Europe Since 1815, Volume 1

Europe underwent profound upheavals in the decades immediately following the downfall of Napoleon, and that tumult was the result of a series of economic, political and social changes whose origins reached back into the eighteenth century. Starting with a superbly concise explanation of the Industrial Revolution, authors Garrett and Godfrey explore the intricate series of events that followed on the heels of a conservative reaction to Napoleon's defeat. With varying degrees of success, the victorious Allied powers sought to reinstall monarchy and religious authority throughout Europe. Hovering over this diplomatic finery was the reactionary figure of Prince von Metternich of Austria, a supremely gifted statesman who remained at the center of a glittering aristocratic European stage for 35 years. But the aristocratic reaction could not contain the surging demand of the new middle classes emerging in the wake of the titanic forces unleashed by the Industrial Revolution. In a series of re