This new history of Europe spans from the French Revolution to the World War I. It weaves together the political, economic, social and cultural developments of the period and examines themes such as the relationship between state, civil society and the citizen; the emergency of mass politics (including women's emancipation movements); the impact of economic growth on society, politics and culture; and the development of identities (including gender, class and nation). While discussing events within the great powers, this useful text also ties smaller countries experiences into the narrative, for a comprehensive and thorough overview of Europe in the 19th century.
Mike Rapport is a senior lecturer in history at the University of Stirling, in Scotland, where he teaches European history.
He is author of 1848: Year of Revolution (Basic Books, 2009), Nineteenth-Century Europe, 1789-1914 (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005), Nationality and Citizenship in Revolutionary France: The Treatment of Foreigners (Oxford, 2000). He also has a volume forthcoming on The Napoleonic Wars: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2013).
He was elected fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2000. With his colleague, Dr. Kevin Adamson, he is working on a research project on the "domino revolutions" from 1848 to the Arab Awakening of 2011.
Mr. Rapport earned his undergraduate degree in history at the University of Edinburgh and his doctorate, on the French Revolution, at the University of Bristol.
This was overall good though I found it sometimes confusing. He moved from one country to another quickly and sometimes a name he mentions in passing one context pops up in another some pages later and I can’t remember if and when I saw it.
University textbook. Was nice to read for my history course, events are explained precisely and neatly so that if I was short on time, I could skim a chapter for the key concepts/characters/events. Only problem I would say is that there is not a lot of focus on any particular person or character, they are depicted more as catalysts for any certain social force and mentioned briefly. Otherwise, this text was good.
A textbook. Informative but unenthralling. Informative about past events but lacking in definitions of big, over-arching concepts such as nationalism (which I now have to write a paper on from this book). It describes where evidence of an idea can be seen, but not what that idea really is and means (though granted its different in most places). Quite frustrating.