Introduction: The Age of Revolution seen from the Twenty-First Century

A t the beginning of the twenty-first century, Europe in the age of revolu-tion seems a long way off. A quick collage of images from the years 1780-1850 can only support such an assertion: those bewigged and powdered revolutionaries singing the Marseillaise, taking an oath to conquer or die at the ‘altar of the fatherland’; Napoleon, mostly seen today on brandy bottles and remembered in ‘not tonight Josephine’ jokes; textbook figures, like Metternich, Peel, Mazzini. Social and economic developments appear equally distant. The large and bulky steam engines of the industrial revolution look a lot less revolutionary when microelectronics is the leading sector; the rise of factory work is less exciting when ever more people are employed in services. The famines and bread riots of revolutionary Europe (with Marie Antoinette telling the Parisians without bread to eat cake) might be relevant to life in underdeveloped countries of the southern hemisphere, but in the economically advanced countries agricultural policy seems to be mostly about finding a way to unload the excess of foodstuffs farmers produce over what consumers can eat.