This book is a study of the occupation of western Germany by the armies of the French Revolution in the decade which separated the first invasion in 1792 from the final absorption of the left bank of the Rhineland into the French Republic ten years later.

In this fascinating new account of Old Regime Europe, T.C.W. Blanning explores the cultural revolution which transformed eighteenth-century Europe. During this period the court culture exemplified by Louis XIV's Versailles was pushed from the center to the margins by the emergence of a new kind of space - the public sphere. The author shows how many of the world's most important cultural institutions developed in this space: the periodical, the newspaper, the novel, the lending library, the coffee house, the voluntary association, the journalist, and the critic.

In the nineteenth century Europe changed more rapidly and more radically than during any prior period. These six specially commissioned chapters by eminent historians offer the student and general reader a unique approach to understanding one of the most complex periods of modern history, addressing all the major issues in Europe's political, social, economic, cultural, international, and Imperial history.

This is an analytical account of a colorful period in Russian history, which is accessible to undergraduates of European and Russian history, as well as to the nonspecialist reader. Central to a discussion that emphasizes Russia's place in Europe are the much misunderstood personalities of some remarkable rulers, such as Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and Alexander I. Their reigns are set in the context of wider developments in social, economic, cultural and intellectual history that help to account for Russia's emergence as a great power.

This book is the first comprehensive history of the European nobility between the Renaissance and the French Revolution. Designed to introduce students and nonspecialists to the subject, it explains all the principal themes in an authoritative and accessible manner. Challenging the conventional point of view, Professor Dewald maintains that the nobles of Europe adapted effectively to the profound changes that marked society and culture at this time. He also argues that the nobility throughout Europe faced the same challenges and reacted to them in similar ways, despite their varying numbers...

This study provides an accessible and authoritative account of poverty and deviance during the early modern period, informed by those new perspectives on the role of the poor themselves in the provision of welfare services characteristic of much recent social history. Contrary to the once-traditional historical emphasis on the ameliorative role of individual reformers, Professor JUtte's account looks much more closely at the poor themselves, and the complex network of social and communal relationships they inhabited.

This book is the first comprehensive history of the European nobility between the Renaissance and the French Revolution. Designed to introduce students and nonspecialists to the subject, it explains all the principal themes in an authoritative and accessible manner. Challenging the conventional point of view, Professor Dewald maintains that the nobles of Europe adapted effectively to the profound changes that marked society and culture at this time. He also argues that the nobility throughout Europe faced the same challenges and reacted to them in similar ways, despite their varying numbers...

This book is an introduction to the history of work in general and of artisans in particular in Europe from 1300 to 1914. It focuses on many aspects of artisan culture, including economic and guild life, and discusses social, rebellious, ceremonial and leisure experience as well. Women, masters, journeymen, apprentices, and non-guild workers all receive substantial treatment, and the text is illuminated with fascinating illustrations.

Despite the fact that its capital city and over one third of its territory was within the continent of Europe, the Ottoman Empire has consistently been regarded as a place apart, inextricably divided from the West by differences of culture and religion. A perception of its militarism, its barbarism, its tyranny, the sexual appetites of its rulers and its pervasive exoticism has led historians to measure the Ottoman world against a western standard and find it lacking. In recent decades, a dynamic and convincing scholarship has emerged that seeks to comprehend and, in the process, to...

James Melton's accessible study examines the rise of "the public" in eighteenth-century Europe. Focusing on England, France, and the German-speaking territories, this is the first critical reassessment of what the philosopher JUrgen Habermas called the "bourgeois public sphere" of the eighteenth century. Topics include the growing importance of public opinion in political life, transformations of the literary public realm, eighteenth-century authorship, theater publics, and new practices of sociability as they developed in salons, coffeehouses, taverns and Masonic lodges.