Three lifetimes ago, Europe was a farming society ruled by families of monarchs. Modern European history began with two seismic tremors—capitalism and democracy—that shattered Europe's foundations. In the decades after 1750, the Industrial Revolution in England thrust aside the old economic order and introduced modern industrial capitalism. The French Revolution of 1789–99 swept away the Ancien Regime in France and threatened entrenched elites everywhere in Europe.
Thomas Childers
University of Pennsylvania - Ph.D., Harvard University
