The New Cambridge Modern History

In a preface written for the paperback edition, Professor Hay examines some of the changes in Renaissance scholarship since the first publication of this volume in 1957. Successive chapters examine the social and economic structure of a continent about to establish trade and colonies in the New World, the intellectual and artistic movements which made up the Renaissance, the position of the Church on the eve of the Reformation, the political inheritance of the Middle Ages, with its rising nation states, and the growth of the Ottoman Empire.

This volume examines the ascendancy of France during the period 1648-1688.

This volume surveys the political, military and diplomatic history of a period of changing alliances and limited and gentlemanly but frequent wars. It gives particular weight to the emergence of Prussia and Russia as European Powers and to the rivalry of France and England in America, in India and on the high seas. The economic background to these national fortunes is of increasing international trade, technological progress and colonialisation. Socially, European society slowly evolved from the domination of the aristocracy to that of urban populations and bourgeois administrators. Intellectually, the culture of Europe took on what are recognized as specifically eighteenth-century forms and ideals. From the point of view of world history this period saw the confirmation of European pre-eminence and dominion.

The rise of Great Britain and Russia is the focus of this particular volume of The New Cambridge Modern History.

Volume 4 of the Cambrdige Modern History series covering the The Thirty Years' War.

This volume of The New Cambridge Modern History examines the period 1793-1830.

From the historian's perspective, the Ottomans in their heyday could claim a more absolute monarchy than any of the truly European empires, a more successful record in quelling rebellion and the rise of national settlement, and the development and maintenance of more effective lines of communication between the centre and outlying lands. The chapters in this book were each written by a specialist in Ottoman history, and in combination they trace the steps by which the empire built on its fourteenth-century beginnings to the high point of its European power. The emphasis throughout is on the internal history of the empire and its relations with non-European states as well as with Europe; it is no longer possible or desirable to write merely from the point of view of the Western powers.