Recensioni
The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions that… di Tim Blanning
These dual subjects are the focus of Tim Blanning’s book. Drawing upon his considerable knowledge of the era, he details both the background of 18th century European politics and the developments which led to the declarations of the revolutionary wars. More broadly, though, he also assesses modern theories about the nature of war, and how they contribute to our understanding of its existence. It’s an appropriate approach to take particularly for what is meant to be the first chronological volume in a series of books on the origins of modern wars, yet Blanning is wise enough to use them to inform our understanding of the elements that motivate modern wars generally rather than the causes of specific ones.
To determine the latter, Blanning focuses on the events that led to the outbreak of European wars in 1792, 1793, and 1798. In his view, none of them were inevitable, and broke out not over ideological issues, but by more practical political considerations. As he notes, for rulers in 18th century Europe war was a tool of policy, one waged with armies that were smaller and more professional than before. These were used to pursue territorial gain or economic advantage over other European. Traditional enmities barely factored into this, as nations who might oppose each other in one war might find themselves allies in the next.
As Blanning demonstrates, this did not change with the advent of the French Revolution. Here he challenges the common interpretation of the wars as ideologically driven, showing how the major European powers were more concerned with their existing contests for position than they were with the possibility of revolution spilling over from France. Many of the regimes that might have most feared a popular uprising in fact welcomed Louis XVI’s revolutionary plight in the belief that it weakened France’s ability to challenge their schemes elsewhere. While this proved true in the early years of the Revolution, many politicians in the French National Assembly were only too eager to exploit Austrian bellicosity in early 1792 as a means of rallying a fracturing polity behind them. This paid off with a victorious war against an Austro-Prussian coalition, with the newly empowered France becoming enough of a threat to British and Russian interests to bring them into the conflict the following year. These interests were also at play in 1798 with the outbreak of the War of the Second Coalition, by which time the revolutionary rhetoric that rallied the French population six years earlier was an increasingly distant memory.
Throughout his book Blanning displays an impressive command of both the available documentary materials and the decades of historical scholarship about the era, which he employs to provide his readers with an insightful examination of his subject. By integrating the diplomatic events of the 1790s into the larger context of contemporary European politics, he makes a persuasive argument for looking past the radical rhetoric in favor of the underlying continuities. It’s an impressive work that, over thirty-five years after its original publication, remains a valuable introduction to both the diplomacy of the French Revolutionary period in particular and the factors that lead to war more generally.
Blanning's strategy in this fascinating biography seems to be to embrace the contradictions without taking sides, as far as that's possible, and to look into the separate strains in Frederick's political and personal situation that were pushing him in these opposing directions. Key, of course, is Frederick's terrible relationship with his father: ruthlessly bullied up to the moment Frederick William died, he enthusiastically took up everything his father hated: art, music, clothes, porcelain, philosophy, free-thinking (and conversely, he took against hunting, drinking, and heterosexuality...). But, thanks to his father's philistinism, he had a very poor education, with all kinds of gaps that couldn't easily be filled later in life. And, in an age when great powers like France and Austria were virtually bankrupt, he had inherited a huge, low-mileage army and enormous piles of hard cash that the miserly Frederick William hadn't had any interest in spending. It would have needed a lot of willpower not to start at least a small war, and the strategically vital Austrian province of Silesia seemed to be there for the taking...
We are led fairly efficiently through the many conflicts of the Silesian wars, the Seven Years War, and the Bavarian Succession, although it's pretty clear that Blanning's first interest is not military history: he conscientiously gives us a sketch-map of each of the important battles, but rarely describes them in the sort of detail that would make a map useful. The diplomacy and strategic manoeuvring in the background is much more fascinating than the battlefield action, but it does become clear that Frederick was better at emotional leadership than at battlefield tactics. When he won a battle he got all the credit because he was so much admired by his subordinates (if not by his fellow-generals). And when he didn't win, he often managed to limit the damage by moving more quickly and decisively after the battle than his opponents.
