Derek Beales is Emeritus Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. His previous publications include Joseph II. Volume I: In the Shadow of Maria Theresa, 1741 80 (Cambridge University Press, 1987), Prosperity and Plunder: European Catholic Monasteries in the Age of Revolution, 1650 1810 (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and Enlightenment and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Europe (2005).