Period 6: Early Modern

Starts with Machiavelli (1513A.D.) and ends with Matsuo Basho (1707A.D.)

There is a huge time gap betwen the last text in the list (1408A.D.) and the first text of this list (1513A.D.) - somehow the split into the Modern periods is inherent in the list. Starting in this period, Western texts become dominant; however, in the early Modern period, it might not have been caused as much by the level of intellectual activities than by what happened subsequently -- European's colonizing the world in the next period made many intellectual efforts done elsewhere in this period obsolete. Within the West, Romance languages created the key texts of Renaissance, Age of Discovery and Reformation, yet English language texts also entered the stage - again, later English strength (both as a colonizing power and a language) might help explain this.

Further east the situation is more dispersed. Arabic was used by Shiite philosophers in Iran, while Persian was used in India to write history of Akbar. Turkish started to be used as an intellectual language in Ottoman lands, while the Sikh scripture is actually somewhat of an anthology of Northern Indian bhakti poets. In East Asia, post-Zhu Xi neo-Confucianism thrived in Korea (and Japan) while facing renewed challenges in both the Ming (captured in Mingru Xuean of Huang Zongxi, focusing on Wang Yangming and his successors) and Qing dynasties. Tokugawa Japan, literature thrived, with the Zen-like, pithy Haiku perfected by Basho in late 17th/early 18th century.