The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Europe: 1648-1815 (The Penguin History of Europe)

In the halcyon days of the 1970's, as an undergraduate history major, I set myself the absurdly ambitious goal of mastering world history. I would do this by first reading Palmer and Colton's "History of the Modern World," and then I would tackle Will and Ariel Durant's "Story of Civilization." I made it through the "History of the Modern World" and became so overwhelmed with facts, figures, and dates, I abandoned the original goal. I later discovered that cultivating smaller patches is a more steady path to historical knowledge. Like-minded undergraduates of today have much more and better information available, and the current volume, the second of Penguin's projected eight volume History of Europe is a good example. Much historical research has been done in the last 30 years, and Tim Blanning, professor of history at Cambridge, makes good use it. It's a big improvement on the Pelican Series of my undergraduate days. Traditionally history was a record of important people such as popes and kings, and major events such as wars and revolutions. From there, historians would make a few passing comments about the lives of ordinary people. Blanning, on the other hand, after the current fashion, gives us a history of everyday life and then shows how it affects the larger events of the day. Blanning covers a wide swath of European history: frome the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 to the Congress of Vienna in 1815. He begins the book with the physical realities of the lives of ordinary people. He tells us, for example, how roads in 1648 were not much different those in Roman times. It took about 3 weeks to travel from London to Edinburgh or from Paris to Madrid. By 1815, it took only a week. He describes how an internal system of tariffs in France stunted its economic growth, and how the absence of those tariffs allowed England to excel economically during that period. He describes how the improvements in agriculture led to better diets, which in turn led to healthier people and longer lives. He traces the advancements in medicine that at the beginning of the period was basically quackery, but by the early nineteenth century was scientifically advanced. Fascinating as all the details are, historian must keep the narrative moving and Banning does this remarkably well. He takes the details of everday life and shows how they relate to the big picture. He does this for most of the book. In the final section, he goes into relations between states, the history with which most of us are familier. Blannings account of Louis XIV's wars in pursuit of glory are probably his best, hence the title of the book. This period marks the beginning of European nation-states and phenomenon known as nationalism. The Peace of Westphalia is an important event for international relations theory, for politics in Europe from that point on becomes an equilibrium of power among the Great Powers. The equilibrium changed constantly and the map of Europe with it.

I agree with all that has been said by the previous reviewers: the writing is excellent and the scholarship outstanding. However, despite the fact that I enjoyed it thoroughly, I can't help wondering what niche it fills. The general reader may well be baffled since Blanning assumes a fairly solid background in the overall history of the period. Without something to cling to, his blithe disregard for chronology even within a particular topic area is likely to be confusing Researching students will be frustrated by the inexplicable lack of footnotes. Blanning liberaly quotes other historians and sometimes even cites the work he is refering to, but nowhere is there a formal footnote to aid the researcher. Serious scholars might find the work entertaining but would probably conclude that the breadth far exceeded the depth. That having been said, I have to admit I couldn't put it down, and the previous reviewers have all agreed that in spite of a few cavils, they, too, have found the work commendable, fascinating, and well worth reading. It's highly unlikely that we share closely similar backgrounds and tastes, so my concern about the narrow niche this book might fill is probably without merit. Nonetheless, I think it would be daunting to come to this work without some previous awareness of the events of this period in Europe.