The more interesting part of the book deals with cultural and social issues. The interesting puzzle of how Berlin-Potsdam failed to become a really important musical centre, despite having a ruler who was a talented and enthusiastic musician. Mannheim and Vienna were the real musical hotspots of the time, with London not far behind. Blanning gives a lot of the blame for that to Frederick's micro-management, and to his tastes that were frozen somewhere in the 1730s. Innovative musicians would have been permanently at war with him, and word soon got around that he didn't take kindly to anyone who wanted to move on to a better-paid post elsewhere. If you were a talented soprano (or a French philosophe) you might well find a Berlin Wall restricting your movements well before 1960. So he was left with competent but not top-flight musicians, like J J Quantz and C P E Bach.
Language is the really odd thing: Frederick seems to have treated his native language in much the same way that 19th century colonial administrators thought of African and Asian languages: useful for giving orders and condescending to the locals, but scarcely a medium for high culture. French was insisted on for official business, and was the language Frederick wrote his many books and poems in — one of the causes of his famous row with Voltaire was his expectation that the great man would be willing to act as his spelling-checker. At a moment when all Europe was rushing out to buy copies of Werther (and the fancy-dress to go with it), Frederick was publishing a pamphlet arguing that it was impossible for German culture to match the achievements of French and Italian. Lessing, the most distinguished Prussian writer of the time, whom Frederick took even less notice of than he did of Goethe, charitably suggested that Frederick's highly-publicised contempt actually encouraged German writers to try harder.
Of course, the thing we really want from a 21st century biography of Frederick is to follow him into the bedroom! Blanning admits that there's no likelihood now that we will ever get conclusive information about Frederick's real sexual preferences from someone who was there at the time, but decides on the basis of the huge amount of circumstantial evidence (from the all-male parties and homoerotic artworks at Sanssouci to Frederick's abandonment of the pretence of living with his wife the moment his father was out of the way) that it's silly to try to represent him as heterosexual, as many earlier historians have done.
Very readable and interesting biography.
Frederick II, King of Prussia from 1740 to 1786, raised Prussia to the status of a great European power.
Through war, diplomacy and domestic reforms he created the core of an Imperial Germany that was to emerge a century later.
In wars that pitted Prussia against France, Russia, Sweden and Austria, Frederick won renown as a battlefield tactician and military strategist.
As a legend in his own lifetime Frederick was labelled “the Great” by his contemporaries and bred a cult of his personality that lasted for more than a century.
When Napoleon invaded Prussia in 1806 and captured Berlin 20 years after Frederick’s death, the Emperor went on a pilgrimage to Frederick’s tomb in Potsdam, saying that he would not have been there if Frederick were still alive.
Less than a decade later, Prussian troops tipped the balance leading to Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Waterloo.
The 19th century Germany military theorist von Clausewitz, revered both Frederick and Napoleon as exemplary practitioners of warfare while Carlyle’s contribution to this hero-worship was an exhaustive six-volume biography.
In the 20th century, Frederick’s image as a warrior-king was used by Hitler and the Nazis to embed their aggressive nationalism.
In response liberals criticised Frederick’s militarism, his unnecessary and bloody wars, and his forced divisions of other peoples’ territories, most notably during the partition of Poland in 1772.
Yet, in contrast to the German nationalist view, Frederick is judged by many historians to have been an enlightened despot who espoused liberal and humanist values and whose regime prefigured the democratic and secular societies of our own age.
He was also a philosopher-king, a latter-day renaissance man who believed princes were duty-bound to implement the rational teachings of philosophers.
And central to Frederick’s own political philosophy was that the rule of law must apply to the sovereign as well as to citizens.
While he was the king of a pious Protestant country, he did not believe in Christian doctrine.
He nevertheless favoured religious toleration, including of Catholics and gave refuge to the Jesuits when their order was dissolved by Pope Clement XIV in 1773.
