Europe 1850-1914 ─ Progress, Participation and Apprehension

The second half of the nineteenth century was an era of relative tranquillity and progress It was an age of free acquisition and disposition of private property among individuals and families, in a phrase, a bourgeois era.

This book tells the story of European history from the middle of the nineteenth century to the outbreak of the First World War. Encompassing in his account the entire European continent, the author describes:

- the structures and processes of economic growth

- the creation of an urban-industrial society

- the rise and transformation of voluntary associations

- the changing structures of gender and the position of women

- the triumphs and defeats of positivism and empiricism in the natural and social sciences

- artists? search for new forms of expression

- the rise of mass politics and the growth of nationalism

- the changing relations and scope of actions of the Great Powers.

Jonathan Sperber is Curators' Professor of History at the University of Missouri. He has written eight books and twenty-three articles on nineteenth century and twentieth century European history, including The European Revolutions, 1848-1851.