All serious historical inquiry constantly encounters these major questions: what are the forces of historical change? and are there any general patterns shaping historical development? Theories of revolution have figured large in historians' explanations, yet they have remained deeply controversial, not least because of the complexity - and often ambiguity - of such notions of revolution themselves. In this book fifteen contributors, leading historians and renowned experts in particular fields or periods, examine the interpretative value of ideas of revolution for explaining historical...

The aim of this book is to put the beliefs of the Enlightenment firmly into their social context.

The main literary and artistic currents of Romanticism are well known. This volume aims uniquely to set them in their wider contexts. Thirteen distinguished contributions examine the particular configurations of the Romantic movement within individual national contexts. Parallels, influences and differences are explored between the course of Romanticism in England, France, Germany and ten other European nations, and special emphasis is placed upon the interplay between Romantic culture and social, political and economic change. Narrow definitions of Romanticism are avoided: the contributors...

For many years, the term "fin de siecle" has been used to imply a state of decadence which was thought to have pervaded 'civilized' European society in the years around 1900. This volume of essays, which draws on a very wide range of disciplines, argues that the period was also one of dramatic constructive change.

This was the period of the rise of the giant corporation, of mass production and mass consumption, and of the development of the generation and distribution of electrical energy. Great strides were made in the advance of mechanical road transport and in aviation. Novel social...

The historical impact of national movements in Europe has been dramatic and continues to be an issue of major importance. This volume by leading historians discusses authoritatively European nationalism in its historical context. A glance at what is being shown or written in the media with regard to national and ethnical issues demonstrates the validity of this aim, not only with regard to the multinational former Soviet Union or Yugoslavia in Eastern Europe, but also (for example) to the "four nations" of the British Isles or bi-national Belgium in the west.

"The Renaissance in National Context" aims to dispel the commonly held view that the great efflorescence of art, learning and culture in the period from around 1350 to 1550 was solely or even primarily an Italian phenomenon. A team of distinguished scholars addresses the development of art, literacy and humanism across the length and breadth of Europe--from Rome to the Netherlands, from Poland to France.

The book demonstrates that the revival of letters, and the generation of new currents in artistic expression, had many sources independent of Italy, meeting numerous local needs, and...

The "Scientific Revolution" of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries continues to command attention in historical debate. What was its nature? How did it develop? Controversy still rages about the extent to which it was essentially a "revolution of the mind," or how far it must also be explained by wider considerations--social, economic, political and cultural. In this volume, leading scholars of early modern science argue the importance of specifically national contexts for understanding the transformation in natural philosophy between Copernicus and Newton. Distinct political, religious,...

The "Scientific Revolution" of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries continues to command attention in historical debate. What was its nature? How did it develop? Controversy still rages about the extent to which it was essentially a "revolution of the mind," or how far it must also be explained by wider considerations--social, economic, political and cultural. In this volume, leading scholars of early modern science argue the importance of specifically national contexts for understanding the transformation in natural philosophy between Copernicus and Newton. Distinct political, religious,...

The Industrial Revolution has been, and continues to be, the focus of massive historiographical as well as historical enquiry. This collection includes reappraisals by Phyllis Deane and by Francois Crouzet of their classic accounts of industrialization in Britain and in France, and more generally broaches the wider issue of "new approaches" that have been emerging for the understanding of the industrializing process in nations where it came somewhat later.

This collection of essays explores the experience of religious reform in "national context." In discussing similarities and differences among the reform movements in a dozen European countries, the book considers countries in which the Reformation was strikingly successful and those where it failed to make an impact. The individual essays emphasize the local preconditions and limitations that the Reformation encountered as it spread from Germany into most of the countries of western and central Europe. Together they present a picture of the many-sided nature of the Reformation as it grew up...