The Age of Revolution

During the period described in this volume, namely, from 1688 to 1815, three revolutions profoundly influenced mankind. They occurred within the space of a hundred years, and all of them led to war between the British and the French. The English Revolution of 1688 expelled the last Catholic king from the British Isles, and finally committed Britain to a fierce struggle with the last great King of France, Louis XIV. The American Revolution of 1775 separated the English-speaking peoples into two branches, each with a distinctive outlook and activity, but still fundamentally united by the same language, as well as by common traditions and common law. In 1789, by force of arms and a violent effort, unequalled in its effects until the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, France proclaimed to Europe the principles of equality, liberty, and the rights of man. Beneath these political upheavals, and largely unperceived at the time, other revolutions in science and manufacture were laying the foundations of the Industrial Age in which we live to-day. The religious convulsions of the Reformation had at last subsided. Henceforward Britain was divided for practical purposes by Party and not by Creed, and henceforward Europe disputed questions of material power and national pre-eminence. Whereas the older conceptions had been towards a religious unity, there now opened European struggles for national aggrandisement, in which religious currents played a dwindling part.