A History of Modern Europe

Citation

Merriman, J. (2019). A History of Modern Europe (4th ed., one-volume edition). W. W. Norton & Company.

Chapter Summary

The one-volume fourth edition is a very large textbook (about 1,260 pages according to the Google Books record) of 30 chapters grouped into seven parts, running from the Middle Ages to the early twenty-first century. The chapter titles below are those of the publisher's table of contents; the descriptions stay close to what those titles and the publisher's description show.

Part One, Foundations: Chapters 1–4

Chapter 1, Medieval Legacies and Transforming Discoveries, sets the starting point, followed by Chapter 2, The Renaissance, Chapter 3, The Two Reformations, and Chapter 4, The Wars of Religion. Together they carry the story from the medieval inheritance through the cultural and religious upheavals of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to the confessional conflicts that followed.

Part Two, Statemaking: Chapters 5–7

Chapter 5, The Rise of the Atlantic Economy: Spain and England, ties state power to overseas trade and empire. Chapter 6, England and the Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century, pairs two states of the period, and Chapter 7, The Age of Absolutism, 1650–1720, turns to the monarchies of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Part Three, New Cultural and Political Horizons: Chapters 8–11

Chapter 8, The New Philosophy of Science, and Chapter 9, Enlightened Thought and the Republic of Letters, cover intellectual change. Chapter 10, Eighteenth-Century Economic and Social Change, and Chapter 11, Eighteenth-Century Dynastic Rivalries and Politics, balance this with social and economic history and with the diplomacy and rivalries of the dynastic states.

Part Four, Revolutionary Europe, 1789–1850: Chapters 12–16

Chapter 12, The French Revolution, and Chapter 13, Napoleon and Europe, open the nineteenth century. Chapter 14, The Industrial Revolution, takes the economic and social side of the transformation. Chapter 15, Liberal Challenges to Restoration Europe, and Chapter 16, The Revolutions of 1848, follow the political contest between the post-1815 order and liberal and national movements.

Part Five, The Age of Mass Politics: Chapters 17–21

Chapter 17, The Era of National Unification, is followed by Chapter 18, The Dominant Powers in the Age of Liberalism: Parliamentary Britain, Tsarist Russia, and Republican France, which compares three states. Chapter 19, Rapid Industrialization and Its Challenges, 1870–1914, and Chapter 20, Political and Cultural Responses to a Rapidly Changing World, cover economic transformation and the reactions to it, and Chapter 21, The Age of European Imperialism, extends the story overseas.

Part Six, Cataclysm: Chapters 22–26

Chapter 22, The Great War, is followed by Chapter 23, Revolutionary Russia and the Soviet Union, and Chapter 24, The Elusive Search for Stability in the 1920s. Chapter 25, The Europe of Economic Depression and Dictatorship, and Chapter 26, World War II, close the part. The publisher states that this edition gives special emphasis to the theme of war and society.

Part Seven, Europe in the Post-War Era: Chapters 27–30

Chapter 27, Rebuilding Divided Europe, and Chapter 28, The Cold War and the End of European Empires, cover the decades after 1945. Chapter 29, Transitions to Democracy and the Collapse of Communism, and Chapter 30, Global Challenges: The War Against Terror and the Uncertainties of a New Age, bring the narrative to the present.

Key Concepts

• Statemaking: the part title for the growth of centralised states in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, linked in the table of contents to the Atlantic economy and to absolutism.
• The Republic of Letters and the new philosophy of science: the intellectual currents of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that Part Three treats as new cultural horizons.
• Revolutionary Europe: the grouping of the French Revolution, Napoleon, industrialisation and the revolutions of 1848 into one period.
• Mass politics: the label for the late nineteenth century, covering unification, liberalism and the political and cultural responses to industrialisation.
• Imperialism: treated in its own chapter within Part Five and revisited in Chapter 28 on the end of European empires.
• War and society: the new thematic emphasis in the fourth edition, according to the publisher, on how war and violence shaped the social fabric of Europe.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Wide span in one narrative. The 30 chapters run from the Renaissance to the War on Terror in a single connected account, so a single text can cover a full modern Europe sequence.
• Narrative style. The publisher describes the book as written in Merriman's signature narrative style, brightened with humour and biographical sketches, and says students and instructors praise it for authoritative coverage.
• Up-to-date emphasis. Norton states that the fourth edition adds coverage of women's history, the history of slavery and race and other social history topics, alongside the new theme of war and society, and that the maps were completely redrawn.
• Clear parts. The seven-part structure and the titles of the chapters make the book easy to navigate and to excerpt.

Limitations

• Size. At roughly 1,260 pages in the combined edition, the book is heavy for a single course; the publisher also offers the text in two volumes.
• Framing around states and wars. The part and chapter titles show a book organised largely around states, wars and political change, with intellectual, social and economic topics appearing as single chapters within each period. Readers wanting a deeper social or cultural history of a period will need a specialised book.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the modern European history course, Merriman is the main survey textbook, running from the Renaissance. Davies's Europe: A History takes a still longer view, from ancient times to the present, while Mason's A Concise History of Modern Europe is described as a brief survey from the Enlightenment onward. For a Western civilization sequence that begins with the ancient world, The Making of the West and Cole and colleagues' Western Civilizations are textbooks with that wider remit.

Two titles cover a narrower period in more depth: Evans's The Pursuit of Power treats Europe from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to 1914 across the whole continent, and Doyle's The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction is a short account of a single revolution that corresponds to Chapter 12. They work well as follow-up reading once Merriman has supplied the overall framework.

How to Use This Book

No prerequisites are listed; the book begins with the medieval background and is written as a general survey for undergraduates. A course covering the whole period can follow the seven parts in order; one beginning in 1789 would use Parts Four to Seven (Chapters 12–30), and one on early modern Europe would stop at Part Three (Chapters 1–11).

Because the book is large, it is practical to choose chapters by the course themes rather than read it cover to cover. Readers who want more than a survey should pair a chapter with a specialised volume: Doyle with Chapter 12, or Evans with Chapters 15–21. Users of the two-volume version should check which chapters each volume includes.