1. For a full discussion of this development, see Wallace K. Ferguson, The
Renaissance in Historical Thought: Five Centuries of Interpretation (Boston, 1948), chs. 1-3.
2. This rather abstract way of putting the matter reflects the overall approach I shall
adopt in this paper. A recent textbook, Constance Brittain Bouchard, Life and Society in the
West: Antiquity and the Middle Ages (San Diego, 1988), p. 1, makes the same point in less
abstract terms: "Human history, at its most basic level, is the history of people trying to get
enough to eat and trying to find ways to get along with each other."
3. My analysis in this and the following paragraph is based on Gordon Childe, What
Happened in History, with a new foreword by Professor Grahame Clark (Baltimore, 1964). I
have not, however, adopted those aspects of his theory that seem too closely identified with a
Marxist analysis specifically, his use of feudalism to identify the medieval economy and his
emphasis on the growth of a world market as the catalyst for the Industrial Revolution. For the
sake of completeness, I should mention Childe's identification of a revolution marking man's
emergence as a distinct species.
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4. Some scholars have recently proposed the concept of an Axial Age to identify this new
period. See S. N. Eisenstadt, ed., The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilization
(Albany, New York, 1986). This interpretation has the advantage for me of being extremely
general, but I am not presently prepared to deal with it.
5. This economic reversal does not serve as a general criterion for periodization. I shall
argue below that man's relation to society can provide such a criterion.
6. I believe all historians would agree with Christopher Dawson, The Making of
Europe: An Introduction to the Making of European Unity (Meridian Book: New York,
1956), p. 239: "It is impossible to draw an abrupt line of division between one period and
another...."
7. Henri Pirenne, Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade, trans.
Frank D. Halsey (Doubleday Anchor Book: Garden City, New York, 1958), pp. 55-74. Lynn
White, Jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change (Berkeley, 1966).
8. This may be an area in which changes in nature and society are related. The relation
between changes in climate and the growth and decline of population is not yet dear, however.
9. This is not a special case. Turning points are often marked by demographic
revolutions. The Urban, Iron Age, and Industrial Revolutions all led to rather rapid growth in
population. See also, n. 20.
10. Ferguson, Renaissance in Historical Thought.
11. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (many
editions).
12. Ferguson, Renaissance in Historical Thought, chs. 10-11.
13. Wallace K. Ferguson, "The Interpretation of the Renaissance: Suggestions for a
Synthesis," Journal of the History of Ideas, XII (1951), 483-95.
14. Pirenne's thesis is stated most fully in Henri Pirenne, Mohammed and
Charlemagne (Meridian Booka: New York, 1957). Bryce Lyon, The Origins of the Middle
Ages: Pirenne's Challenge to Gibbon (New York, 1972) gives an account of the debate. For a
recent analysis from an archeological point of view, see Richard Hodges & David
Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne & the Origins of Europe (Ithaca, New York,
1983).
15. Alfons Dopsch, The Economic and Social Foundations of European
Civilization (New York, 1937), ch. 1, analyzes the traditional theory, which he labels
"catastrophic,'' going back to the Italian Humanists. See also Lyon, Origins of the Middle
Ages, chs. 1-2.
16. Ferdinand Lot, The End of the Ancient World and the Beginnings of the Middle
Ages (Harper Torchbook: New York, 1961).
17. Bryce Lyon so argues in The Origins of the Middle Ages. Nevertheless,
Gibbon identifies a distinct period, lasting from the age of Trajan and the Antonines to the
beginning of the sixth century. See Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire, ed. J. B. Bury (London, 1909), vol. I, p. xxxix.
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18. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. III, p. 221.
19. The life of Copernicus, whose heliocentric theory can be viewed as a climax in
intellectual history, was contemporary with that of Luther.
20. If one wishes to be precise, one might argue for A.D. 167, the date of the plague that
marked the beginning of the decline in population.
21. To adopt Pirenne's dating for the end of a period of transition is to remove the
absolute quality it has in his theory. His interpretation de-emphasizes the importance of
Christianity in the period before the seventh century.
22. This remark suggests a final criterion for periodization. In this paper I have discussed
periodization using extremely general criteria based on the abstract concepts of nature, society,
and worldview. Yet the essential subject matter of history remains the lives of men and women.
Although history emphasizes the lives of people living in society, one way to use the concept of
the individual in periodizing history is by focusing on the concept of personal identity. And one
way in which people identify themselves can be used as a way of validating the periodization
suggested here. H. Weisinger, "The Self-Awareness of the Renaissance as a Criterion of the
Renaissance," Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Literature, XXIX
(1944), 561-67, suggested that self-consciousness serves as one criteria for establishing the reality
of the Renaissance. I believe such self-consciousness is generally characteristic of a new period. I
have just suggested that we are now aware that we have moved into a new period of transition.
Other periods as well reflect this self-awareness. Thus citing only the barest of evidence the
Epic of Gilgamesh clearly indicated an awareness that Sumerian civilization differs from
the more primitive age that preceded it; Herodotus contrasted Greek society with that of the East;
the Christian fathers clearly recognized the novelty of their age; and the Quarrel of the Ancients
and Moderns marked a consciousness of the beginning of the Modern Age.
23. Jan Romein, The Watershed of Two Eras: Europe in 1900 (Middletown,
Conn., 1978).
24. I would also extend the general period to 1945. This period is not on a par with
others I have identified. We are too close in time to periodize conclusively.
25. See Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Revolt Against Dualism: An Inquiry Concerning the
Existence of Ideas (La Salle, Illinois, 1960), pp. 8-10.