Frederick also granted political asylum to Voltaire and other persecuted luminaries of the European Enlightenment. He was less tolerant towards Jews but even they prospered in his Prussia. So, apart from Great Britain, Frederick’s Prussia was regarded as the most liberal society in all of 18th century Europe.
Frederick was a multi-linguist but detested his native language and had little time for such German national icons as the poet Goethe. But nor did he appreciate Shakespeare, preferring instead the classics of French literature and philosophy.
As an active poet, a musician and a patron of the arts, he built the Berlin Opera House and amassed a huge collection of paintings and sculptures. It was during Frederick’s reign that art and high culture became a new, secular religion in Europe.
In recent years interest in Frederick’s colourful private life has come to the fore. He was a camp king, who revelled in homo-erotica, surrounded himself with homosexuals and may even have been a practising homosexual, notwithstanding his arranged marriage to a German princess.
Not surprisingly, Frederick’s life and career has generated a vast literature. His own collected writings fill 30 volumes while his voluminous correspondence fills another 50.
Much of his writing chronicled the prosecution of his military campaigns because, as Winston Churchill later proved, Frederick believed history would judge his actions to be both right and just because he was the one writing it!
In the 21st century, the 300th anniversary of his birth in 2012 saw a further revival of interest in Frederick, especially in Germany where the lessons of past German leadership in Europe are a highly topical subject of discussion.
Tim Blanning’s contribution to this literature is a grand synthesis of research and writing on Frederick that probes each and every aspect his life and reign — military, political, cultural, economic and, above all, personal. The book is long — more than 600 pages of text with maps and illustrations — but is as accessible as it is erudite. Blanning was Professor of Modern History at Cambridge and was for many years associated with University College Cork as an external examiner. His expertise is the history of 18th century Europe and this book is the culmination of a lifetime of scholarship.
The first half is devoted mainly to Frederick’s childhood and early life and to the various military campaigns he undertook after becoming King in 1740.
Frederick’s father — Frederick William — was a brutal parent who, writes Blanning, “never praised his son, never showed him any affection and treated him worse than he did his court buffoons.”
At 18 Frederick ran away with a military friend but was caught and imprisoned while his companion was beheaded. Thereafter Frederick buckled down to his father’s authority but kept his own counsel and nurtured his own identity as an intellectual and aesthete. When he ascended the throne, Frederick rebelled against his father’s austere regime but benefitted greatly from the strong military foundations of his inheritance.
When I worked with Tim in the 1990s, what impressed me most was the careful judgement he brought to bear as an external examiner. That same measured quality shines through in this work as he navigates the myriad of issues associated with Frederick. Blanning is neither a debunker nor a mythologist of Frederick.
After a detailed treatment of his wars and campaigns, Blanning’s verdict on Frederick’s best-known claim to fame, his military success, is that he was an “indifferent general but a brilliant warlord” because of the clarity and persistence with which pursued his goals.
Frederick was in many ways a great humanitarian — one of his first acts as King was to abolish torture — but abominable in his treatment of family members. He had no children and his elder brother August Wilhelm was heir-apparent. A younger brother, Henry, played an important role in Frederick’s military campaigns.
As Blanning notes, Frederick was not violent towards his male siblings (he treated his sisters more kindly) but inclined to humiliate them publicly — driving poor August to an early death, or so it was said. It was “a classic case of a victim of bullying being turned into a bully himself”.
Frederick supported free speech and shrugged off personal criticism but could be imperious towards dissenting journalists. One such victim was an editor in Cologne who published a newspaper supporting Austria against Prussia.
Frederick paid someone to beat him up. But such roughhouse politics was not uncommon at the time. Frederick was popular with his troops because he shared their hardships and was liked by the people because he paid attention to their concerns.
But while Frederick played up his image as a man of the people he was also careful to protect the interests of the Prussian nobles whose sons were the bedrock of his army.
According to Blanning, Frederick was an outstanding but autocratic ruler with micro-management tendencies.
