A Political History of Modern Europe
From the Reformation to the Present Day (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A Political History of Modern Europe: From the Reformation to the Present Day

A History which, like the present one, compresses the political development of Europe during the last four eventful centuries into a single volume, must needs give the impression of being hurried and superficial, and be guilty of a large number of glaring omissions. In excuse of these shortcomings the author begs leave to call attention to his purpose merely to raise one of those scaffoldings which must precede the erection of an edifice, and which is destined to be cleared away when the edifice is completed. In the author's view his book is no more than an introduction to the field, planned for the convenience of the student who is asking his first survey of this branch of knowledge. In the hope of facilitating the beginner's labors, the text is accompanied with references and illustrated by means of maps and genealogical tables. A word upon the text and the auxiliary features will show how they are correlated.

1. The text presents the political development of Modern Europe in the following order: a Preliminary Survey, introducing the reader to the intellectual, moral, and political conditions of the Renaissance, is followed by three parts, entitled respectively, Part I., The Reformation (1500-1648); Part II., The Absolute Monarchy (1648-1789); Part III., Revolution and Democracy (1789-1906). Each part is divided into a convenient number of chapters. As soon as a chapter has been carefully read and fully understood the student should turn to the references.

2. The references at the head of each chapter enable the student to penetrate more deeply into the chapter matter.

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