Eighteenth-century Europe
Subtitle: tradition and progress, 1715-1789
By: Isser Woloch, Gregory S. Brown
Contributors: Brown, Gregory S. (Gregory Stephen)
Edition: 2nd ed.
Series: The Norton history of modern Europe
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.; W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2012
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 362
ISBN-13: 9780393929874
Subjects: Europe; Intellectual life; History; Enlightenment; Civilization
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 327-344) and index.
Table of contents: title: Concepts of statecraft: monarchies and empires state power and absolutist monarchies.  Absolutism and the French state -- The rise of  Brandenburg-Prussia -- The Habsburg monarchy -- Russia -- Southern Europe -- States in decline and transition. Northern Europe: The decline of Sweden and Poland -- The Ottoman Empire -- British politics and government. British Politics at the accession of George III -- The British state and public finance -- Conclusion -- War and peace in Eighteenth-Century Europe : relations among states. The peace of Utrecht -- King George’s wars -- The Great War for Empire : The Seven Years War -- The First Partition of Poland and eastern European rivalries -- The culture and practice of diplomacy -- Military, state, and society in Eighteenth-Century Europe. Military life -- Strategy, tactics, and technology -- Rural society. Lords and serfs in Eastern and Central Europe -- Seigneurs and peasants in Western Europe . Rural communities -- Agrarian reform : failure of an era -- An age of aristocracy. The spectrum of noble elites -- The English upper class : aristocracy and gentry -- The nobility and the state -- Urban society. Urban elites -- The worlds of work -- Population growth. Historical demography -- The death rate / Health and nutrition -- Marriage patterns and birthrates -- The beginnings of contraception -- Economic growth. Sustained growth -- Money and credit -- The global economy -- The Atlantic slave trade and plantation slavery -- The beginnings of structural change in England. The agricultural revolution -- The beginnings of industrialization -- The struggle against poverty. The family economy -- From poverty to indigence -- The indigent and the state on the continent -- The English poor -- Laws -- Unwanted children -- Crime and punishment. Judicial mechanisms -- Torture and punishment -- Criminality -- Poaching and the game laws -- Rights and riots -- The philosophes and the enlightenment as a movement. The Encyclopédie and enlightenment thought -- The Encyclopédie : publication and resistance -- Enlightenment themes : reason, nature, and religion -- Deism and empiricism -- The Enlightenment and the wider world -- The moral basis of enlightenment political theory : Montesquieu -- The enemy of infamy : Voltaire -- Rousseau : morality, nature, and sentiment -- Women, gender, and morality -- Mary Wollstonecraft and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman -- Economic man. Economic theory : luxury and commerce -- Physiocracy and laissez faire -- Adam Smith : the social value of labor -- Other enlightenments. Materialism : radical or utilitarian enlightenment? -- Idealism : the German enlightenment -- The ideal of public and forms of public space. Salons, literary gatherings, and coffee houses -- Scientific and literary academies -- Enlightenment science and colonial society -- Secondary and higher educational institutions -- Legal and medical education : the persistence of tradition -- Freemasonry -- Varieties of cultural expression. Public theater and theater publics -- The transformation of playwriting -- Art and music -- Popular culture -- The uses of print : diffusion and resistance. Literacy, religion, and primary education -- A reading revolution? -- Authorship -- Printing and the book trade in England and France -- The public sphere and repression elsewhere in Europe -- Conclusion -- Religious diversity, toleration, and intolerance the catholic church in Eighteenth-Century Europe. The Gallican Church : Catholicism in France -- Challenges to the Gallican Church in France -- Catholic popular piety -- Protestantism in revival. Pietism in Prussia -- Pietism in the Habsburg Empire -- English Methodism -- Popular Intolerance in England -- Female Pietists and Methodists -- Judaism and Islam in Eighteenth-Century Europe. Judaism -- Image and reality of Islam -- Religious belief, reform, and the abolition of the slave trade. Cracks in the old order. The second partition of Poland -- The Pugachev Rebellion in Russia -- The Patriot Revolution in the Netherlands -- The turn to democratic revolution. Crowds and reformers in England -- Colonial rebellion in America -- The coming of the French Revolution, 1774 - 1789 -- Social tensions -- Cultural origins of the French Revolution -- The failure of reform -- The Pre-Revolution, 1787 - 1789 -- Popular unrest and the convergence of revolutions -- Suggestions for further reading.