“The compulsive wish to keep secrets and to monopolise decision-making probably had its roots in his childhood experiences. Forced to keep his true self concealed from his fearsome father, he created for himself an iron mask which he took off only among his circle in time.”
One consequence of such personalised rule was that Frederick did not prepare the succession and Frederick William II — August’s son — squandered much of his legacy and reversed many of his liberal reforms.
On the vexed question of Frederick’s homosexuality, Blanning argues that he was homosexual but the jury remains out on whether he had sex with other men. More importantly, his campness was “about a lot more than sex or impudence, it is also about a special kind of milieu involving flamboyant decoration, consumption and self-indulgence.”
Tim Blanning’s book is a suitably rich and engaging testimony to the enduring fascination we have with complexities of Europe’s philosopher-king.
However, this book is an accessible and interesting introduction to Romanticism.
1 
ElleGato | 2 altre recensioni | Sep 24, 2018 |
ElleGato | 2 altre recensioni | Sep 24, 2018 | 
Oxford University Press have made a specialty of selling an extensive library of multi author histories. The editor of this volume, Timothy Blanning has himself taken on the task of producing a number of these, including general editorship of the multivolume Short Oxford History of Europe. In his introduction to those volumes he highlights the challenges of depth and breadth. Really these confront all history which attempts geographic or chronological breadth. History needs to be fairly interpretive, and by nature dependent on others scholarship as it expands its sweep. The only means to avoid this is to engage multiple authors. They can either covering a specific timespan (the multi volume Oxford History of England breaks time into 30 - 50 year chunks and hands each volume to individual authors), theme (The Short Oxford History of Europe gives authors individual topics such as politics or economy) or geographic area (The Cambridge Modern History, probably the first of these efforts, features volumes on The Ottoman Conquest, Italy and her Invaders and two generous volumes on Florence!). A multi author volume can provide greater credibility for individual topics, but at the cost of coherence. The strength of J M Roberts classic Penguin History of the World or Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens is the single vision and interpretive framework drawing the book together, albeit at the sacrifice of expert and deep knowledge of particular periods and areas (as seen in the coverage of East Asia in Roberts’ book).
The Oxford History of Modern Europe takes off quite a big bite of history - the entire European continent through a period of dramatic change and European world hegemony. Blanning organises the text well. He divides the period into pre World War 1 and post, and assigns eleven experts to topics of politics, economy, war, society and culture. Blanning’s introduction expertly weaves these into a coherent summary of how Europe has undergone two centuries of dramatic change and world expansion. Without over thinking the meaning of “Modern” he identifies the end of the eighteenth century as the beginning of a new epoch.
It is hard to talk about this periodisation without mentioning Eric Hobsbawm (another example of a single author covering big sweeps of history!). In The Age of Revolution he outlined an influential interpretation of the early nineteenth century as being characterised by dual revolutions - the consequences of the French Revolution of 1789, and the economic revolution of the Industrial transformation. Blanning adds the Napoleonic Wars, the decisive transition in society from orders to classes and the cultural phenomenon of the ‘romantic revolution’ as marks of the beginning of the modern.
One of my favourite historians, J M Roberts leads the charge with a look at politics in the nineteenth century. His writing is always interpretive, looking at connections and patterns rather than specific events and personalities. Don’t expect colourful anecdotes about antics at the Congress of Vienna or amusing anecdotes of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s foreign policy fumbles. He divides the century into much the same subdivisions as Hobsbawm - a period of upheaval and war until 1815, peace until mid century, two more decades of upheaval then a second great peace until 1914.
