World History of the Middle Period 1500-1800

Contents: Preface. 1. The period of the western world. 2. The Habsburg trial for mastery, 1519-1659. 3. The winning of wars, 1660-1815. 4. Industrialization and the changing global balances, 1815-1885. 5. The coming of a Bipolar world and the crisis of the "Middle Powers:" Part II, 1919-1942. Bibliography. Index.

"World History of the Middle Period 1500-1800 discuss in the year 1500, the date chosen modern times, it was by no means obvious to the inhabitants of the Europe that their continent was poised to dominate much of the rest of the earth. The knowledge which contemporaries possessed about the great civilizations of the Orient was fragmentary and all too often erroneous, based as it was upon travelers tales which had lost nothing in their retelling.

Whereas these threats seemed part of a coherent grand strategy directed by Sultan Mehmet II and his successors, the response of the Europeans was disjointed and sporadic. Unlike the Ottoman and Chinese Empires, unlike the rule which the Moguls were soon to establish in India, there never was a United Europe in which all parts acknowledged one secular or religions leader. Instead, Europe was a hodgepodge of petty kingdoms and principalities, marcher lordships and city-states. Some more powerful monarchies were arising in the west, notably Spain, France and England, but none was to be free of internal tensions and all regarded the others as rivals, rather than allies in the struggle against Islam.

The English alliance which William III had cemented in 1689 was simultaneously the saving of the United Provinces and a substantial contributory factor in its decline as an independent great power in rather the same way in which, over two hundred years later, Lend Lease and the United States alliance would both rescue and help undermine a British Empire which was fighting for survival under Marlborough\'s distant relative Winston Churchill.

One of the greatest difficulties which faced British and French decision-makers as they wrestled with the diplomatic and strategical challenges of the 1930s was the uncertainty which surrounded the stance of those giant and somewhat detached powers, Russia and the United States. Was it worth making further efforts to persuade them into an alliance against the fascist states, even if this involved substantial concessions to Moscow\'s and Washington\'s requirements and provoked criticism at home? Which of these should be wooed more ardently, and in what respect." (jacket)