ABSTRACT
On the well-known principle, hammered into this editor by her sixth-form and undergraduate progeny, that students only read introductions and conclusions, what above all do we learn from the half-century under review? Two issues stand out. First, the long-term and linked impact of the 1789 Revolution and the protracted European war which followed it. Second, the huge difference in the scale of its repercussions in eastern and western Europe. The reader will be curious to explain the difference. Both Julian Swann and Brendan Simms make it clear that pressure for change in the structure of government and society already existed Europe-wide before the French Revolution, the latter noting that the Austrian Emperor believed that France in 1789 was on the verge of imitating his own reforming efforts. In the ensuing fifty years the directions taken by the eastern empires and western Europe diverge. Despite extensive military commitment and temporary devastating defeat, the eastern states emerge from the wars barely touched by the ideas of the Revolution.
