Europe of the Ancien Régime 1715 - 1783

No age in European history presents a more striking range of contrasts than that which precedes the French Revolution. Often described as the Age of Reason, in recognition of the eminence of such men as Kant, Hume, Diderot and Voltaire, it was, as Mr. Ogg points out, also an age of sentiment and of irrational conservatism. In war and politics it witnessed the rise of the British Empire and the birth of the U.S.A., the career of Frederick the Great and the beginnings of modern power politics. Yet the years from 1715-1740 are here summarised as ‘a period of diplomatic futility and inconclusiveness probably unmatched in European history. And in trade and agriculture, in law and public administration the same co-existence of the archaic and the barbarous with the civilised and scientific is equally conspicuous.

This book is not only a lucid and stimulating account of the old Europe and the countries that composed it. The reader will find in it much out-of-the way information and an interpretation at once sensitive and personal, giving life and colour to a period too often buried under a mass of detail. The treatment of the visual arts, the intellectual life and the music of the time is not the least memorable feature of this survey.