Europe Unfolding

The new edition of this classic history provides readers with anintroduction to a period characterized by diversity and vitalityalongside war, plague, revolution and famine. The book has beenupdated in the light of recent scholarship and includes a fullyrevised bibliography. The history of Europe between 1648 and 1688, often associatedmostly with Louis XIV or the Age of the Baroque, was in factdisturbed by more cross-currents than at almost any other period.Disturbances, conflicts and uprisings along the remote frontiers, in Poland, in the Ukraine, in the Carpathians and in South-EasternEurope, had repercussions in Vienna, Paris, Stockholm, and TheHague, affecting diplomacy across the world. Yet, at the same time, Europe was home to Newton and Huygens, Velázquez andRembrandt, Pascal and Bossuet, Bernini and Racine. The diversityand vitality of European science and culture was all the moreastonishing for the incessant ravages of war, plague andfamine.The period which opens with a lull after the Thirty Years Warand closes with another period of calm before the Wars of Englishand Spanish Succession, witnessed the flowering of Dutchprosperity, the rise of Muscovy, and the slow decline of Turkey andVenice. Almost everywhere the institution of monarchy, shaken atthe outset, was by 1688 more strongly entrenched than ever.