A Short History of Europe: From Pericles to Putin

by Simon Jenkins

Overview

A sweeping, illustrated history of Europe—a continent whose imperial ambitions, internal clashes, and existential threats are as vital today as they were during the conquests of Alexander the Great

In just a few hundred years, a modest peninsula off the northwest corner of Asia has seen the rise and fall of several empires; served as the crucible for scientific dynamism, cultural innovation, and economic revolution; and witnessed cataclysms and bloodshed that have almost destroyed it several times over. This is Europe: a continent whose identity emerged not so much by virtue of geographic or ethnic continuity, but by a long and storied struggle for power.

Studded with infamous figures—from Caesar to Charlemagne and Machiavelli to Marx—Simon Jenkins's history of Europe travels briskly from the Roman Empire, the Dark Ages, and the Reformation through the French Revolution, the World Wars, and the fall of the USSR. What emerges in this thrilling and expansive telling is a continent as defined by its continually clashing cultural identities and violent crises as it is by its tireless drive for a society based on the consent of the governed — which holds true right up to the present day.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541788534
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	03/05/2019
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	995,681
File size:	113 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Sir Simon David Jenkins is a British author and newspaper columnist and editor. He served as editor of the Evening Standard from 1976 to 1978 and of the Times from 1990 to 1992. He currently writes columns for both the Guardian and Evening Standard. He is the author of many books, among them A Short History of England (PublicAffairs). He lives in London.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations xi

