History of Western Europe [Didactic Press Paperbacks]

History of Western Europe [Didactic Press Paperbacks] PDF Author: James Robinson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781545504918
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 748

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Book Description
By far one of the greatest history books ever written, James Robinson's classic of Western European history is an absolute must-read for anyone seeking a greater understanding of the power struggles and armed conflicts that formed the Europe, and the world, of today. Spanning over a thousand years, from the stunning fall of the western Roman Empire to the rise of the German industrial/military empire on the eve of World War I, Robinson weaves a beautiful, easy to read historical narrative of the major events and figures of European history. From Philip Augustus to Prince Metternich, from Charles Martel to the Holy Roman Empire and the Papal States, James Robinson's heavily illustrated history takes you on a journey of several lifetimes, and aims to leave you better and more informed than when you began.

History of Western Europe [Didactic Press Paperbacks]

History of Western Europe [Didactic Press Paperbacks] PDF Author: James Robinson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781545504918
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 748

Get Book

Book Description
By far one of the greatest history books ever written, James Robinson's classic of Western European history is an absolute must-read for anyone seeking a greater understanding of the power struggles and armed conflicts that formed the Europe, and the world, of today. Spanning over a thousand years, from the stunning fall of the western Roman Empire to the rise of the German industrial/military empire on the eve of World War I, Robinson weaves a beautiful, easy to read historical narrative of the major events and figures of European history. From Philip Augustus to Prince Metternich, from Charles Martel to the Holy Roman Empire and the Papal States, James Robinson's heavily illustrated history takes you on a journey of several lifetimes, and aims to leave you better and more informed than when you began.

Europe in the 16th Century [Didactic Press Paperbacks]

Europe in the 16th Century [Didactic Press Paperbacks] PDF Author: Arthur Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781545445457
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description
THE division of history into periods may be very misleading if its true purport be not understood. One age can no more be isolated from the universal course of history than one generation from another. The ideas, the principles, the aims of man change indeed, but change slowly, and in their very change are the outcome of the past. The old generation melts into the new, as the night melts into the day. None the less, just as the night differs from the day, although it is impossible to say when the dawn begins, and when the day, so does the Modern differ from that which has been termed the Middle age. This once granted, the importance of the later years of the fifteenth century may be easily grasped. The medi�val conception of the great World-Church under Pope and Emperor had by this time lost all practical power. The authority of the Emperor was confined to Germany, and was even there disputed, and, if the Papacy still retained its pretensions, they no longer had their old weight. Not only had they been resisted by the various powers of Europe in turn, they had even been severely criticised by two General Councils. Already the man was born who was to take the lead in the final overthrow of the unity of the Western Church. Meanwhile, the older society was breaking up: the links which in binding a man to his lord, his fields, his trade, or his town, bound him to his fellows, and his livelihood to him, were falling to pieces, and the 'individual' of modern life was emerging. To this change many things contributed. The movement of the Renaissance emancipated men from the somewhat narrow limits of medi�valism; it opened to them the knowledge of the ancients, and gave them a glimpse of the worlds of thought beyond, of which the New World about to be discovered to the west seemed but a type. The economic revolution had a like effect. The break-up of the older organisation of trades under the system of close guilds, was accompanied by the rise of modern competition. In life, as in thought, the individual was asserting himself...

Europe in the Middle Ages [Didactic Press Paperbacks]

Europe in the Middle Ages [Didactic Press Paperbacks] PDF Author: Irene Plunket
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781546872924
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
'Ave, Roma Immortalis!', 'Hail, Immortal Rome!' This cry, breaking from the lips of a race that had carried the imperial eagles from the northern shores of Europe to Asia and Africa, was no mere patriotic catchword. It was the expression of a belief that, though humanity must die and personal ambitions fade away, yet Rome herself was eternal and unconquerable, and what was wrought in her name would outlast the ages.In the modern world it is sometimes necessary to remind people of their citizenship, but the Roman never forgot the greatness of his inheritance. When St. Paul, bound with thongs and condemned to be scourged, declared, 'I am Roman born,' the Captain of the Guard, who had only gained his citizenship by paying a large sum of money, was afraid of the prisoner on whom he had laid hands without a trial.To be a Roman, however apparently poor and defenceless, was to walk the earth protected by a shield that none might set aside save at great peril. Not to be a Roman, however rich and of high standing, was to pass in Roman eyes as a 'barbarian', a creature of altogether inferior quality and repute.'Be it thine, O Roman,' says Virgil, the greatest of Latin poets, 'to govern the nations with thy imperial rule': and such indeed was felt by Romans to be the destiny of their race.Stretching on the west through Spain and Gaul to the Atlantic, that vast 'Sea of Darkness' beyond which according to popular belief the earth dropped suddenly into nothingness, the outposts of the Empire in the east looked across the plains of Mesopotamia towards Persia and the kingdoms of central Asia. Babylon 'the Wondrous', Syria, and Palestine with itsturbulent Jewish population, Egypt, the Kingdom of the Pharaohs long ere Romulus the City-builder slew his brother, Carthage, the Queen of Mediterranean commerce, all were now Roman provinces, their lustre dimmed by a glory greater than they had ever known...

