Herbert H. Rowen On Europe Between 1648-1848

From Absolutism to Revolution, ed. Herbert H. Rowen

(New York: Macmillan Company; 1964), p. v.

ʻThe two centuries from 1648 to 1848 form the tract of time between a Europe still half-medieval to one distinctly modern.

Such terms as “medieval” and “modern” are not plain names for simple things; they stand for complex interweavings of many historical threads in which we can detect several large, loosely connected patterns.

It is these over-all patterns which become more elusive the more closely we look at them which define our historical “ages.”

In this sense the characteristic patterns of the medieval period were the coexistence of localisms and universalism, the predominance of the manorial and feudal systems in a predominantly agrarian society, the guild system and the “closed” town, a social order frankly based upon hereditary privilege, an all-embracing and universally accepted Christianity, and the philosophical-theological system of Christianity-plus-

Aristotelianism called scholasticism.

ʻIn the modern period, on the other hand, the characteristic patterns are nationalism and the nation-state, the predominance of the city in a predominantly industrial and capitalist society, a social order divided into classes but hostile to inherent privilege, with individual equality and freedom before the law, and, in the world of thought and believe, the ascendancy of secularism and science.ʼ

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