Early Modern Europe 1500-1789. Pt2 of 3. A History of Europe, H G Koenigsberger
Title: Early Modern Europe 1500-1789, A History of Europe
Condition: WELL READ
Author/s: H.G. Koenigsberger
Edition/Year: 1st Ed. 8th Impression
Publisher: Longman
Pages: 343
Format: Paperback
About the Book:
Early Modern Europe 1500-1789 is the central volume of a major new illustrated history of Europe from the collapse of the Roman Empire to modern times, written for upper school, college and university students, and for the general reader. The authors, H G Koenigsberger and Asa Briggs, have collaborated closely on the planning of the sequence, the first of which Medieval Europe 400-1500, is also by Professor Koenigsberger, and the third, Modern Europe 1789-1980, by Lord Briggs.
Early Modern Europe opens with the climax of the Renaissance. Its humanists rightly saw themselves at the beginning of a new age. European cultural life had hitherto been dominated by the Church and the princely courts; now an educated and mainly city-based laity brought their own very different demands and sensibilities to bear on earlier traditions. Printing immeasurably increased the volume and accuracy of information, and also the numbers of those who could read. Population was rising, bringing with it a massive economic expansion, fuelled by technological and organizational improvements.
Soon Europe itself was on the move: a thousand years of defence gave way to aggressive expansion. The detailed history of the Europeans overseas is outside the scope of this book, but not the fierce social dynamism which made it possible. But as Europe expanded it also split: the unity of medieval Christendom broke down in the Reformation, and a new dualism between religious and secular ways of thinking arose. This, for a multicentred and highly competitive society, was itself highly dynamic. It emancipated every aspect of human activity from tis medieval subjection to the claims of theology.
Simultaneously, the political organization of the European states was becoming more effective and sophisticated, intruding ever further into public and private life. Externally, no single state succeeded in dominating Europe, thought their attempts to do so bought incessant warfare. Internally, all states had to face the conflict of interest between their monarchies and their estates or parliaments, and the associated questions of liberty and authority, of privilege and the rights of the individual. Changing economic conditions and social expectations made these tensions ever more pressing, and the failure to resolve them split Europe open in 1789.
