Published in 1963

The three essays bound together in this book are based upon lectures given by the author as a University Lecturer in Modern History at Oxford. The lectures were not intended as a substitute for the excellent textbooks of modern European history published in recent years.

The choice of subject and manner of treatment were determined by the questions of students and others attempting to find in this history of modern Europe something more than a chronicle of events, a list of dates and names, a catalogue of political and constitutional changes.