EUROPEAN HISTORY

European History: Analysis of Era from Eighteenth Century to Twentieth Century

Abstract

This term paper will highlight and lay emphasize on the most crucial events that took place in the modern European history and how the European culture and living pattern evolve throughout this time period. The paper will cover the French Revolution along with the attach incidents and developments that took place during the eighteenth and the twentieth century. However, this paper also lay emphasizes on all other crucial events that tend to be considered as defining and development of the overall society of Europe.

European History: A comparison from Eighteenth Century to Twentieth Century

Introduction

The French Revolution is considered a "watershed" or turning point in modern world history. It lasted from 1789 to 1799, provides a classic example of how a society united to overthrow a tyrant. During this short time period, a bloody revolt by the peasant population toppled the royalty and aristocrats from power and initiated a short period in which the political system was drastically reformed. New political ideas and philosophies were introduced, many of which are still used in the modern-day political establishment. The storming of the Bastille by an angry mob of peasants began a chain of events that triggered the beginning of a whole new phase in French history

Another aspect that is important and relevant for the paper is the description of the term Ancien regime and understanding it with the greatest need. It literally means the prior or former regime, but the most common English rendering is “old regime” or simply ancien régime. Over time, the phrase has acquired both a literal and a metaphorical significance. The original French term was coined to refer to the political and social order that existed before the French Revolution of 1789. Indeed, the first important uses of the term were by the revolutionaries themselves, such as the radical journalist Jean-Paul Marat and the Jacobin leader Maximilien Robespierre.

Others, however, use the term to refer more to the social hierarchy that existed before the revolution of 1789. Most societies in prerevolutionary Europe were structured around juridical distinctions between functionally defined classes, or orders (états in French): the first estate (clergy), the second estate (war-fighting nobility), and the third estate (commoners). The theory was that the clergy pray, the nobility fight, and the commoners work and that this arrangement was sanctioned by God. Broadly speaking, this functional definition of society disappeared as an explicit principle of legit Imation in or shortly after 1789, even if landed nobilities continued to exist and to exercise considerable power in regimes as various as England, Germany, and Russia thereafter.

It is worth noting that the term ancien régime is rarely used to describe the old economic order. Economic historians use a number of different markers to distinguish between modern and pre-modern, most of which are at best indirectly related to the social and political attributes of the ancien régime, as that term is generally employed. Some emphasize the Industrial Revolution, which began before ...