it crashed due to the Black Death. The second began about 1400 and lasted until a mid-seventeenth-century decline. The third advance began about 1700, and has yet to halt.

#4 Climate change was a general cause of the premodern population increases around the world. It affected all growing things, trees as well as wheat or rice, and could lead to harvest failures if it was too cold or too hot.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jul 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822545113

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Insights on Robert B. Marks's The Origins of the Modern World

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The world in 1400 was made up of social, economic, political, and cultural structures that were not of our choosing, and we were born and raised under these circumstances. We must understand these structures in order to understand the changes that occurred during the origins of the modern world.

#2

The fifteenth century was a time of major social and economic changes, as well as a transition to a more settled way of life. The material world in which people lived was basically the same, regardless of where they lived or what civilization they belonged to.

#3

There have been three major waves of population increase and decrease over the past one thousand years. The first began about 900–1000 CE, and lasted until about 1300, when it crashed due to the Black Death. The second began about 1400 and lasted until a mid-seventeenth-century decline. The third advance began about 1700, and has yet to halt.

#4

Climate change was a general cause of the premodern population increases around the world. It affected all growing things, trees as well as wheat or rice, and could lead to harvest failures if it was too cold or too hot.

#5

The 380 million people living in 1400 were not evenly distributed across the face of the Earth, but rather clustered in a few pockets of much higher density. The most notable of these was the Eurasian continent, with China, Europe, and India as the three most populous countries.

#6

The agricultural revolution, which took place about 11,000 years ago, was a change in the way people lived, socialized, and died. It gave rise to two additional defining characteristics of civilization: cities and writing.

#7

Empires are large political units ruled by a single elite in which the subject population provides their agricultural surplus to the ruler and the landowning elite, who in turn provide military protection.

#8

The size of towns and cities was a very rough indicator of the overall wealth of a society. The largest cities in the world in 1400 were in Asia, while Europe had only five cities in the top twenty-five.

#9

The Eurasian continent was home to many agriculturally based civilizations, as well as groups of people who obtained their living from the land by hunting and gathering. The two groups had a symbiotic relationship, as they depended on each other.

#10

Humans had migrated to nearly every place on the globe by 1400. The two areas with the greatest diversity and density of animal species