This is a very ambitious survey. Blanning covers not only the 18th century proper but also the second half of the 17th century and the period of the French Revolution/Napoleonic wars. Similar books often start later and end with the beginning of the French Revolution, so Blanning has really undertaken an enormous task. Surveys like this one force authors into attempts to balance chronological narrative with thematic exposition of major trends. In this fine book, Blanning emphasizes thematic exposition over narrative. The Pursuit of Glory is divided into 4 major sections; Life and Death, Power, Religion and Culture, and War and Peace. The first three, comprising the great majority of the book, are thematic. The War and Peace section is a more traditional narrative overview of European politics and diplomacy. This structure is a little unusual but effective. The Life and Death section is devoted to demography, transportation, economic history, and agricultural history. Power covers the basic political structures of the differing European societies, the impact of attempted reforms, the complex social history of European elites, and provides a broad brush outline of major political and diplomatic trends. The Religion and Culture section is the most diverse, covering intellectual history such as the Enlightenment, religious history and some efforts to look at religious enthusiasms, aristocratic culture, and the beginnings of the Romantic movement. All sections, including the War and Peace narrative section, are very well done. Blanning is a fluent, sometimes witty, writer. He has to grapple with some controversial historiographic issues, such as the nature of the Enlightenment and the nascent Industrial Revolution, and does so in a generally sensible way. Some themes that emerge are the increasing population and economic vigor of Europe, particularly Western Europe, the parallel growths of the power of the state and the public sphere, and an increasing emphasis on individualism and human capacities. In terms of traditional political and diplomatic history, the themes are the decline of France, the emergence of the great peripheral powers, Russia and Britain, the emergence of Prussia, and the surprising resilience of the Austrian Hapsburgs. As with all surveys, some things get neglected. Blanning's thematic approach to social, economic, and intellectual history generally works well. On the other hand, it is sometimes hard to get a sense of historical evolution of changes in these different areas from his thematic expositions. Most of the topics discussed are both crucial and very interesting but there are at least a couple of major omissions. There is little discussion of science or math in this book. This is the period of Descartes, Huygens, Newton, Boyle, Linneaus, Morgagni, Laviosier, Hutton, and many others. Similarly, there is little discussion of the history of technology, another major omission. In contrast, Blanning ha

This is not the first volume to be published in the Penguin History of Europe. That honor belongs to William Jordan's "Europe in the High Middle Ages", a book not as praiseworthy as Mr. Blanning's, which reviewers on both sides of the Atlantic have regarded as one of the top history books of 2007. "The Pursuit of Glory" is a very ambitious book. It covers, in a single volume, a period that took up 4 volumes in Will and Ariel Durant's Story of Civilization. It begins during the minority of Louis XIV, and ends with Napoleon en route to Saint Helena. In between these two, Blanning tells the stories of the trial and execution of Charles I and of James II's dereliction of duties, of pathetic Charles II and his poisoned inheritance, of Charles XII's madness and Peter the Great's folly, of Elizabeth Farnese's ambition, of Louis XV's lack of foresight, of Maria Theresa's efforts to survive and thrive next to fearsome neighbours, such as Frederick the Great, of Joseph II's pigheadedness and Katherine the Great's acquisitiveness, of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, of Brissot and the Girondins, of the Abbe de Sieyes and Napoleon, of Talleyrand, Pitt and Metternich. All the usual suspects turn up, but this is not dynastic history as usual. Blanning tells us why road locations were not chosen in the same way in Britain, Spain or France, and what that meant for those countries' future development. He shows us that hunting was a very important activity, central indeed to the kingly role, and highlights the popularity of cock fighting in Britain all the way to Queen Victoria's reign. He compares Mozart's with Beethoven's funeral and uses it to give evidence of the artist's role from the classical to the romantic period. He derides the popular perception of the XVIII century as an age of irreligion, and instead argues that it was an age of faith, with several important revivals still to come, although he acknowledges the decline in the papacy's role since the renaissance. Perhaps the only XVIII century pope worthy of remembrance was Clement XIV, because he suppressed the Jesuit order under pressure from the Bourbon kings of France and Spain. Not the papacy's greatest hour. In this book Blanning concentrates on the great powers. That meant France, Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia, since Spain, the Dutch Republic, Poland and Sweden went into a steep decline around the middle of the XVII century. France was a superpower until the end of the XVII century. Then Austria prevailed, before ceding its position to Prussia. On the margins, both Britain and Russia only got stronger, until in 1815 they were able to define the future of Europe. Seen from this perspective, the Napoleonic era is just a grandiose coda to a faded greatness that would never return. Remarkable to this reader was that "Blitzkrieg" (lightning war) was an invention of Frederick the Great. He understood that a small, (relatively) poor country with a first rate army could hope