ABSTRACT
Human society tends to be grouped in a series of elements from the family upwards, interconnected like the rings caused by pebbles dropped into water. How still was the water of the late eighteenth century? What were the main features of society and social change in these years? What were the links between economic and social developments? In what ways did radical alterations in the role and power of the state have a bearing on society? Normally fifty years would be too short a span of time to note any real differences, but the unprecedented upheaval in ideas, institutions and frontiers produced by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire, which have been described elsewhere in this book, need to be taken into account as catalytic accelerators of development throughout much of western Europe. 1
