ABSTRACT
Looking back from the vantage point of the middle of the nineteenthcentury, we can consider, briefly, the extent and nature of the changes occurring in the previous seven decades. We might wonder whether the changes were drastic, discontinuous and irreversible – ‘revolutionary’, in the meaning that the word acquired precisely in this era – or gradual, involving no sharp break with the past, and not definitive. Naturally, such a consideration could, and does lead to different conclusions when we look at different aspects of social, economic, political and cultural developments; as it does when we consider different regions of Europe.
