The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800 - Updated Edition

by R.R. Palmer, David Armitage (Foreword)

For the Western world, the period from 1760 to 1800 was the great revolutionary era in which the outlines of the modern democratic state came into being. Here for the first time in one volume is R. R. Palmer's magisterial account of this incendiary age. Palmer argues that the American, French, and Polish revolutions—and the movements for political change in Britain, Ireland, Holland, and elsewhere—were manifestations of similar political ideas, needs, and conflicts. Palmer traces the clash between an older form of society, marked by legalized social rank and hereditary or self-perpetuating elites, and a new form of society that placed a greater value on social mobility and legal equality.Featuring a new foreword by David Armitage, this Princeton Classics edition of The Age of the Democratic Revolution introduces a new generation of readers to this enduring work of political history.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Philosophy

870 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Robert Roswell Palmer (January 11, 1909 – June 11, 2002), commonly known as R. R. Palmer, was a distinguished American historian at Princeton and Yale universities, who specialized in eighteenth-century France. His most influential work of scholarship, The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760–1800 (1959 and 1964), examined an age of democratic revolution that swept the Atlantic civilization between 1760 and 1800. He was awarded the Bancroft Prize in History for the first volume. Palmer also achieved distinction as a history text writer.

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 5 out of 5]

We used Palmer's history of Europe as our text in Tim Little's high school European History A.P. class, so I was excited to find a copy of his magnum opus available and finally got down to read the thing when not burdened by school assignments.

Palmer's two volume book is an attempt to globally picture the revolutionary currents which swept Europe and the Americas in the last four decades of the eighteenth century. It is not just about the revolutions in North America and in France, but it does concentrate on them.

[Turgut · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heavily emphasizes French revolution, almost to the point of exclusion of all others, but still worth it.

[Annabelle Bragdon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone’s overthrowing something, nobody’s calm, and somehow France is always the problem!