Blanning divides each chapter with subheadings, an effective method of organisation. Robert’s first section is provocatively titled “The Myth of Revolution”. Roberts sees the myth of revolution as central to the politics of the nineteenth century; “Whether it was believed that irresistible forces were working to assure that revolution was inevitable, or that propaganda and organization could bring it about - and whether people viewed the outcome as desirable or horrific - the idea that the central issue of politics was to be for or against the revolution was a great simplifier; it provided a way of seeing, understanding, explaining things otherwise difficult or unintelligible”. Roberts believes that the spectre of Revolution was mythological in the sense that the idea more than the fact of revolution was significant. The most concrete actions were in the pre 1815 period. France was the great power of eighteenth century Europe, and thus the events of the reaction against the failures of the ancien regime. Ironically the growth in the strength of the French revolutionary state, as seen in the defeats of the other European powers in the Napoleonic Wars led to changes which strengthened the dynastic powers of Prussia, Austria and Russia. They were also influenced by another new idea from the Revolution - “that legitimacy for government is to be sought in some kind of debate and competition for the support of the public”. This idea can’t really be overstated.
Thirty years of peace were followed by the upheaval of 1848. Despite the failures Roberts sees the legacy of the second Revolutionary actions as immense. Germany saw the emigration of the radical leadership afterwards, accentuating the dominance of Prussian conservatives. In France the middle class distrusted Paris and the republicans. Italy was more firmly under Austrian hegemony. But more than all these localised effects was the recognition of the power of nationalism, a clarion call taken up by conservatives.
Roberts zeroes in on the Balkans in the late nineteenth century. After 1871 five new nations emerged in the region. They were products of the “Concert of Europe”, the post 1815 diplomacy which successfully avoided war between the great powers in the area (with the exception of the Crimean War) by the expedient of carving states out of the deflating Ottoman Empire. Eventually however Russia and Austria’s growing interest in the region along with those Balkan nation’s greed for growth would be the catalyst for the First World War.
Clive Trebilcock is not a historian I have read before (he passed away in 2004). Along with some business histories his major publications were ,i>The Industrialisation of the Continental Powers 1789-1914, a contribution to the twentieth century volume of The Fontana Economic History of Europe and editing Understanding Decline: Perceptions and Realities of British Economic Performance. He contributed an outstanding and well argued chapter on the economics of the nineteenth century, and the other arm of Hobsbawm’s ‘dual revolution’. There is no doubt about the criticality of this process, one which Trebilcock divides into three critical phases - the 1780s to 1820s, 1840 to 1870 and 1895 to 1914. Britain dominated the first with innovations in cotton textiles and ironmaking. The second phase saw the ‘take-off’ of France, the German states and the United States. Railways were the key new ingredient of this new stage of progress, both in enabling other industries as well as being a driver of both engineering and financial innovation. After a period of depression the last period of acceleration was stimulated by a new set of additions to the list of leading industrial economies - Italy, Japan, Sweden, Austria and Russia. New sectors also lead the drive - chemical and electrical engineering, bicycles and cars. The second wave economies (France, the US and Germany) led the way with Britain lagging.
Trebilcock highlights the slow gradual nature of the process - if revolution is the right term in terms of the dramatic transformation it was not a violent one. Surprisingly to me Russia, one of the late developers in fact achieved the fastest rates of growth. Prior to 1914 the tsarist empire was achieving an annual growth in industrial output of 8% in the 1890s. We are also reminded of continuities. The traditional (albeit modernised) agricultural sector still made up more than 25% of all leading economy’s national output in 1910 with the exception of Britain.
The discussion of the military could not be in better hands than Hew Strachan’s. He highlights the transformation in warfare in the nineteenth century, far greater than that of the twentieth century. Strachan insightfully points out however that success in war was not directly linked to industrial and technological development. Russia, still the most backward power in Europe managed to maintain a war against Germany singlehandedly for three years, whilst even more remarkably the Ottoman empire fought on up to four fronts for the duration of the Great War. I found Strachan’s point regarding the logic of going to war interesting. Observers prior to World War I pointed to the ‘inutility of war’ due to the massive cost to advanced economies, drawing off manpower and disrupting trade and industry. The paradox of the resilience of backward economies such as Russia (until 1917) and the Ottoman Empire certainly reinforces that “the significance of national economic development for the making of war was confused”. Technological advantage had played a major role - seen in the success in winning empire in the nineteenth century, and in Britain’s decisive naval technology (she was not to fight a fleet action between the Battle of Trafalgar and the Battle of Jutland.
