The introduction of this chapter summarizes the major cultural changes that the early modern era of world history gave birth to. This ranges from the spreading of Christianity to Asians, Muslims, and Native Americans to the emergence of a modern scientific outlook on life. All of these cultural transformations that were taking place during this time were due to the globalization of the world and the world was evolving as a melting pot of different cultures and beliefs.
The Christians of the world were divided by the Roman Catholics of the Western and Central Europe and the Orthodox of Eastern Europe and Russia. The Christians were also facing competition from the expansion of Islam. The Protestant Reformation also split up the Roman Catholic Church because people were offended that it was associated with the rural and feudal world of aristocratic privilege. Despite new changes, Protestant women were still oppressed and considered less than men in the Church. The rivalry between Protestant and Catholic's caused major conflict all throughout Europe, from France, to Germany, and in the Roman Empire. The Protestant Reformation during this time encouraged skepticism towards authority and tradition. Religious individualism was a whole new concept that the Protestants encouraged and revitalized Christianity was established around the world in the centuries following this reformation.
Conversion of Spanish America to Christianity was something that millions accepted and embraced. Europeans were highly aggressive, claiming religious truth and destructing local gods. Church authorities would destroy and disrespect many ritual objects just to undermine native religion. Attacks on Christianity from the Spanish-American people were quickly shot down, so instead many groups tried to blend the two religious traditions together, by assimilating Christianity into patterns of local culture. Overall, Christianity did begin to take root in this environment, however, it was Andean or Mexican Christianity, instead of being an exact copy of the Spanish Christianity.
In China, there was no mass conversion to Christianity like there was in Spanish America, however there was a modest spread of these ideas among some Chinese people. The aspect of Christianity just did not fit with the long rooted culture of the Chinese people and it did not offer anything that the Chinese genuinely wanted. There was ultimately many aspects that played into the general failure of trying to create a presence of Christianity in China.
In China during the Ming and Qing dynasties, they operated under Confusion framework which was supplemented with ideas from Buddhism and Daoism. This created a system called Neo-Confucianism. In China there was also a movement called koazheng, which meant "research based on evidence" and emphasized the importance of verification and precision. In China among the less educated, culture was growing and the arts, and novels were becoming increasingly popular.
Moving away from religion, during the early modern period there was also the Scientific Revolution. The first major break through in the Scientific Revolution was the argument that the sun was the center, and the Earth and other planets revolved around it. Sir Isaac Newton formulated the modern laws of motion and mechanics This fueled a completely new scientific few of the universe by Europeans. In the eighteenth century growing numbers of people started believing that the outcome of the scientific revolution would be the "enlightenment". This was the belief that humans would discover the way that mankind can govern itself more effectively. The idea of progress is what the central belief of enlightenment was.
The Scientific Revolution and its ideas ultimately began spread globally, more than the ideas of religion and the arts. European science did impact Asian scholars and they selectively assimilated some of these ideas on their own terms. Theoretical science was facing a challenge while the ideas of Western Science were on the rise.
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