Resources & Concepts
United States History: Pre-Colombian to the Millennium
- Native American Society on the Eve of British Colonization
- Britain in the New World
- The New England Colonies
- The Middle Colonies
- The Southern Colonies
- African Americans in the British New World
- The Beginnings of Revolutionary Thinking
- America's Place in the Global Struggle
- The Events Leading to Independence
- E Pluribus Unum
- The American Revolution
- Societal Impacts of the American Revolution
- When Does the Revolution End?
- The Declaration of Independence and Its Legacy
- The War Experience: Soldiers, Officers, and Civilians
- The Loyalists
- Revolutionary Changes and Limitations: Slavery
- Revolutionary Changes and Limitations: Women
- Revolutionary Limits: Native Americans
- Revolutionary Achievement: Yeomen and Artisans
- The Age of Atlantic Revolutions
- Making Rules
- Drafting the Constitution
- Ratifying the Constitution
- George Washington
- Unsettled Domestic Issues
- Politics in Transition: Public Conflict in the 1790s
- Jeffersonian America: A Second Revolution?
- The Expanding Republic and the War of 1812
- Social Change and National Development
- Politics and the New Nation
- The Age of Jackson
- The Rise of American Industry
- An Explosion of New Thought
- The Peculiar Institution
- Abolitionist Sentiment Grows
- Manifest Destiny
- An Uneasy Peace
- "Bloody Kansas"
- From Uneasy Peace to Bitter Conflict
- A House Divided
- The War Behind the Lines
- Reconstruction
- The Gilded Age
- Organized Labor
- From the Countryside to the City
- New Dimensions in Everyday Life
- Closing the Frontier
- Western Folkways
- Progressivism Sweeps the Nation
- Progressives in the White House
- Seeking Empire
- America in the First World War
- The Decade That Roared
- Old Values vs. New Values
- The Great Depression
- The New Deal
- The Road to Pearl Harbor
- America in the Second World War
- Postwar Challenges
- The 1950s: Happy Days
- A New Civil Rights Movement
- The Vietnam War
- Politics from Camelot to Watergate
- Shaping a New America
- A Time of Malaise
- The Reagan Years
- Toward a New Millennium
Common Historical Eras
One of the ways history is commonly divided is into three separate eras or periods: the Ancient Period (3600 BC - 500 AD), the Middle Ages (500 -1500), and the Modern Era (1500-present). According to this classification, the eras last hundreds of years, even thousands of years in the case of the Ancient Period. Within the Modern Era we have all kinds of smaller eras, like the Age of Discovery (spanning the 15th-17th century) and the Enlightenment (in the 18th century). The Age of Discovery was characterized by global exploration, particularly in the New World. The Enlightenment was characterized by an emphasis on reason, individualism, humanism, tolerance, and a skepticism of religious tradition. Other common historical eras include:
Sometimes these eras overlap. For example, the 'Roaring Twenties' and the 'Interwar' Period took place at the same time, but the term 'Roaring Twenties' is usually applied in the context of American history, whereas 'Interwar Period' is generally used in the context of European history. |