The Nineteenth Century: Europe 1789-1914

Short Oxford History of Europe

by Timothy C.W. Blanning (Editor)

In the nineteenth century Europe changed more rapidly and more radically than during any prior period. These six specially commissioned chapters by eminent historians offer the student and general reader a unique approach to understanding one of the most complex periods of modern history, addressing all the major issues in Europe's political, social, economic, cultural, international, and Imperial history.

Genres: History, European History, Nonfiction, 19th Century

318 pages, Paperback

First published May 25, 2000

About the author

Timothy Charles William Blanning, FBA is Emeritus Professor of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge, where he taught from 1992 until 2009. His work focuses on the history of Europe from the 17th century to the beginning of the First World War.

Reviews

[MischaS_ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don't know how to rate this book. It was pretty boring and a lot confusing. But on the other hand, it was sort of amazing. I guess I'm going to wait for the results of my exam. And based on the mark I'm going to rate this book. - Seems fair to me - :)

If there has to be revolution, we would rather make it than suffer it" - Words of wisdom and also Bismarck.

Peace is more artificial and demands more explanation. (than war)"

[Emilija · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book started pretty well before very quickly falling off a cliff in both ability to be understood and to maintain your attention as a reader. As each chapter is written by a different author, there was a problem with the flow of the book and it could be quite jarring.

[Leonids · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has seven authors and six main chapters, each on a different aspect of nineteenth century (read: 1815-1914) history. As such, I’ll address each segment briefly in this review.

The introduction and conclusion were written by the author credited, Blanning. They were a fairly decent read and provided a fair overview of the period/summary, linking it to themes shown in other books in this series on European history.

The first section was on political developments. This was done pretty well, looking at different forces in politics developing in the period. The second section, on society, took a largely class based view, and was also a strong section and very comprehensive.

However, from there is where the strength of the book falters a little. While the economic section of the book was very well written, the force of argument is clearly strained by lack of proper space for development. This flaw is clearly evident in the rest of the book.

The fourth segment, supposedly on culture, is actually about philosophy. It also treats Europe as a single entity with practically no allowance for differences in culture. This chapter in particular felt very limited in scope and creativity.

The final two segments were on foreign relations - the first within Europe, the second around the world. These chapters suffered the worst from being essentially specialist articles in a book meant to be written on a broad basis. My understanding of the content fell off dramatically in these two chapters and they tended to focus on a single idea without much room for variation or development of more than one element and appeared to be addressing internal arguments without properly setting them up first. This was a particular problem in the fifth chapter.

Overall, I was pretty disappointed with this book. Being a purely European history, it was limited geographically, and overall felt very safe and traditional. Another aspect was that the introduction claimed that the six author structure was designed to gain diversity of experience, expertise, and opinion - every single contributor to this volume was a white man, and I believe all were either American or British. As such, though it had strong points, overall it was a fairly weak book.

[Kristy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good overview of the 19th century by topic

[Frederick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an okay history book on Europe in the 1800's. It is not great and part of that is the fact that it contains several authors' work with several different styles of writing. Some sections flowed smoothly and some seemed hard to get through. I can recommend the book for personal reading if you are interested in learning more about the place and time but it doesn't draw you in very well. It was good but having read so many terrific books lately, it was a disappointment.

[Rachel Feeck]

Paints a thematic picture of the 19th century, rather than a narrative of highlights. The intended audience seems to be those who already have a strong grasp on the history of the times. Names of people and events are thrown in one after another but with generally little explanation to set up the analysis.