Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on a specific continent and the spatial horizons of its inhabitants rather than an 'isolationist' perspective or an implicit claim of pre-eminence. Encompassing coastal regions, fertile plains as well as high mountains, its natural conditions have always fostered different kinds of socio-economic regimes. The book highlights wider geographical, economic and cultural connections throughout the period, including the intensification of exchange with Africa, Asia and the New World as well as different forms of European settlement there. Europeans had options within strong environmental and cultural constraints. The book presents a primarily thematic structure. The early modern centuries were highly dynamic, allowing individuals and communities to combine elements from this list into peculiar mixtures which were neither unambiguously 'medieval' nor 'modern'.