A magisterial history of the Renaissance and the birth of the modern world

The cultural epoch we know as the Renaissance emerged at a certain time and in a certain place. Why then and not earlier? Why there and not elsewhere? In The World at First Light, historian Bernd Roeck explores the cultural and historical preconditions that enabled the European Renaissance. Roeck shows that the rediscovery of ancient knowledge, including the science of the medieval Arab world, played a critical role in shaping the beginnings of Western modernity. He explains that the Renaissance emerged in a part of Europe where competing states and cities formed relatively open societies. Most of the era’s creative minds—from Leonardo de Vinci and Michelangelo to Copernicus and Galileo—came from the middle classes. The art of arguing flowered, the basso continuo to intellectual and cultural breakthroughs.

Roeck argues that two revolutions shaped the Renaissance: a media revolution, triggered by Gutenberg’s invention of movable type—which itself was a driving force behind the scientific revolution and the advent of modern science. He also reports on the dark side of the era—hatred of Jews, witch panic, religious wars, and the atrocities of colonialism. In a series of meditative counterfactuals, Roeck considers other cultural rebirths throughout the first millennium, from the Islamic empire to the Carolingians, examining why the epic developments of the Renaissance took place in the West and not elsewhere. The complicated legacy of the Renaissance, he shows, encompasses the art of critical thinking as learned from the ancients, the emergence of the modern state, and the genesis of democracy.

"A new and ambitious history of the Renaissance as a global event which, the author argues, was much more revolutionary and profoundly influential than we currently appreciate. This is nothing less than a new history of the origins, development and legacy of the Renaissance in a global and comparative context. Presented as a panorama of what the author characterises as a restless and dramatic epoch, the book is an exploration of how a distinct concentration of ideas, discoveries, and tumultuous political circumstance should have coalesced in Europe in such a way and at a particular time as to bring about the modern world as we know it. Drawing on a multidisciplinary awareness of history, art, philology, literature, philosophy, science and medicine, and exploiting both traditional accounts and post-colonial approaches, the author seeks to explain how the Renaissance came about and how it was, for better or worse, both the dawn of the modern world and the dawning of modern worldliness. After highlighting the distinctive and advantageous geographical position of Europe and establishing the absolutely crucial heritage of dialogue, criticism and communication from the classical world, the author recounts the various cultural 'rebirths' throughout the first millennium, from the Islamic empire to the Carolingians and late Byzantium, as well as the ongoing 'struggles for order' which marked much of the uneven development of the medieval period. By the very late Middle Ages, then, Europe was a propitious collection advanced states engaged in acrimonious but productive rivalry, wherein populated urban areas offered ideal venues for the exploitation of two phenomena: the importation of moveable type and a widespread adoption of the classical discourse of criticism and exchange. In situating Europe in the context of political and cultural conditions in central and south Asia as well as the Far East, Roeck argues that the explosion in learning and expression which we associate with the Renaissance was a combination of new ideas and material conditions, and of innovations as well as serendipitous political realities; it was also as much the culmination of a long and slow evolution of ancient tendencies as any sudden rediscovery. The consequences in any case have been profound: much that we take for granted in politics, scientific enquiry and intellectual life is a consequence of the Renaissance"--