The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-first Century

This term was recently invented by anthropologists to describe the current geological era, in which humanity is having unprecedented impacts on the natural world, causing climate change, mass extinctions, and other drastic changes in the world’s environments. The text examines how these problems stem from industrialized agriculture and the resulting human population growth in the Anthropocene era.

Named for Christopher Columbus, the first European sailor to reach the Americas, the Columbian Exchange refers to both the intentional and accidental movement of people, commodities, food, plants, animals, and even diseases between the Americas, Africa, and Eurasia. Marks notes the immense and often devastating effects of the Columbian Exchange.

This term refers to the increased interactions between even distant regions and peoples of the world. It can refer to the trade of commodities, the exchange of information, and the movement of peoples. The text examines both the positive and negative effects of globalization.

This is Marks’s own term for the catastrophe that overtook the Indigenous peoples of the Americas as a result of European colonization in the 16th century. As Europeans came to the Americas, they brought with them new diseases like smallpox and influenza that wiped out most of the inhabitants, whose bodies had not developed immune defenses against these diseases, and Marks notes that this likely enabled the European conquest and settlement of the Americas.

Starting in the late 18th century in Britain, the Industrial Revolution began (by most accounts) with the invention of the steam engine. During this period, the rapid development of industrial technology (i.e., factories, railroads) rapidly developed, and Britain transitioned from a primarily agricultural economy to the world’s first industrial economy. The text notes how this change drew people from rural to urban environments.

Primarily affecting Europe and North America, the Little Ice Age was a climate event that experts theorize occurred from approximately the 14th century to the 18th century. As the name suggests, it brought about cooler weather, which Marks notes negatively affected crops and may have spurred unrest.