WRITING for an historical series is tricky, and the outcome is not always a success. The best overall European history in English is the old “Fontana History of Europe”, but it was uneven in quality, and it suffered because the volumes appeared so far apart in time. The new “Penguin History of Europe” has only recently begun. But judging by this second volume in a projected eight-volume series, it is going to be a smashing success.
Tim Blanning, a Cambridge history professor, may not have the controversial dash of a Simon Schama or a Jonathan Clark, but he brings to his period knowledge, experience, sound judgment and a colourful narrative style. His broad range is evident from the start when, in place of the usual recitation of politics and battles, he expounds on such themes as communications, transport, demography and farming. Indeed, much of what might be seen as traditional history is pushed back to the fourth and final part of the book.
Not the least of Mr Blanning's achievements is his integrated approach to the entire continent. He jumps nimbly from Spain to the Low Countries, from Russia to Austria, from Prussia to Turkey. Many of Europe's royal families were related, after all. Moreover, the biggest preoccupation of such places as an emerging Prussia, a nervous Poland or a mercantile Dutch Republic was always with their neighbours, any one of which might invade them at almost any time.
The author also deftly places the history of the two greatest rivals of the day, England and France, in its wider European context. Any British Eurosceptic who thinks his country's history is detached from continental Europe's would realise from even the most scanty perusal of this book how bound up with the continent it has in fact always been.
The 17th and 18th centuries in Europe were, above all, a period of war. Indeed, it seemed at times as if France and Austria, the pre-eminent martial powers in 1648, did little else but fight. Sometimes war helped to stimulate economic and commercial development. But it is striking that it fell to Britain, which enjoyed at least a few years of peace, to pioneer Europe's industrialisation. Not coincidentally, among big powers it was the British who most curtailed the absolute rule of their monarch and who established the soundest base for financing a modern state. France's failure to do either was a leading contributor to its revolution in 1789.
The emergence of the modern state is a second main theme of the book. The drawn-out demise of the Holy Roman Empire, the sickening of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of Prussia laid the basis for the century ahead. As, of course, did revolutionary France, although Mr Blanning convincingly lays stress on its continuity with the ancien régime, especially in foreign policy. No history book can be dull that detects the origin of the French revolutionary wars almost two years before Bastille Day: in the declaration of war by Turkey on Russia in mid-August 1787, which the author likens to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914.
The book is stronger on the 18th century than on the second half of the 17th, reflecting the author's own historical bias. Another weakness is that, though there is a reasonable bibliography, it has no footnotes citing sources, a scandalous omission in a work with serious academic pretensions. It also sometimes takes for granted a basic grounding in the history of the period, which may be problematic for students at whom it is presumably in part aimed. But overall Mr Blanning has produced a triumphant success.
This article appeared in the Books & arts section of the print edition under the headline "Revolutionary days"