The Eighteenth Century: Europe 1688-1815 (Short Oxford History of Europe) - Softcover

Reviewed along side "The Nineteenth Century" by same author, "compendious, informed, instructive, readable and easy to handle....evoke thoughtful, colourful and lively essays...For scholars and specialists their most rewarding aspect is the way all contributions examine traditional and up-to-the-minut interpretation, pointing out interpretative virtues and shortcomings and providing perspectives that are the more satisfying for being tentative rather than totalitarian. Statements are backed by information, generalizations carry corroboration, statistics are soberly (and moderately)used, less for support than for illumination. Maps, chronological tables and suggestions for further reading also prove helpful...Tim Blanning and his colleagues have done justice to the fraught, fantastic times they have had to grapple with", Eugen Weber, TLS, 15th December 2000

An important and valuable contribution to the comparative understanding of Britain and Germany from 1750 to 1850. (Jörn Leonhard, Wadham College, Oxford)

The contributions, which offer a wide range of new perspectives in detail generally based on original source material, allow a deeper insight into the advantages of comparative analysis, especially where the articles concentrate sustematically on both Britain and Germany. (Jörn Leonhard, Wadham College, Oxford)

The illustration of the different meanings and ambiguities of contemporary key concepts of the period such as state, reform, revolution and parliament in Germany and Britain is clearly one of the most valuable outcomes of this book. It is hoped that such a collection will inspire more comparisons on a European level of analysis. (Jörn Leonhard, Wadham College, Oxford)

Important text for access to Europe on the eve of industrialization. Dr Tim Megarry, Senior Lecturuer in Sociology and Anthropology, University of Greenwich

The complete Short Oxford History of Europe (series editor: Professor T.C.W. Blanning) will cover the history of Europe from Classical Greece to the present in eleven volumes. In each, experts write to their strengths tackling the key issues including society, economy, religion, politics, and culture head-on in chapters that will be at once wide-ranging surveys and searching analyses. Each book is specifically designed with the non-specialist reader in mind; but the authority of the contributors and the vigour of the interpretations will make them necessary and challenging reading for fellow academics across a range of disciplines.

The word which best summarizes the wonderful variety of human experience in the eighteenth century is `expansion'. The size of armies, literacy rates, state intervention, the acreage of overseas empires, productivity or just the number of Europeans on the planet were all significantly higher in 1800 than in 1700. It is the century which forms the hinge between the old world and the new for, by its end, change was not only detectable, it was also seen to be irreversible. In this book, six experts analyse concisely and incisively the major developments in politics, society, the economy, religion and culture, warfare and international relations, and in Europe's relations with the world overseas.