Explains how bold efforts at profound progressive change provoked a powerful reactionary backlash that led to the imposition of brutal, regressive dictatorships.

A study of the economic and social changes which shaped the movement for German unification. The author emphasizes the effect of industrialism on urban life, traces the decline of manorialism in agriculture and seeks to show that the political movements of these years were profoundly influenced by the economic transition from agrarianism to capitalism.

An engaging range of period texts and theme books for AS and A Level history. In many ways the period 1789-1849 saw the birth of the modern world, as the people of Europe grappled with the impact of the new political and social ideas, rapid population growth and the acceleration of the industrialisation. The clash between the forces of change and of conservatism provoked crisis, war, revolution and reaction. Andrew Matthews provides a lively and intelligent account. In chapters that focus on the French Revolution, Napoleon, Restoration France, Metternich's Europe and the 1848 revolutions, he considers the key individuals, groups and political, social and economic pressures that produced so much revolution, repression and war.

Broers seeks to unravel the different strands of modern European political culture at a crucial but neglected stage of their development by analyzing and comparing the major political ideologies of the period within the context of their times.