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The century between 1603 and 1714--an era of profound social, economic, and religious change--launched Britain from an isolated archipelago to a world-class intellectual, commercial, and military center. An outburst of intellectual creativity that surpassed even the Renaissance saw a language scarcely known beyond its native shores become immortalized for a future world.
From the accession of James I to the death of Queen Anne, Britain evolved from an isolated archipelago to a world-class intellectual, commercial, and military center. It was an epoch whose monarchic convulsions, constitutional changes, and bloody civil war contained the seminal moments in Britain's political development -- and the seeds of subsequent political history in the Western world. An era of profound social, economic, and religious change, it saw the rise and fall of Puritanism, the birth of the modern business world, and an outburst of intellectual creativity that surpassed even the Renaissance. Science came of age in discoveries that were the origin of every modern discipline, and from Shakespeare and the King James Bible to Milton and Bunyan, from Swift to Pope, a language scarcely known beyond its native shores was immortalized for a future world.
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