Jerzy Lukowski shows the pressures and tensions, both from below and from governments, which increasingly challenged traditional ruling groups in Europe during the century before the French Revolution. The position of the nobility depended on a stable world which accepted their authority; but that world was becoming fractured as a result of social and economic developments and new ideas. Lukowski explains the basic mechanisms of noble existence and examines how the European nobility sought to preserve a sense of solidarity in the midst of widespread change.
Jerzy Lukowski shows the pressures and tensions, both from below and from governments, which increasingly challenged traditional ruling groups in Euro...
During the eighteenth century Europea s republics may have been an integral part of the international scene, but they were marginalised or in decline. When, in 1772, the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania suffered a massive loss of territory to its three more powerful neighbours, Russia, Prussia and Austria, Edmund Burkea s question Poland was but a breakfast where will they dine?a was asked across the continenta s lesser states, republics and non-republics alike. The slow, almost inevitable, process of Polanda s digestion may have contributed to the relative ease with which that process...
During the eighteenth century Europea s republics may have been an integral part of the international scene, but they were marginalised or in decline...
