Early Modern Period from the end of the Thirty Years' War to the French Revolution - Enlightenment - a completed era or an open political project? - Broadening of horizons and experience of the world: transformation of consciousness at the beginning of modernity - emergence of the knowledge society - changes in the historical-political constellation: state systems, colonialism, discourses of power and domination - places, protagonists, and ideas of the European Enlightenment.