Strachan also discusses the philosophy of war, the impact of the railway and rise of the ‘General Staff’ as well as the professionalisation of war and the rise of the mass army. The chapter is insightful, and although it is dominated by World War I and changes leading to it, this can be justified to some extent by the fact that it was largely a century of peace. Perhaps a little more discussion of colonial war would have been welcome.
Patricia Pilbeam discusses the people. Social history saw significant demographic changes which would accelerate in the twentieth century. Population exploded from 193 million to about 423 million, shattering the Malthusian cycle. Huge proportions emigrated. One of the most significant changes however was the shift from orders to class consciousness, a change Pilbeam originates in the French Revolution. The first half of the century saw class unrest but with specific grievances rather than a desire to overthrow governments. One effect of the legacy of the French Revolution was fear of another outbreak, which resulted in violent suppression of rebellion by governments.
A significant change was in the development of an interventionist state - to resolve social issues in an attempt to head off revolution with an accompanying increase in representation. Most countries ensured though that representation was confined to elites who also retained a disproportionate share of wealth.
In the last chapter on the nineteenth century Tim Blanning discusses culture. His chapter title gives away what he sees as two major facets - commercialisation and sacralisation. Although the French Revolution saw art aimed at a broader public rather than wealthy patron, celebrating the secular world “the culture of the French Revolution proved to be a blind alley”. The first and most important trend is Romanticism - the power of the “fabulous and the irrational” over the “universal, abstract, and rational” of the Enlightenment. Its cold rationalism was felt to be inadequate in describing a chaotic natural world. The egocentric romantics rejected the old world of patronage by royalty and elites, but were challenged by the inexorable rise of mass culture. Blanning describes well the importance of the piano as an example of this, and the relationship between technology and art. Secularisation brought the sacralisation of art as it became an object of veneration in and of itself. Although artists attempted to create an impression of the genius unaffected by their audience, success resulted from acceptance by a mass audience.
Blanning describes how music began its march towards is present day artistic hegemony in the nineteenth century with the fame of musicians such as Paganini, Rossini and Liszt. The rise of romanticism dovetailed with nationalism as artists rejected the cosmopolitanism of eighteenth century culture. The nation was “the most important point of reference in human affairs”. The rise of new political entities in Eastern Europe in the twentieth century is inextricably linked to efforts such as the long campaign to build a National Theatre in Prague.
Realism was the natural successor to, and reaction against romanticism. This was then submerged by a generation disillusioned with the long depression after 1873, reacting against liberalism with what became known as symbolism. Early in the twentieth century “art was fragmenting into stylistic anarchy”.
The Oxford History of Modern Europe may not reflect the very latest historiographic trends but overall provides an extremely useful overview of modernism. This is not a narrative history (and could not be in this space), however the various authors present a reasonably unified and well informed overview of the period. The nineteenth century chapters reinforce the importance of the industrial revolution and technology in driving social and military change, and the complex importance of political revolution, or fear thereof. The book provides a well written interpretive overview of the period for the interested reader or those taking a survey course which would be well supplemented by more detailed texts such as the Penguin History of Europe volumes by Tim Blanning, Richard Evans and Ian Kershaw or alternatively books such as Barricades and Borders by Robert Gildea or the older titles in the Fontana History of Europe series.
Blanning takes a thematic approach, following particular topics across the continent and across the years apparently more-or-less as the fancy takes him, without a very conspicuous plan or agenda. Broadly, the first part of the book is about social and technological questions, the second about kingship and power, the third about ideas, and the rather rushed and neglected fourth about warfare.
This means you're likely to get lost quite quickly if you don't already have a reasonably clear idea of the outlines of 18th century European history, but it does pick up some interesting patterns and connections. It isn't like reading Hobsbawm or someone like that, who can show you how all the pieces effortlessly fall into one clear ideological framework: most of the time Blanning is exploring at least two different ways of reading the same set of facts and showing how both approaches can teach us something interesting.
