In this ambitious and original work Abram de Swaan, one of Europe's leading sociologists, describes the evolution of the modern welfare state in Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States from the late Middle Ages to the present. De Swaan traces the development of poorrelief, mass education, urban sanitation, and social security as first local, then regional and national, responses to the twofold interdependency between rich and poor and among the rich themselves in the context of centralizing nation-states evolving in competition with each other. His broad focusprovides a historical sociology of contemporary social problems and the collective arrangements that have evolved in different times and places.