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What is Periodisation? Why is it useful

Modern Period
This period began in Europe with the coming of the Industrial Revolution which changed the way goods were produced forever. It led to social and political changes which became characteristics of the Modern Period. However, in India, the situation was somewhat different. India did not witness the scientific and industrial changes in this period to the extent that Europe did. This is why India became a supplier of raw materials at cheap rates which helped British industries to progress. It also served as a market for goods manufactured in British factories. Local Indian industries declined and received little attention from the colonial government. The standard of living of the common people declined. India had become a colony being exploited by an imperialist power. Therefore, Indian historians refer to this period as the 'colonial' period instead of Modern Period.
USEFULNESS AND IMPORTANCE OF PERIODISM
We periodise history in an attempt to capture the characteristics of a time, its central features as they appeared to us. They reflect our ideas of the past. They show how we see  the significance of the change from one period to the next.
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Akanksha
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Dear Student
Periodisation refers to the process of demarcating the difference between periods. They reflect our ideas about the past. They show how we see the significance of the change from one period to the next.

3.Historians refer to modern period as colonial period because it marked the age of imperialism where the world was divided into colonial empires and the colonisers.

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Periodization" refers to how historians divide up portions of time into eras or periods that are discernibly different from others. It is important to historiography because it provides useful terminology for classifying events within broad categories of historical experience. For example, the period "Middle Ages" or "medieval era" provides a way to identify as connected a whole range of events occurring between the 500s and 1400s CE. By referring to the 1500s-1700s as the "early modern" era, then, the time period from around 1450-1550 can be usefully conceived as a transition in politics, society, and technology.

Periodization is always a construct imposed upon the past. People back in the historical era itself did not usually recognize themselves as living in an historical era. People usually think of themselves in their own time as 'modern' and not part of some broader time frame. Nobody in the 1300s woke up and said, "Another day in the Middle Ages!" That concept of a "medieval" period was articulated in the 16th century by Renaissance thinkers who wanted to position their own contemporary cultural movement as superior to the past millennium (which they wanted to describe as a "dark age" between the light of ancient Roman civilization and the new Renaissance in Europe). This periodization has stuck because it is kind of useful to historians (though most serious historians no longer uncritically accept the whole 'dark age' notion created by the Renaissance partisans).
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