This is the only modern study of European international politics to cover the entire timespan from the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763 to the revolutionary year of 1848.

ECONOMIST BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2016 'A scintillating, encyclopaedic history, rich in detail from the arcane to the familiar... a veritable tour de force' Richard Overy, New Statesman 'Transnational history at its finest ... .. social, political and cultural themes swirl together in one great canvas of immense detail and beauty' Gerard DeGroot, The Times 'Dazzlingly erudite and entertaining' Dominic Sandbrook, The Sunday Times A masterpiece which brings to life an extraordinarly turbulent and dramatic era of revolutionary change. The Pursuit of Power draws on a lifetime of thinking about nineteenth-century Europe to create an extraordinarily rich, surprising and entertaining panorama of a continent undergoing drastic transformation. The book aims to reignite the sense of wonder that permeated this remarkable era, as rulers and ruled navigated overwhelming cultural, political and technological changes. It was a time where what was seen as modern with amazing speed appeared old-fashioned, where huge cities sprang up in a generation, new European countries were created and where, for the first time, humans could communicate almost instantly over thousands of miles. In the period bounded by the Battle of Waterloo and the outbreak of World War I, Europe dominated the rest of the world as never before or since: this book breaks new ground by showing how the continent shaped, and was shaped by, its interactions with other parts of the globe. Richard Evans explores fully the revolutions, empire-building and wars that marked the nineteenth century, but the book is about so much more, whether it is illness, serfdom, religion or philosophy. The Pursuit of Power is a work by a historian at the height of his powers: essential for anyone trying to understand Europe, then or now.

The three intervening decades between the Congress of Vienna and the Revolutions of 1848 are marked by enormous social, political, economic and cultural change. Liberalism, nationalism, romanticism and industrialism profoundly affected the course of Europe and compelled conservative monarchies to accept the principles of collective action and military force to curb political revolution. In the years immediately following 1815, the Quadruple and Holy Alliances served the dual purpose of preventing a restoration of Bonapartism and suppressing revolutions. By the 1820s these international associations dissipated, but the principles upon which they were founded informed the decisions of the respective governments through 1848. The classic articles and papers collected in this volume attempt to illustrate that despite the substantial changes to European society which occurred during these thirty years, European powers accepted common principles which influenced their state's domestic and foreign policies.

Mastering Modern European History traces the development of Europe from the French Revolution to the present day. Political, diplomatic and socio-economic strands are woven together and supported by a wide range of pictures, maps, graphs and questions. Documentary extracts are included throughout to encourage the reader to question the nature and value of various types of historical evidence. The second edition brings us fully up to the present day. Chapters on European Decolonisation, Communist Europe 1985-9, and European Unity and Discord have been added, and others have been substantially rewritten. An even wider range of illustrations and documentary source questions are included. The book is presented in a readable and well ordered format and is an ideal reference text for students.

A "lively, panoramic" history of a revolutionary year (New York Times) In 1848, a violent storm of revolutions ripped through Europe. The torrent all but swept away the conservative order that had kept peace on the continent since Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815 -- but which in many countries had also suppressed dreams of national freedom. Political events so dramatic had not been seen in Europe since the French Revolution, and they would not be witnessed again until 1989, with the revolutions in Eastern and Central Europe. In 1848, historian Mike Rapport examines the roots of the ferment and then, with breathtaking pace, chronicles the explosive spread of violence across Europe. A vivid narrative of a complex chain of interconnected revolutions, 1848 tells the exhilarating story of Europe's violent "Spring of Nations" and traces its reverberations to the present day.

This book takes up a question raised about the nature of the European international system in the late eighteenth-early nineteenth centuries by Paul W. Schroeder's pathbreaking and controversial work, "The Transformation of European Politics, 1763 - 1848" (1994). Schroeder's central claim was that the European states system underwent a fundamental transformation in the revolutionary, Napoleonic, and Vienna eras from a system of competitive, conflictual power politics based purely on a shifting balance of power to a more consensual, stable, and peaceful set of relations based on legality, acknowledged rights and obligations, and shared norms. The contributors to this volume, while examining this claim, primarily extend the debate to the entire history of European and world international politics from the early seventeenth century to the present. If this transformation was real, they ask, was it only a temporary episode, or does it represent an example of other transformations or structural changes in international politics over the centuries down to the present day, and a possible model for change in the future?