The Pursuit of Glory

Reviewing this survey by Tim Blanning of Europe from Portugal to Russia in 670 pages of fine print is a daunting task. The advertising blurbs on the front and back covers proclaim the work a masterpiece and promise the reader a jaw-dropping experience. There is little that the book's table of contents does not promise to explain, and it is impossible to do justice to the wealth of information contained here in a brief review. The reader should be warned that there are no demonstrations here. The author proceeds to ‘capture the illustrative substance’ by example, sometimes judicious, and sometimes not. This is an ‘impressionist’ exposé that juxtaposes fleeting evocations tightly into each page, guided only loosely by four over-arching themes: Life and Death, Power, Religion and Culture, and finally War and Peace. Life and Death leads us along the highways and waterways, until we understand that distance made it difficult for most countries to develop a national market. We are soon introduced to a leitmotif running through the book: the advance of Britain with respect to continental states in this and almost everything else. The titbits of information are often enlightening and one would often wish to know their source, but the absence of references is part of an editorial strategy and not the fault of the author. One cannot be a specialist of everything; the pages on women, sex and gender are particularly weak, although that must in part reflect the heavy reliance on literature and anecdote common to authors in that field. The book skims rapidly over the demography of the Continent, slowly recovering from the ravages of war and cold climate. Blanning notes the commercial precocity of the Dutch, with their precipitous fall in the eighteenth century. One might think that he is too dismissive of French maritime commerce, which was 90 per cent of the British in value in the 1780s and expanding more rapidly. His discussion of commerce leads to a short section on the industrial revolution, built in large part on rural proto-industry which reflected the growing prosperity of some peasants, and the pauperisation of others

Aesthetics · Anecdote · Art · Glory · Media studies · Political science · Power (physics · Sociology · Table of contents · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Computer Science · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Law