Maps xvii

Introduction 1

1 Aegean Dawn - The Glory of Greece: 2500-300 BC 7

Crete

Troy

Athens

Pericles

Alexander the Great

2 The Ascendancy of Rome: 500 BC-AD 300 20

Roman Republic

Punic Wars

Julius Caesar

Augustus

St Paul

The Antonines

Diocletian

3 Goths, Huns and Christians: 300-560 35

Constantine

Christendom

Theodosius

Alaric the Goth

Sack of Rome

Attila the Hun

Clovis and Theodoric

Justinian

4 The Age of Charlemagne: 560-840 48

Gregory the Great

Mohammad and Umayyad Invasion

Charles Martel

Charlemagne

Verdun

5 The New Europeans: 840-1100 57

Vikings

Magyars and Otto the Great

Cnut

The Great Schism

William the Conqueror

Investiture Conflict

Humiliation of Henry IV

6 The Church Militant: 1100-1215 69

First Crusade

Second Crusade

Becket and Henry II -Barbarossa

Third and Fourth Crusades

Innocent III

Fourth Lateran Council

Magna Carta

7 The Rise of States: 1215-1400 80

Frederick II

The Golden Horde

Henry III and de Montfort

Hundred Years War

Black Death

Western Schism

Wycliffe and Hus

8 The Death of Byzantium: 1400-1500 95

Sigismund and Constance

End of Western Schism

Pope Nicholas

Fall of Constantinople

Ivan the Great

9 Renaissance and Reformation: 1450-1525 105

Gutenberg

Henry the Navigator

Isabella and Ferdinand Columbus

Savonarola

The Borgias -Maximilian

Luther

10 Wars of the Princes: 1525-1560 117

Henry VIII

Francis I

Charles V

Suleiman the Magnificent-Counter-Reformation

Ignatius Loyola

Council of Trent

Peace of Augsburg

Accession of Philip II

11 Wars of Religion: 1560-1660 127

Catherine de' Medici

Lepanto

St Bartholomew's Day Massacre

Armada

Henry IV of France

Thirty Years War

Peace of Westphalia

Cromwell

12 The Climax of Autocracy: 1660-1715 143

Louis XIV

William of Orange

Glorious Revolution

War of Spanish Succession

Marlborough

Treaty of Utrecht

Charles of Sweden

Peter the Great

13 From Reason to Rebellion: 1715-1789 158

War of Austrian Succession-Maria Theresa

Frederick the Great

Catherine the Great

Seven Years War

William Pitt

American War of Independence

14 The French Revolution: 1789-1804 171

Bastille

Girondins and Jacobins

Robespierre's Terror

Directory

Napoleon Emperor

15 Napoleon's Europe: 1804-1815 183

Trafalgar

Austerlitz

End of Holy Roman Empire

Peninsular War

Napoleon in Moscow

Battle of Leipzig

16 Vienna and the Failure of Reform: 1815-1840 194

Congress of Vienna

Waterloo

Greece

1830 Revolutions

Louis Philippe

Reform British Style

17 The Old Order's Last Cry: 1840-1850 208

Hegel and Marx

1848, the Year of Revolutions

Napoleon III

Great Exhibition

Russia's Empire

Crimean War

18 Italy and Germany: 1850-1900 219

Cavour and Garibaldi

Unification of Italy

Rise of Bismarck

Austro-Prussian War

Franco-Prussian War

Congress of Berlin

Allocation of Empires

Fall of Bismarck

Fin de Siècle

19 The War to End War: 1900-1918 234

Entente Cordiale

Balkan Uprising

Murder in Sarajevo

The Marne and the Trenches

Russian Revolution

Brest-Litovsk

America at War

Armistice

Treaty of Versailles

20 The Years in Between: 1918-1939 247

Reparations and Revenge

Locarno

Great Depression

Rise of Hitler

Munich

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

21 The Second World War: 1939-1945 259

Fall of France

Churchill

Battle of Britain

Barbarossa

Pearl Harbor

Holocaust

Stalingrad

D-Day

Yalta

Defeat of Germany and Japan

22 Cold War Continent: 1945-1989 270

Reconstruction

Cold War

European Union

Khrushchev and Détente

Second Cold War

Gorbachev

Collapse of Soviet Union

23 Strains Past and Present: 1989- 286

A New Russia

Balkan Wars

NATO Expands

Ever Closer Union

Rise of Putin

Crisis of 2008

Disunited Europe

24 Epilogue 300

A Timeline of European History 307

Author's Note 313

Further Reading 315

Index 317

Editorial Reviews

★ 01/28/2019

British historian Jenkins (A Short History of England) turns his attention to continental Europe in this swift, engaging traditional political history. The book traces “the struggle of people for power over land” and “the extraordinary role of violence, and the technology of violence, in that narrative” in page-turner fashion. (Jenkins acknowledges that famines, plagues, and assorted natural calamities have played roles as well.) Although the primary focus is the men (and rare woman) who have wielded and lost power—among them Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Pope Gregory I, Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, Louis XIV, Catherine the Great, Napoleon, Bismarck, and Hitler—Jenkins does attend to the cultural and social milieu. “Pen portraits of people and ideas that are important to that story” pepper this history; artists, (Leonardo da Vinci) philosophers (Aristotle, Hegel) and writers (Tolstoy) play their parts. Jenkins also brings in the best work of other historians, from the ancient (Herodotus, Procopius) to the modern (Daniel Boorstin, Peter Frankopan). Entertaining morsels of legend, lore, and gossip add flavor, as when he describes Peter the Great as “brash, high-living, persistently drunk.” Readers of conventional histories—those of the victors, rather than what Jenkins calls “the victims of power”—will find this a pleasurable, erudite tour of 4,000 years of European politics. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"Jenkins has produced the sort of work that not only compacts people and places into manageable form but also has wit and insight enough to bring a sense of freshness even to a knowledgeable history buff."—BOOKLIST

"Swift, engaging traditional political history.... Entertaining morsels of legend, lore, and gossip add flavour....a pleasurable, erudite tour of 4,000 years of European politics."—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, Starred Review

From the Publisher

2018-12-09

A concise and somewhat quirky treatment of European history from ancient times to the present.

In a natural follow-up to A Short History of England (2011), Guardian and Evening Standard columnist Jenkins (Britain's Hundred Best Railway Stations, 2017, etc.) begins and ends with classical metaphors. He opens by noting how Europe was named for the place on the island of Crete where Zeus, after seducing the Phoenician princess Europa, swam with her to engender a new civilization. The author ends with the story of the magnificent Piraeus lion, carved in Greece in the fourth century B.C.E. and removed to Venice, where it stands outside the Arsenal in Venice, revealing what Jenkins sees as a metaphor "to free ourselves from our own place in history and see the past as a distant land." Indeed, the cultural currents forming Europe and shaping its destiny have been staggering. From the ascendancy of Rome to its overrun by barbarian invaders to the establishment of a Frankish kingdom by Charlemagne to the invasions of the Vikings, Europe experienced a violent founding characterized by many forced migrations of diverse peoples. Yet it has also been the crucible of enlightened civilizations, from the enterprising Scandinavian tribes to the Norman builders to the rise of powerful nation-states to the galvanizing ideas of the Renaissance and Reformation. Throughout this chronological work, Jenkins touches on many usual suspects—e.g., Julius Caesar, Constantine, Catherine de' Medici, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Hitler, and Putin—yet he deals with schisms and wars of dynasty with admirable restraint, distilling the research to the bare essentials. He organizes his work by themes such as "The Old Order's Last Cry: 1840-1850," and he manages to capture the dwindling "strains" of a disunited present-day Europe. The 20 pages of maps at the beginning, as well as the timeline, are endlessly helpful in navigating this vast history.

Jenkins says it best: "This short book is aimed at those without the time and inclination for a longer one." An accomplished introduction for any nonscholar interested in European history.

Kirkus Reviews