There are several types of periodization of world history. The most famous of them are formational periodization, which we studied in the Soviet school, and civilization periodization, which is also studied at the humanitarian faculties of universities. If we try to consider the history of mankind as a chain of endless conflicts, which it is, then the question arises of the periodization of history from this point of view. In fact, this will be a periodization of international relations from a military point of view.
In our opinion, it would be wrong to choose as milestones in history the conflicts in which at one time or another the largest number of states or the largest armies of a given time took part. It would be advisable to talk about events that were the last or the first of their kind, that is, they put an end or a beginning in a chain of characteristic facts of military history. At the same time, it is advisable to assume transitional periods between the stages of development of international relations, since it is obvious that even in a relatively small territory, society cannot change at the same time, that for the consolidation of any tendency, society, like everything in nature, takes time; or society needs time to comprehend new factors, including the challenges and threats that it had to face, to adapt to new conditions of existence. This presupposes the development of means and methods of protection against these new factors, which sometimes led to a complete change in the system of international relations. It will not be possible to avoid Eurocentrism here, since European civilization has had a much greater influence on the course of world history than any of the Asian civilizations, not to mention the American or African civilizations, which affects our days.
So, the traditional date for the end of the history of the Ancient World is the year 476, when the "last" Roman emperor Romulus Augustulus was overthrown. This did not lead to any radical changes in the life of the Western Roman Empire, and even more so in the system of international relations. There were no such changes until the appearance of Muslim commanders at the borders of the Byzantine Empire and the Sassanid State in the first half of the 7th century. Europe "got acquainted" with Muslim conquerors from the Battle of Yarmouk (636) to the Battle of Poitiers (732), Asia - from the Battle of the Euphrates (633) to the Battle of Talas (751). As you can see, a chronological analogy can be drawn here between Europe and Asia. Islam has since become a factor constantly influencing all three parts of the world known to each other at that time, including Africa. This is what we call the transition period from Antiquity to Modernity, since on a global scale Islam remains such a factor to this day.
If we talk about the Middle Ages that have become traditional in historical periodization, then here we will call the year 1453 as the beginning of the transition to the New Time, since that year ended the most protracted of European wars of that time - the Hundred Years, and also as a result of the Ottoman conquests the geopolitical actor ceased to exist, which played a role since Antiquity, is the Byzantine Empire. The fall of the latter became symbols of the changed face of Europe. In addition, this year the conclusion of the first treaty between Swiss mercenaries and French kings took place, which marked the beginning of the emergence of mercenary troops (separate detachments and entire armies). This phenomenon exists in our time, for example, the soldiers of the French Foreign Legion or the Nepalese Gurkhas, although they are not mercenaries from the point of view of international law (mercenaries de facto, not de jure).
Now we need to decide whether the year 1453 was the last in the transition period from the Middle Ages to the New Time, or it was the first. If we assume that the New Time began in 1453, then we can conditionally say that such events as the beginning of the Hundred Years War (1337) and the first penetration of the Ottoman Turks (the emergence of a new actor, albeit under the already well-known - Muslim - flag) into Europe (1352), which roughly coincide in time, marked the beginning of the transition period from the Middle Ages to the New Age.
If we accept that the transition period from the Middle Ages to the New Time began in 1453, then it is advisable to take the year 1523 as its end, when the Knight Uprising was defeated, which marked the disappearance of the knightly army as a military-political factor, and when play a new military-political factor - the mercenary army. Around the same time, the Reformation began to spread, leading to protracted religious wars and significantly influencing the system of international relations, including between the colonial (read - European) powers in Asia and Africa. In addition, in 1522, the first round the world voyage, begun by Fernand Magellan, which was of great psychological importance for all the naval powers of that time, was completed, and from 1525, from the Battle of Pavia, hand firearms began to be massively used on the battlefield, which led to a radical change in battle tactics. The latter caused a revolution in military affairs, including in the recruitment and training of troops, which in turn entailed changes in the state structure of European countries and the intensification of colonization.
The year 1492, when the completion of the Reconquista and the "discovery" of America by Christopher Columbus took place (Europeans before Amerigo Vespucci, that is, for about 10 years, believed that Columbus sailed to India), cannot be considered as having an epochal significance, since the fall of the small Emirate of Granada was rather symbolic meaning, moreover, of a local nature, and before the defeat of the "Great Armada" (1588), the New World was divided and colonized by only two powers - Spain and Portugal.
The assertion that the Thirty Years' War is the last war of the Middle Ages does not stand up to criticism, since its main reason was the Reformation, and this war was waged in new, completely different from medieval conditions: it is enough to recall the military revolution mentioned above. As a consequence, the scale of the Thirty Years' War surpassed all previous European conflicts.
Antoine Jean Gros. Napoleon Bonaparte on the Arkolsky bridge
Taking into account the enormous damage caused to the peoples due to the ambitions of Napoleon Bonaparte, in a sense, he can be called the first war criminal in the history of mankind. It is obvious that the Napoleonic Wars in their scale and losses were incomparably superior even to the Thirty Years' War, although they lasted about 20 years. Both of these events (the Napoleonic Wars should be considered as one phenomenon) led to a change in the system of international relations: the Westphalian system and the Vienna system were formed accordingly. However, here, in our opinion, we can only talk about the periodization of the New Time, and not about the transition to the Newest history.
The new actor who changed the face of the world was the German Empire that emerged in 1871, which played the role of the main provocateur of both world wars (undoubtedly, Hitler's Third Reich should be considered as the ideological successor of the Second Reich). Thus, since 1871before the fall of the Third Reich in 1945 and, as a result, before the formation of the Yalta-Potsdam world order, we should talk about the transition to the Modern Era, since the Versailles-Washington system of international relations did not eliminate Germany as a destabilizing factor (read: a hotbed of tension), which led to the Second World War.
