Early modern warfare is associated with the start of the widespread use of gunpowder and the development of suitable weapons to use the explosive, including artillery and handguns such as the arquebus and later the musket, and for this reason the era is also summarized as the age of gunpowder warfare.

Prior to the 15th century, gunpowder was used on a limited basis, but its use became universal in the early modern period, its apex occurring during the Napoleonic Wars from 1792 to 1815. This entire period is contained within the Age of Sail, which characteristic dominated the era's naval tactics, including the use of gunpowder in naval artillery.

All of the Great Powers of Europe and the Middle East were actively fighting numerous wars throughout this period, grouped in rough geographical and chronological terms as the European wars of religion between the 1520s and the 1640s (including the Thirty Years' War, the Eighty Years' War and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms) and the Franco-Spanish War (1635–1659); the Northern Wars, Polish–Swedish wars and Russo-Swedish Wars; the Russo-Turkish Wars, Ottoman–Habsburg wars, and other Ottoman wars in Europe. In the Horn of Africa; the Adal's conquest of Ethiopia and the involving of the Ottomans, Mamluks and the Portuguese. In Asia the Persia–Portugal war, the Mughal conquests, the Chinese Ten Great Campaigns, and the Anglo-Mysore Wars; and throughout the 18th century the "Second Hundred Years' War", an umbrella term which includes the Nine Years' War, Seven Years' War, War of the Spanish Succession, War of the Austrian Succession, and finally the American War of Independence, French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars of the late 18th to early 19th centuries which mark the end of this era.

Modern warfare, although present in every historical period of military history, is generally used to refer to the concepts, methods and technologies that have come into use during and after the Second World War and the Korean War.^{[citation needed]} The concepts and methods have assumed more complex forms of the 19th- and early-20th-century antecedents, largely due to the widespread use of highly advanced information technology, and modern armies must modernize constantly to preserve their battleworthiness.

Although total war was thought to be the form of international conflicts from the experience of the French Revolutionary Wars to the Second World War, the term no longer describes warfare in which countries or nations use all of their resources to destroy another country's or nation's organized ability to engage in war. The practice of total war which had been in use for over a century, as a form of war policy, has been changed dramatically with greater awareness of tactical, operational and strategic battle information.

In history, the early modern period of modern history follows the late Middle Ages. Although the chronological limits of the period are open to debate, the timeframe spans the period after the late portion of the Middle Ages (c. 1500) through the beginning of the Age of Revolutions (c. 1800) and is traditionally demarcated by historians as beginning with the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire in 1453 CE. From a global standpoint, the most important feature of the early modern period was its globalizing character — it witnessed the exploration and colonization of the Americas and the rise of sustained contacts between previously isolated parts of the globe. The historical powers became involved in global trade. This world trading of goods, plants, animals, and food crops saw exchange in the Old World and the New World. The Columbian Exchange greatly affected almost every society on Earth.

In the world, capitalist economies and institutions became more sophisticated and globally articulated. This process began in the medieval North Italian city-states, particularly Genoa, Venice, and Milan. The early modern period also saw the rise and beginning of the dominance of the economic theory of mercantilism. It also saw the European colonization during the 15th to 19th centuries which resulted in the spread of Christianity around the world.