Velvet Gloves and Iron Fists

From the Wikipedia article on the 1848 revolutions

1848: Year of Revolution by Mike Rapport
New York : Basic Books, 2010, c2008.
xii, 461 p. : ill., map ; 24 cm.

You might remember that a while back I wanted to read Barbara Tuchman's Proud Tower, but realized that my background knowledge of 18th and 19th century Europe was sorely lacking - and so read a slim little volume about the Napoleonic Wars - and then was going to read 1848. Well, I've read it, and what an intense and complicated time 1848-1850 was!  Revolutions in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Venice, Rome, Buda and Pest, Naples, and Florence (among others) pitted liberals, reactionaries, nationalists, imperialists, Papists, monarchists, socialists, revolutionaries, the peasantry, and the nobility in violent conflicts to determine the future of regions, kingdoms, and  Europe as a whole.  By the time 1850 rolled around, the forces of authoritarianism, conservatism and reaction sadly had triumphed - but what an incredible time it was...

In spite of the extreme complexities involved (maps would have been an invaluable addition to this book), Rapport writes well and is able to convey many of the significant underlying themes, conflicts, causes and effects of the year 1848.  His book really is relevant, since much of what stoked the conflicts still exists - extreme wealth and extreme poverty, ethnic versus nationalist tensions, majority rule versus minority protections, and individual rights versus the common good.

I can't say I'd recommend this book to just any student, but if there were a student who loved history and was interested in European history, then this is definitely an excellent read!

Nice, Little (Book) - Big, Terrible (Wars)

From Wikipedia

The Napoleonic Wars: A Very Short Introduction by Mike Rapport
Oxford, U.K. : Oxford University Press, 2013
xiv, 149 p. : ill. ; 18 cm.

I'm not sure what recently prompted me to want to read European history.  Perhaps it's the 100th anniversary of the start of WWI - which will be commemorated this August - perhaps it's seeing books on the shelf about Napoleon, or perhaps it's just my wanting to get away from fiction for a while.  Whatever the reason, I recently picked up a book I've been wanting to read for some time: Barbara Tuchman's The Proud Tower (about Europe in the decades just before WWI).  Starting it made me realize that I wanted to know more about the period before Tuchman's book, so I picked up Mike Rapport's 1848: Year of Revolution.  Guess what? Yes, I needed some background for 1848 and so I settled on this fine, little introduction to the Napoleonic Wars.

I love these "Very Short Introduction" books from Oxford.  They cover a wide variety of subjects and are written for lay readers by experts in the field being covered, and are short and concise.  As you can see, this one has just 149 pages, and the book is small enough that Napoleon could have it tucked under his buttons in the David portrait above - and we'd never know it!

Joking aside, the book was really eye-opening to the scale of carnage and destruction that the French Revolutionary and subsequent Napoleonic Wars brought to Europe (and the world).  I had always thought that WW I was the first real mass-carnage, total war to take place in Europe - but Rapport makes the case that the percentages and scale of casualties (along with the global nature of the wars) puts the Napoleonic Wars in the same league as WWI.

I also appreciated his attempt to show the conflicting views on the legacies (good and bad) of Napoleon's expansionism - especially in light of the extreme reactionary responses to his aggression.

Now I'm ready to tackle 1848 and then, hopefully, to take on The Proud Tower.