A Clash of Thrones

A Clash of Thrones PDF Author: Andrew Rawson
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0750966785
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
Medieval Europe is a dark and dangerous place. In 1054 the Church tears itself in two, setting the scene for nearly 500 years of turmoil. Empires will collide and dynasties will rise and fall; marriages will be made and alliances broken. It is a place where love clashes with ambition and violence rules – enemies are blinded, rivals are murdered and heretics are burnt at the stake. As the Black Death sweeps the continent and the Mongol hordes threaten its borders, can the kings of the old world survive the dawn of a new era?

A Short History of the Renaissance [Didactic Press Paperbacks]

A Short History of the Renaissance [Didactic Press Paperbacks] PDF Author: Edith Sichel
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781546519379
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
MICHAEL ANGELO'S great painting of the newly created Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel might be taken as a symbol of the Renaissance, of the time when man was, as it were, re-created more glorious than before, with a body naked and unashamed, and a strong arm, unimpaired by fasting, outstretched towards life and light. Definitions are generally misleading, and it is easier to represent the Renaissance by a symbol than to define it. It was a movement, a revival of man's powers, a reawakening of the consciousness of himself and of the universe - a movement which spread over Western Europe, and may be said to have lasted over two centuries. It was between 1400 and 1600 that it held full sway. Like other movements it had forerunners, but, unlike other movements, it was circumscribed by no particular aim, and the fertilizing wave which passed over Italy, Germany, France, England and, in a much fainter degree, over Spain, to leave a fresh world behind it, seems more like a phenomenon of nature than a current of history - rather an atmosphere surrounding men than a distinct course before them. The new birth was the result of a universal impulse, and that impulse was preceded by something like a revelation, a revelation of intellect and of the possibilities in man. And like the Christian revelation in the spiritual world, so the Renaissance in the natural, meant a temper of mind, a fresh vision, a source of thoughts and works, rather than shaped results. When it crystallized into an �sthetic ritual, it fell into decadence and corruption...

History of Germany 1740 - 1914 [Didactic Press Paperbacks]

History of Germany 1740 - 1914 [Didactic Press Paperbacks] PDF Author: George Priest
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781545485682
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
The German Empire of 1740 was established on Christmas Day 800 when the Pope placed the imperial crown on the head of Charlemagne in Rome. From that time until far down the Middle Ages the Empire stood forth as the great power in western Europe. Conjointly with the Papacy it was the acknowledged head of Christendom. But the Empire comprised many different racial elements which could not be coalesced. A political unit in name, the Empire was never one in spirit. In the centuries which followed Charlemagne various emperors tried to mold the imperial provinces into an organic whole - Otto the Great (936-973) succeeded in part - but all were ultimately defeated either by intrigues of powerful nobles or by divergence of material interests. Luther created a feeling of national unity by means of his Translation of the Bible (1534), as Germans realized in it the possession of a mother-tongue common to them all. But the religious differences of the Reformation ranged German states against each other in bitter partisanship, and the ravages of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), the culmination of this hostility, added unparalleled want and misery to spiritual discord that could not be reconciled. The Treaty of Westphalia, which concluded the Thirty Years' War, left the states of Germany as disunited as they ever were. Provisions of this treaty were still regulating affairs of the German Empire in 1740...

The Holy Roman Empire [Didactic Press Paperbacks]

The Holy Roman Empire [Didactic Press Paperbacks] PDF Author: James Bryce
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781546350958
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
Of those who in August, 1806, read in the English newspapers that the Emperor Francis II had announced to the Diet his resignation of the imperial crown, there were probably few who reflected that the oldest political institution in the world had come to an end. Yet it was so. The Empire which a note issued by a diplomatist on the banks of the Danube extinguished, was the same which the crafty nephew of Julius had won for himself, against the powers of the East, beneath the cliffs of Actium; and which had preserved almost unaltered, through eighteen centuries of time, and through the greatest changes in extent, in power, in character, a title and pretensions from which all meaning had long since departed. Nothing else so directly linked the old world to the new-nothing else displayed so many strange contrasts of the present and the past, and summed up in those contrasts so much of European history. From the days of Constantine till far down into the middle ages it was, conjointly with the Papacy, the recognised centre and head of Christendom, exercising over the minds of men an influence such as its material strength could never have commanded. It is of this influence and of the causes that gave it power rather than of the external history of the Empire, that the following pages are designed to treat. That history is indeed full of interest and brilliance, of grand characters and striking situations. But it is a subject too vast for any single canvas. Without a minuteness of detail sufficient to make its scenes dramatic and give us a lively sympathy with the actors, a narrative history can have little value and still less charm. But to trace with any minuteness the career of the Empire, would be to write the history of Christendom from the fifth century to the twelfth, of Germany and Italy from the twelfth to the nineteenth; while even a narrative of more restricted scope, which should attempt to disengage from a general account of the affairs of those countries the events that properly belong to imperial history, could hardly be compressed within reasonable limits. It is therefore better, declining so great a task, to attempt one simpler and more practicable though not necessarily inferior in interest; to speak less of events than of principles, and endeavour to describe the Empire not as a State but as an Institution, an institution created by and embodying a wonderful system of ideas. In pursuance of such a plan, the forms which the Empire took in the several stages of its growth and decline must be briefly sketched. The characters and acts of the great men who founded, guided, and overthrew it must from time to time be touched upon. But the chief aim of the treatise will be to dwell more fully on the inner nature of the Empire, as the most signal instance of the fusion of Roman and Teutonic elements in modern civilization: to shew how such a combination was possible; how Charles and Otto were led to revive the imperial title in the West; how far during the reigns of their successors it preserved the memory of its origin, and influenced the European commonwealth of nations...

