Das Alte Europa vom Hochmittelalter bis zur Moderne. By Peter Blickle. Munich: C. H. Beck. 2008. Pp. 330. Cloth €26.90. ISBN 978-3-406-57171-8

摘要

Much conventional history has been written from the perspective of the great urban centers of Europe or America. Things can seem very different when viewed from the perspective of the village, as Peter Blickle demonstrates in his new history of Europe from 1300 to 1800. Modernity, he argues, is generally defined as the product of the French and industrial revolutions. The search for antecedents helped to fashion the current term “early modern,” related to developments such as the Renaissance, the Reformations, state formation, and European overseas expansion and conquest. This periodization preferences the activities of a minority of Europeans, principally the political, intellectual, and economic elite, while marginalizing the contributions of the more humble majority, as well as those living before the mid-fifteenth century. Blickle seeks to recover these aspects by presenting the five centuries after 1300 as a distinct epoch of “old Europe.”