A Political and Social History of Modern Europe | Page 2

condition the progress
of the several countries of modern Europe and to create the life and
thought of the present generation throughout the world. The rise of the
bourgeoisie is the great central theme of modern history; it is the great
central theme of this book.
Not so very long ago distinguished historians were insisting that the

state, as the highest expression of man's social instincts and as the
immediate concern of all human beings, is the only fit subject of
historical study, and that history, therefore, must be simply "past
politics"; under their influence most textbooks became compendiums of
data about kings and constitutions, about rebellions and battles. More
recently historians of repute, as well as eminent economists, have given
their attention and patronage to painstaking investigations of how, apart
from state action, man in the past has toiled or traveled or done the
other ordinary things of everyday life; and the influence of such
scholars has served to provide us with a considerable number of
convenient manuals on special phases of social history. Yet more
recently several writers of textbooks have endeavored to combine the
two tendencies and to present in a single volume both political and
social facts, but it must be confessed that sometimes these writers have
been content to tell the old political tale in orthodox manner and then to
append a chapter or two of social miscellany, whose connection with
the body of their book is seldom apparent to the student.
The present volume represents an effort really to combine political and
social history in one synthesis: the author, quite convinced of the
importance of the view that political activities constitute the most
perfect expression of man's social instincts and touch mankind most
universally, has not neglected to treat of monarchs and parliaments, of
democracy and nationalism; at the same time he has cordially accepted
the opinion that political activities are determined largely by economic
and social needs and ambitions; and accordingly he has undertaken not
only to incorporate at fairly regular intervals such chapters as those on
the Commercial Revolution, Society in the Eighteenth Century, the
Industrial Revolution, and Social Factors, 1870-1914, but also to show
in every part of the narrative the economic aspects of the chief political
facts.
Despite the length of this book, critics will undoubtedly note omissions.
Confronting the writer of every textbook of history is the eternal
problem of selection--the choice of what is most pointedly significant
from the sum total of man's thoughts, words, and deeds. It is a matter of
personal judgment, and personal judgments are notoriously variant.
Certainly there will be critics who will complain of the present author's
failure to follow up his suggestions concerning sixteenth-century art

and culture with a fuller account of the development of philosophy and
literature from the seventeenth to the twentieth century; and the only
rejoinders that the harassed author can make are the rather lame ones
that a book, to be a book, must conform to the mechanical laws of
space and dimension, and that a serious attempt on the part of the
present writer to make a synthesis of social and political facts precludes
no effort on the part of other and abler writers to synthesize all these
facts with the phenomena which are conventionally assigned to the
realm of "cultural" or "intellectual" history. In this, and in all other
respects, the author trusts that his particular solution of the vexatious
problem of selection will prove as generally acceptable as any.
In the all-important matter of accuracy, the author cannot hope to have
escaped all the pitfalls that in a peculiarly broad and crowded field
everywhere trip the feet of even the most wary and persistent searchers
after truth. He has naturally been forced to rely for the truth of his
statements chiefly upon numerous secondary works, of which some
acknowledgment is made in the following Note, and upon the kindly
criticisms of a number of his colleagues; in some instances, notably in
parts of the chapters on the Protestant Revolt, the French Revolution,
and developments since 1848 in Great Britain, France, and Germany,
he has been able to draw on his own special studies of primary source
material, and in certain of these instances he has ventured to dissent
from opinions that have been copied unquestioningly from one work to
another.
No period of history can be more interesting or illuminating than the
period with which this book is concerned, especially now, when a war
of tremendous magnitude and meaning is attracting the attention of the
whole civilized world and arousing a desire in the minds of all
intelligent persons to know something of the past that has produced it.
The great basic causes of the present war the author has sought, not in
the ambitions of a