The position of the nobility depended on a stable world which accepted their authority: but, in the eighteenth century, that world was becoming increasingly fractured as a result of social and economic developments and new ideas. Since nobles were, in economic terms, an extremely disparate group, ranging from the near destitute to the unimaginably wealthy, how could this ruling class preserve a coherent identity? Was wealth more important than birth or education? How should wealth be retained or accumulated? And what role did women play in shoring up noble pre-eminence? In this wide-ranging study, Jerzy Lukowski addresses these issues, and shows the pressures and tensions - both from governments and from the lower orders - which challenged traditional ruling groups in Europe during the century before the French Revolution. Lukowski explains the basic mechanisms of noble existence and examines how the European aristocracy sought to maintain a sense of solidarity in the midst of widespread change.

Europe in the Eighteenth Century is a social history of Europe in all its aspects: economic, political, diplomatic military, colonial-expansionist. Crisply and succinctly written, it describes Europe not through a history of individual countries, but in a common context during the three quarters of a century between the death of Louis XIV and the industrial revolution in England and the social and political revolution in France. It presents the development of government, institutions, cities, economies, wars, and the circulation of ideas in terms of social pressures and needs, and stresses growth, interrelationships, and conflict of social classes as agents of historical change, paying particular attention to the role of popular, as well as upper- and middle-class, protest as a factor in that change.

The position of the nobility depended on a stable world which accepted their authority: but, in the eighteenth century, that world was becoming increasingly fractured as a result of social and economic developments and new ideas. Since nobles were, in economic terms, an extremely disparate group, ranging from the near destitute to the unimaginably wealthy, how could this ruling class preserve a coherent identity? Was wealth more important than birth or education? How should wealth be retained or accumulated? And what role did women play in shoring up noble pre-eminence? In this wide-ranging study, Jerzy Lukowski addresses these issues, and shows the pressures and tensions - both from governments and from the lower orders - which challenged traditional ruling groups in Europe during the century before the French Revolution. Lukowski explains the basic mechanisms of noble existence and examines how the European aristocracy sought to maintain a sense of solidarity in the midst of widespread change.

This text examines Western European nobility in the 17th and 18th centuries. It includes chapters on: the consolidation of noble power c. 1600-1800; the British nobility 1660-1800; the Dutch nobility; nobility in France and Spain; and the Italian nobilities.

An authoritative and accessible survey of the European nobility over four centuries.