The Fall of the Stuarts [Didactic Press Paperbacks]

The Fall of the Stuarts [Didactic Press Paperbacks] PDF Author: Edward Hale
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781545510704
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
THE history of western Europe in the seventeenth century is a history of wars."Wars destroy the morals of mankind by habituating them to refer everything to force, and by necessitating them so often to dispense with the ordinary suggestions of sympathy and justice." This is true of wars in general; but the demoralizing effect is much greater if wars are civil wars; or religious wars--wars, that is, between fellow-citizens to serve the ends of some political party, or to enforce the observance of some political truth; or wars between fellow-Christians to force all to follow some religious creed. Moral virtues are in these cases uprooted; military virtues, which may exist in the most depraved man or state, flourish.The era of the great Protestant Revolution ushered in the period of religious wars, France was devastated by religious and civil wars combined in the latter half of the sixteenth, and in the beginning of the seventeenth century. It took part in the Thirty Years' War of Germany (1618-1648); it was again the theatre of the civil war of the Fronde, in which aimless attempts were made to oppose the absolutism of the French crown (1648- 1653). Germany was almost ruined by its great civil and religious Thirty Years' War. England had also suffered in its great civil and partly religious war, which ended in 1648, with the execution of Charles I.The great principle of religious toleration was unknown in the sixteenth century, and taught without success by a few great thinkers in the seventeenth century. Men believed great truths, by believing which they thought they secured their salvation, and they deemed it their bounden duty to make others believe, in order that they too might be saved. So not merely were wars undertaken for the sake of religious tenets, but within the several countries there were persecutions of Christians by Christians, of Englishmen by Englishmen, Frenchmen by Frenchmen, Germans by Germans.Nevertheless it is only through the fire of religious and civil wars, and of religious persecutions, that the cause of religious and civil liberty comes out triumphant. The fall of the Stuarts, of which we shall treat, is an event in the successful struggle for civil and religious liberty.The latter half of the seventeenth century was occupied by wars of a less demoralizing character than civil and religious wars; by wars undertaken by one man, Louis XIV., to obtain certain personal ends, These ends were the supremacy of Western Europe, the Imperial crown, and the succession to the throne of Spain. Of what befell Louis in his attempts to secure the supremacy of Western Europe, and how the "balance of power" was eventually righted, we shall also treat...

A Short History of Germany [Didactic Press Paperbacks]

A Short History of Germany [Didactic Press Paperbacks] PDF Author: Ernest Henderson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781546497943
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
GERMANY stands in the centre of Europe, and on her soil all the great international struggles have been fought, - the Thirty Years' War, the early campaigns of the Spanish Succession War, the Seven Years' War, the gigantic wars against Napoleon. It is the custom for modern educators to recommend the study of the history of France as a guiding thread through the intricacies of general European history; but is this choice justifiable? The two great, omnipresent factors of the whole medi�val period are the Papacy and the Empire; the Empire was German from the ninth to the nineteenth century, - from the days of Charlemagne until the days of Francis II., - and the Empire interfered in the affairs of the Papacy and of Italy far more than did France. When we come to the period of the Reformation, surely Luther and his kind were more prominent than the. French reformers, and the Emperor Charles V. had more to do with the affairs of Europe than any of the French kings. In the Thirty Years' War, larger interests were at stake than in the Huguenot struggles, and the German Peace of Westphalia necessitated a recasting of the whole map of Europe. Louis XIV., it is true, gave the tone to the high society of his age, and French was almost universally spoken and written at the German courts; but this influence was neither very deep nor very beneficial. Nor can it be denied that the French Revolution produced great results for Europe. Yet its effects, as far as Germany was concerned, have been overrated; the liberation of the serfs would probably have been accomplished without it, while constitutional government, popular representation, and trial by jury had still to wait for half a century.

An Introduction to the History of Western Europe

An Introduction to the History of Western Europe PDF Author: James Harvey Robinson
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "An Introduction to the History of Western Europe" by James Harvey Robinson. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.