It's occasionally a little frustrating when there are important chapters Blanning would clearly have liked to write but didn't and others he wrote without much enthusiasm. Warfare, for instance, is a topic that evidently lost its novelty for Blanning long ago, but must have been included at the insistence of the Penguin editors, whilst we never get the chapter on Methodism, Pietism and Jansenism that Blanning keeps referring to.
The period is one that includes a lot of big personalities. Blanning doesn't fall into the temptation of diverting the book into a string of mini-biographies, but he does let Peter and Catherine of Russia, Frederick of Prussia, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Voltaire, Goethe and the rest all get their fair share of attention. Frederick the Great is clearly a favourite, and Blanning quotes frequently from his writings - I have no problem with that. Napoleon, on the other hand, doesn't seem to excite him at all. Altogether, thinkers get more space here than men of action: Marlborough, Wellington and Nelson are all basically offstage characters, but Clausewitz gets his few minutes in the spotlight.
I found this an enjoyable and profitable read: whilst it didn't tell me very much about the 18th century I didn't know at least vaguely already, it did show me a few new ways of linking concepts together. But I don't think it would be a good introduction to the subject for a novice, and it certainly isn't a useful reference book (no footnotes!).
3 thorold | 9 altre recensioni | May 5, 2016 |
thorold | 9 altre recensioni | May 5, 2016 | 1 TheAmpersand | 2 altre recensioni | Feb 10, 2016 |
TheAmpersand | 2 altre recensioni | Feb 10, 2016 | These three points, combined with the crazy hype surrounding this book, makes me give it two stars. He writes well, but thanks to the no-notes business it's not very readable. Maybe the second edition can be 350 pages of text plus 200 pages of notes; maybe the narrative element will be a bit stronger. That'd be a five star book, because his judgments are very persuasive and fairly independent of prevailing fashions (e.g., really, the industrial revolution happened and was kinda important.)
1 stillatim | 9 altre recensioni | Dec 29, 2013 |
stillatim | 9 altre recensioni | Dec 29, 2013 | 
He sets the background up over the major part of the book covering social, political, religious, cultural, geographic etc facets of life at the time - and not just life for the bewigged elite. The concision of his coverage of the political events of the period is quite brilliant - all the vital detail presented, all the important trends delineated yet all in a structured way.
The title sums up his take on three of the 'great' rulers of the period, Louis XIV, Frederick the Great and Napoleon. They were chasing la gloire - the results were mixed for France and Prussia and often disastrous for other Europeans.
This book is a brilliant coverage of its subject and is an interesting case of why I read history and I guess why I think one should. In itself it’s a general introduction and/or overview of the long eighteenth century in Europe (mostly excluding the Ottoman lands) from 1648-1815 so from the Peace of Westphalia to Waterloo. I had come across politeness as a driving, revolutionary force in the late seventeenth century which was a new idea to me. It made Addison and Co so much more important and interesting. So I started to investigate a detailed study of it and failed. But I found one on the Enlightenment (slightly later period but related I suppose) which led me to this one on the same shelf. It had lots of good reviews. It’s probably widely recommended and read as a neat intro for students (undergraduate or sixth form) of history so they have some idea of the overall framework within which other denser, more detailed books operate. For this it’s excellent. Blanning covers every aspect of life, thought and politics in a lively style and without reducing himself to headlines. He definitely shows you the bigger picture.
The eighteenth century was the age of enlightenment? For some certainly but it was also the age of Methodism, Pietism and Jansenism, as well as slavery and serfdom. Many more religious books were published than anti-religious ones. The age of French dominance? Well certainly up to a point with the French language in widespread use amongst the elite – but not in England. Some French art dominated in some areas with a Versailles being built in Naples, for example, but elsewhere Italian styles would dominate. And what do you make of the signature of Prince Eugene – Eugenio von Savoie? Surely that sums up the multinational, multicultural aspects of life the further east in Europe you went. The Industrial Revolution? Well more of that anon but it’s definitely a “Yes, but ...” book. In short it shows you the bigger picture without painting every cat grey.
