history essay titles

history essay titles

Exploring Key Themes in Modern European History

1. Introduction to Modern European History

Modern European history, along with the values that come with it, such as freedom of speech, religion, government, and economics, democracy, and a belief in human rights, has so much to offer every person, irrespective of nationality, that every powerful reason exists to introduce it into the secondary schools. Every individual is in some way, positive or negative, affected by the legacy, memory, consequences, or teaching of it. Largely, negative patriotic affinities played a significant role in maintaining and promoting nationalistic movements in the nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth centuries. Indeed, throughout the modern period of European history, new types of nationalism arise, grow more powerful, promote new states, and even disappear once their claims have been met or satisfied.

Why worry with modern European history? Why present yet another “forced march” through the great names, dates, and events of modern European history?

It is a truism to say that most people in the world interact in one way or another with European history and hear a great deal about it from the time they are very young. Within Europe, the importance of understanding modern European history varies. For example, in Greece or Poland, an understanding of the communist era and its ending is essential, whereas in Britain or Portugal, an understanding is desirable but not required. Furthermore, modern, as opposed to ancient, religious, or medieval history, is not a term that is often introduced in school.

2. Political Transformations and Power Struggles

To describe political power in the early modern period, historians often use terms such as absolutism, divine-right monarchy, or the growth of the modern state. However, these concepts cannot easily be applied to individual European nations. Political developments in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were too diverse to be captured by a single term or model. The governments of the day had varying degrees of success and failure in enhancing the institutions of government. While some states, such as the French monarchy, were able to impose law over government, society, and economy, other states, such as those in the German or Italian regions, were less stable, with political and military conflict keeping the government on the brink of disorder. In part, political developments in the period responded to an incessant mix of changing and similar themes, of cooperation and conflict. But we should also understand the variety of the states that emerged in this period. Each state could be identified by characteristics of its internal and external composition and by its relationship with the institutions and practices of statehood.

Crafting laws, raising armies, and maintaining order – these were the measurements of power in the early modern state. As European monarchs began to wrest themselves free from the vassals, corporations, representative assemblies, and religious seventials that had laid claim to their authority, fresh configurations of political power emerged within the state. But the story of political transformation does not end here. Dislodging centers of authority soon raised questions about the limits of the new power. Jesus Christ had said, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” A political thinker might ask, “What belonged to the state, and what belonged to society? What was Caesar’s, and what was God’s?” or “Did the two parties share a mutual possession?” These questions – going to the heart of what the state was, and indeed, what it should be – shaped both the theoretical reflections of political philosophers and the practical politics of statecraft.

3. Social Movements and Cultural Shifts

The mid-1960s in Europe were years of protest. The atmosphere resembled bona fide revolution more than anything Western Europe had seen since the days of the Paris Commune. Peaceful protesters challenged not only the authority of the old regime, but the legitimacy of the entire system of high technocratic organization, making possible mass society consumerism, the continued existence of a nonhereditary power based solely on wealth, and the increasing distortion of international relations by these domestic relations. The trade unions were clearly among the most effective reformers characteristic of these years of insurgence; through their strikes they limited the application of the traditional categorical imperative of preserving law and order, decayed by the base of knowledge in issues of secondary significance, selectable only according to the calculations of the already powerful.

What factors led to the growth of peaceful protest movements in Western Europe after 1945 and the dramatic upsurge of mass demonstrations in the 1960s? Some historians highlight the affluence of postwar society as a crucial factor that enabled such large numbers of people to take time away from earning a living to join with others for political and cultural purposes. Others stress the lasting impact of mass mobilization during the war and the strength of the working and peasant classes that demanded changes that never arrived. Many also emphasize the role of information in creating such large and visible groups. Whatever the reasons, sometimes even as large groups of young people were leading the kind of counterculture that caused considerable anxiety among older citizens, much of civil society was relaxing too, and, as it continued its flow from the traditional or organic to the modern or bureaucratic, ways of protesting established authority were changing.

4. Economic Developments and Technological Innovations

Indeed, economic changes and the resulting problems have forced the diverse peoples of Europe to seek new solutions to their many problems and to find new ways to bridge their many differences. As an introduction to this brief treatment of such a complex and multi-faceted topic, I should like to divide the study of Europe’s economic development from the late Middle Ages to 1914 into three important categories: agriculture, urbanization, and the industrial revolution. Each of these broad areas is related to the others, and together they help to explain why change was so rapid and sweeping in Europe.

One of the most critical aspects of modern Europe has been its economic transformation, including its profound and far-reaching consequences on the other facets of European life and culture. Economic ties have always been a central unifying factor in Europe and have long helped to forge a common identity among Europeans. The economic, social, and political problems generated by Europe’s many urban areas and varied ties and connections, in turn, have also helped to serve as a means of demarcating different peoples and regions of the European Continent.

5. Conclusion: Reflecting on the Legacy of Modern European History

It is the traditional and universal questions of the exercise of power and authority and delegation of statecraft that have been studied in this light. In the chapters in this book, elites and others striving for power closer to the top functioned through, influenced, and utilized the structures of the state. In different ways, large and small; strong and weak; the headings of monarchs or emperors, nobles or castes of officials, these people had power or sought it by exercising authority beyond that of ‘mere’ local leaders and pursued the elements that promised to deliver control at the expense of others. Such questions have been joined by more recent concerns with the sometimes complex and fractious roles of political ideologies and national or collective identities as sources of legitimacy. These are topics to be explored fully elsewhere. The chapters here, while contributing to an understanding of these broader questions, each revolve around questions of particular interest. They encompass themes across others; of social aspiration, of status concerned with self-image, secular elites, and searches for spiritual reward. Each reflects a shared paradox—the desire to express independent identity combined with functions structured on elite collectivities whose membership was meant to be as unchanging as possible. The desire to project that function in visual terms shaped an art of power. Every chapter has a story to tell.

In this conclusion, we reflect on the contributions of the chapters in this book to our understanding of modern European history. It is interesting to reflect on the episodes of modern European history with which these contributions have been concerned. The volume’s chapters illustrate the interpretive possibilities of case studies and open up a broad and rich range of themes. The focus on elites, and especially aristocracies, is both a continuation of a long tradition of social history but also reflects shared aspects of elite societies and their functions across historical periods and Europe. The importance of gender to the exercise of power at all levels of society and its intersection with other sources of authority is also a recurrent theme. The role and nature of individual states have drawn the attention of contributors. Behind each of these chapters is a larger context of European history that has impinged and influences our understanding. The inference is obvious; whatever conclusions we draw from these case studies or the questions we ask, they resonate beyond the subject and geographical emphases of the chapters.