History Of Western Europe Jovian Press

By far one of the greatest history books ever written, James Robinson's classic of Western European history is an absolute must-read for anyone seeking a greater understanding of the power struggles and armed conflicts that formed the Europe, and the world, of today. Spanning over a thousand years, from the stunning fall of the western Roman Empire to the rise of the German industrial/military empire on the eve of World War I, Robinson weaves a beautiful, easy to read historical narrative of the major events and figures of European history. From Philip Augustus to Prince Metternich, from Charles Martel to the Holy Roman Empire and the Papal States, James Robinson's heavily illustrated history takes you on a journey of several lifetimes, and aims to leave you better and more informed than when you began.

By far one of the greatest history books ever written, James Robinson's classic of Western European history is an absolute must-read for anyone seeking a greater understanding of the power struggles and armed conflicts that formed the Europe, and the world, of today. Spanning over a thousand years, from the stunning fall of the western Roman Empire to the rise of the German industrial/military empire on the eve of World War I, Robinson weaves a beautiful, easy to read historical narrative of the major events and figures of European history. From Philip Augustus to Prince Metternich, from Charles Martel to the Holy Roman Empire and the Papal States, James Robinson's heavily illustrated history takes you on a journey of several lifetimes, and aims to leave you better and more informed than when you began.

Before we can safely proceed with the story of European development during the past four hundred years, it is necessary to know what were the chief countries that existed at the beginning of our period and what were the distinctive political institutions of each.A glance at the map of Europe in 1500 will show numerous unfamiliar divisions and names, especially in the central and eastern portions. Only in the extreme west, along the Atlantic seaboard, will the eye detect geographical boundaries which resemble those of the present day. There, England, France, Spain, and Portugal have already taken form. In each one of these countries is a real nation, with a single monarch, and with a distinctive literary language. These four states are the national states of the sixteenth century. They attract our immediate attention...

History, in the broadest sense of the word, is all that we know about everything that man has ever done, or thought, or hoped, or felt. It is the limitless science of past human affairs, a subject immeasurably vast and important but exceedingly vague. The historian may busy himself deciphering hieroglyphics on an Egyptian obelisk, describing a mediæval monastery, enumerating the Mongol emperors of Hindustan or the battles of Napoleon. He may explain how the Roman Empire was conquered by the German barbarians, or why the United States and Spain came to blows in 1898, or what Calvin thought of Luther, or what a French peasant had to eat in the eighteenth century. We can know something of each of these matters if we choose to examine the evidence which still exists; they all help to make up history.

THE division of history into periods may be very misleading if its true purport be not understood. One age can no more be isolated from the universal course of history than one generation from another. The ideas, the principles, the aims of man change indeed, but change slowly, and in their very change are the outcome of the past. The old generation melts into the new, as the night melts into the day. None the less, just as the night differs from the day, although it is impossible to say when the dawn begins, and when the day, so does the Modern differ from that which has been termed the Middle age. This once granted, the importance of the later years of the fifteenth century may be easily grasped. The medi�val conception of the great World-Church under Pope and Emperor had by this time lost all practical power. The authority of the Emperor was confined to Germany, and was even there disputed, and, if the Papacy still retained its pretensions, they no longer had their old weight. Not only had they been resisted by the various powers of Europe in turn, they had even been severely criticised by two General Councils. Already the man was born who was to take the lead in the final overthrow of the unity of the Western Church. Meanwhile, the older society was breaking up: the links which in binding a man to his lord, his fields, his trade, or his town, bound him to his fellows, and his livelihood to him, were falling to pieces, and the 'individual' of modern life was emerging. To this change many things contributed. The movement of the Renaissance emancipated men from the somewhat narrow limits of medievalism; it opened to them the knowledge of the ancients, and gave them a glimpse of the worlds of thought beyond, of which the New World about to be discovered to the west seemed but a type. The economic revolution had a like effect. The break-up of the older organisation of trades under the system of close guilds, was accompanied by the rise of modern competition. In life, as in thought, the individual was asserting himself.

THE year 1870 will long remain memorable in the annals of Europe. For in that year occurred a great and decisive war whose outcome was destined to exercise a large and profound influence upon the history of the subsequent period; whose consequences were to prove pervasive, far-reaching and unhappy, just as the four terrible years through which the world has recently passed will inevitably determine the future of the world for many decades to come. There was a certain tragic unity to that intervening period between the Franco-Prussian War and the World War, the shadow of the former, the dread of the latter hovering over the minds of men, full of menace, inspiring a recurrent sense of uneasiness and alarm. All the various streams of activity, all the different movements, national and international, social and economic, intellectual and spiritual, all the complex and diverse phenomena of the life of Europe during that crowded half-century took their form and color largely from the memory of war, the fear of war, the preparation for war. A period like that is surely worth studying. Indeed only if men acquire or possess a just understanding of it, only if they retain a vivid sense of its lessons and its warnings, will they be able to avert a repetition of its horrors, only thus will they have the aid of either chart or compass on their voyage into the future. But apart from this general feeling of insecurity and apprehension, inspired by the Franco-Prussian War, that war had several immediate and specific consequences which must inevitably render the year 1870 notable in the history of modern times and which furnish a proper starting-point for this narrative. The war of 1870 completed the unification of Germany and created the German Empire. It completed, also, the unification of Italy, by giving to the kingdom, as its capital, the incomparable city of Rome. It overthrew the Second Empire in France and produced the Third Republic. It robbed France of Alsace-Lorraine for the benefit of Germany and thus embedded militarism in the life of Europe.