It’s certainly good to have an overview to refresh what I know about European history and add the occasional new nugget. I have never read a better summary narrative of the military, diplomatic and political events of the period. Blanning is unpitying in his analysis (Blenheim and Waterloo not that important in the long scheme of things, other (non-British battles) highly significant). Did the British Industrial Revolution actually come to dominate because the French were mired in bankruptcy and war? One tends, this side of the Channel, to view the eighteenth century as elegant, bewigged enlightenment gentlemen if one is not careful. Blanning makes it very evident that it was a bloodthirsty, murderous age over much of Europe suffering from la gloire of Louis XIV, Frederick the Great and Napoleon and, if it comes to that, Britain’s far from always benign interference.
You then get equally brilliant summaries of the cultural, sexual, social, religion, courts etc. How the Prussian rulers converted the Junkers into a military asset while the Russian tsars had a confused relationship with their aristocracy. The changes in religion are clarified whereby the majority of the population as far as we can tell were deeply religious, the parish clergy were admired, the higher clergy were aristocratic placeholders in various ways. The enlightened wanted to cut away the superstitions of popular religion in Catholic when that is what the populace actually liked.
In short for a quick overview of the period it's excellent.
1 Caomhghin | 9 altre recensioni | Oct 3, 2012 |
Caomhghin | 9 altre recensioni | Oct 3, 2012 | What I really liked about this book is that it shows a lot of the diversity within movements. Romantic thinkers could be aligned with nationalism, inspired by the deep roots of local myths. Then as nationalism solidifies into authoritarianism, romantic thinkers could rally to revolutionary movements, to the barricades in the streets.
Blanning defines romanticism as a movement that cultivates and celebrates inwardness, subjectivity. And of course that explains the diversity: inwardness can blur into impulsiveness or libertine living, for example. Was Byron more a romantic personality than a romantic poet? Blanning says his poetry is more like that of Pope than like that of Wordsworth or Keats.
This is a short book - 182 pages - that covers a lot of material. So it does race along, touching on points rather than arguing them or examining them in depth. But we do get a rather complete sketch, covering a wide range of the romantic phenomenon. The book is a tasty appetizer, not a meal. It should be an excellent introduction and orientation, enabling the reader to jump into deeper material and see where it fits into the bigger picture.
2 kukulaj | 2 altre recensioni | Sep 18, 2012 |
kukulaj | 2 altre recensioni | Sep 18, 2012 | I was a bit disappointed by the balance of the content. I felt there is a disproportionate ammount of text devoted to the social history of the period and too little on the meaty political and military events, e.g the wars of the French revolution. I also thought that given that the book does not flow in strict chronological order then it would have really benefited from the inclusion of a simple summary chapter or timeline - something I think newbies to this period of European history would find very useful. That said, I still highly recommend it to anyone.
The selection of topics seems somewhat whimsical. For instance, there is a full chapter on hunting and one on palaces and gardens, yet there is almost nothing about overseas expansionism and imperialism, almost nothing on slavery.
Perhaps the best way to approach this book is to first browse it to get an idea of its topics, and then to use it as a reference for the subject of one's interest.
I found the chapter on Liberation the best: and the discovery of 'serf orchestras" in nineteenth century Russia: "This was a sensible investment, for not only were the serf musicians available to entertain the family in the evenings, they also represented a marketable asset and could be sold if necessary."
Highly recommended for nuggets such as this.
Questo sito utilizza i cookies per fornire i nostri servizi, per migliorare le prestazioni, per analisi, e (per gli utenti che accedono senza fare login) per la pubblicità. Usando LibraryThing confermi di aver letto e capito le nostre condizioni di servizio e la politica sulla privacy. Il tuo uso del sito e dei servizi è soggetto a tali politiche e condizioni.