ABSTRACT
In the space of less than two generations France experienced four different political regimes: two royal dynasties, a republic, and an empire. As with the Revolution itself, instability and innovation spread far beyond politics. The magnitude of the changes makes it clear that for France the period from 1815 to 1852 was far more than a replay of the Revolution of 1789. In September 1814 the victorious Allies gathered to celebrate the defeat of revolutionary France and to chart out the future of Europe in the sumptuous aristocratic environs of Habsburg Vienna. The transnational character of liberal and revolutionary movements in the early nineteenth century both illustrated the continuing influence of France's revolutionary heritage as well as demonstrating how it was shaped by forces beyond the nation's borders. In recent years historians have challenged the idea of the Industrial Revolution as a sharp break with the agrarian past, emphasizing instead continuities with earlier forms of manufacture.
