Enlightenment and the emergence of the absolutist nation-state and democracy
Review of The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Europe- 1648-1815 by Timothy Blanning
This book is a dazzling exposition of the evolution of European society from 1648 to 1815, when absolutism and the Enlightenment reigned, state power was consolidated and then challenged by the “nation”, and the democratic political revolution began and failed, ending in military dictatorship and a war so savage that the destruction and killing were on a par with World War I.
The book starts off with a basic analysis on life and death at the time, including how primitive transportation was, how unimaginably difficult life was in the countryside, and how the economy for most had barely changed since antiquity even with steam power and the beginnings of the industrial revolution. People were almost all born poor, worked their entire lives, and died with little prospect of improvement of their station in life. While this in many ways is the driest part of the book, it is essential for what follows and indeed for putting modern life in perspective.
The chapters on power and institutions were particularly fascinating to me. First, with the consolidation of centralized control and the relative decline of feudal aristocrats, there was the absolutist impulse. This supposedly put unprecedented power into the hands of a sovereign, though Blanning questions whether the notion is as cut and dried as historians have made it out to be. One thing is certain: the levers of power were moving directly into the hands of executives, increasingly enabling them to bypass aristocratic intermediaries.
Second, Blanning examines in great detail who the elites were, how they could achieve rank and power, and how their positions were changing. While essentially aristocratic as based on land ownership and religious offices, these bases were beginning to give way to elites in urban centers – merchants and industrialists, who were more secular. Much of this remained inchoate until the French Revolution, but Blanning proves it was in motion long before the 19th century upheavals we associate with them.
Third, he looks at how the function of institutions were changing, as in the development of rudimentary checks and balances of parliaments, however restricted in power or class representation they remained. Furthermore, a professional bureaucracy was taking shape. It was staffed by educated men of varying backgrounds, though aristocrats tended to become their titular heads.
Finally, in reference to the title, Blanning argues that much of what happened was due to the actions of kings and princes, whose principal motivation was a mix of personal glory and pride or saving face. In lucky cases, these were the “enlightened despots” that Voltaire, Diderot, and others cultivated.
The church, Blanning argues, experienced a golden age of influence on the powerful and everyday life, in spite of the image of Enlightenment challenges to its authority. This was the Baroque age as well as one of protestant diversification. Religious toleration, at least of Christian varieties, had reached a new stage: for the most part, Reformation wars of religion had become a thing of the past. Moreover, he posits, the rationalist philosophies that emerged were largely ignored or superseded by their romantic critics, gaining currency only in limited circles and disciplines like science, which was emerging.
Blanning also explains the political nature behind the art and architecture that arose in this period, with a particular focus on Louis XIV’s Versailles. Again, it is fascinating, a kind of Kulturgeschichte expressed in dense and elegant writing, each section a flowing mini-essay that stands on its own, ranging across a wide range of concepts and countries.
The concluding chapters on the military situation focus on Alfred the Great (who militarized Prussian aristocratic society) and Napoleon (who mobilized all classes of citizens for total war). The coverage is too brief in my view, skimming over what were immensely complex wars and rapidly evolving political systems. I was disappointed because these were the questions I wanted addressed in greater detail, but then, this is not a linear history on politics and war. I bought this book in order to read about the aftermath of the Thirty Years War, in which the notion of national sovereignty essentially overtook the extreme fragmentation of the feudal era; it was not adequately addressed.
A great theme I took away was how the state came to merge with the “nation” in this period, not only as the beginning of the end of sprawling and loosely organized multi-ethnic empires, but also bringing a new sense of identity as belonging to a political, indeed ethno-linguistic, entity that is supposed to be more representative, if not yet democratic.
Though a bit unusual in its organization – it is not a narrative history and follows no clear chronological order – this book offers a wonderful reading experience about the early modern period in European history. It is organized around broad themes and hence not for everyone, but it absorbed my attention in near-complete satisfaction. While it would be better a clearer idea of what events were taking place in context, Blanning alludes to them in passing – this will slow some readers down, but is more or less sufficient. Finally, I would have preferred extensive footnotes, but it is not an academic book so much as a popular history. There is a good annotated bibliography.
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