The Long 19th Century (1789-1914) has always been my favorite.
That would be #1 on my list of most overrated centuries. It's frustrating how much attention the 1800s gets, while the more than 100 years between the end of the 30 Years' War and the start of the 7 Years' War is largely neglected. I've just always found struggles of ideology and nationalism to be far less intriguing than dynastic power politics. The period encompassing the late 17th and early 18th centuries - with its constantly shifting alliances, wars of succession, and conflicting political and religious interests of the various states - was truly the peak of European diplomacy and grand strategy. Not to mention the peak of art, music, and culture on the continent.
So you're just gonna ignore the change that the 19th century was for the average person? In 1800, lots of people outside of England were living the same lives that their ancestors had for hundreds or even thousands of years. By 1899, there was a modern, industrialized world with trains, cars & bicycles, photography, electrification, telegraphy, a media revolution, & modern states. There were only farmers & aristocrats before the 19th & by its end, there was a whole new class: workers. Kings lost their influence to the bourgeoisie; democracy gained strength. Such is all to say that a person born in 1800 was still living in pre-modern world; by 1900, we were in the modern world.
I don't disagree with you on how transformative the 19th century was; that it clearly was
1. But whether one finds those changes
interesting, is an entirely different question, and one that is totally subjective. That said, I have to disagree with what you wrote on the rise of the bourgeoisie. A thriving middle class composed of merchants and skilled craftsmen had existed for centuries, and was by no means a creation of the 19th century
2. Furthermore, I would not go so far as to say that the world of 1800 was pre-modern. It was not yet the industrialized world of a century later, certainly, but neither was it the Middle Ages. The early modern period was a distinct period in time, neither medieval nor fully modern.
Since the 19th century did change so many things, I suppose its place in the annals of history is warranted. But as someone who finds more interest in previous centuries, it irritates me to see it everywhere. When I go to my public library's European history section, there's no shortage of books about Napoleon, the rise of the British Empire, Bismarck, and other 19th century topics. There's even a fair amount of books about the Renaissance and Middle Ages. But you'd be hard-pressed to find anything about the later 17th or earlier 18th centuries. That has forced me to do a lot of my own research; I've had to search online for academic journals to find articles on the periods I'm interested in (not that that's a bad thing; I've learned a lot I wouldn't have otherwise). But even in academia, even outside the popular histories of my library, I still get the feeling that the 19th (and 20th) century tends to block out other periods. I know how important and transformative a time it was, but isn't it just a little overrepresented?
Every century since at least the 9th has seen Europe embroiled in an intricate diplomatic chess game with a myriad actors, ever-shifting alliances, and shocking twists of fate. And yes, it's all fascinating. The difference is that, until the 19th century, this was a game by and large only played by a small elite. The 19th century sees the rise of the masses as a political player - a player freer than it had ever been before (when the masses were too downtrodden to do anything about it) or after (when the rulers started to truly figure out how the masses work and exploit that to their advantage). It was a century where the most carefully laid-out plans frequently crumbled in the face of public sentiment. Of course, it also had Great Men (at least as much as any other centuries, arguably more than most) and the interplay between Great Men and the masses was what made that time so unique.
Right, but it took many centuries for diplomacy to fully hit its stride. It wasn't until the 16th century that the resident ambassador became a commonality, and it took another hundred years for the principle of diplomatic immunity to be fully established. As a result, the state system of the Middle Ages was far less mobile and more stagnant than what came later. Whatever the enmities between the princes of Europe, Christendom was bound together by the Pope and the Catholic faith, and had a common enemy in the infidel. Even when permanent envoys arrived with the coming of the Renaissance, the religious hatreds of the Reformation saw Catholics generally ally with Catholics, Protestants with Protestants (France of course being the exception). It wasn't until after 1648 that all the conditions had been set down for the coming of the stately quadrille. Matters of religion were still taken into consideration when forming alliances (unlike in the 19th century, which removes a layer I find interesting), but these religious concerns were now outweighed by
raisons d'État. What followed was the most volatile period in diplomatic history, a period that ended sometime between 1789 and 1815. Sure, 19th century people still talked about the balance of power, but the
Pax Brittanica prevented the state system from warring like it used to, while in the previous century war had driven it along. Simultaneously, national rivalries became more entrenched due to the rise of nationalism, making the side-switching of the past far less common. Compared to what came before, the 19th century Concert of Europe was stunted, inactive, and plain boring. Never in history has there ever been anything quite like the diplomatic system of the post-Westphalian century
3, and to me it it is the most interesting thing ever and what I want to devote my life to studying.
I've gotten a bit carried away, but you do raise a good point with the empowerment of the masses that occurred in the 19th century. If you feel that the input of the masses on the political world made things more interesting, fine
4. It's simply a matter of personal preference: to me the era of high diplomacy and the
Kabinettskriege is more interesting, to you it isn’t.
1Though I'd argue that the early 20th century was even more impactful.2There's a great line I remember reading from Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence that goes something like "Many students are taught that the 19th century saw the rise of the bourgeois middle class. This estimate is about 600 years too late."3However, in the book Renaissance Diplomacy by Garret Mattingly, the author makes a convincing argument that 15th century Italy under the Peace of Lodi presaged the Westphalian state system by 2 or 3 centuries, and is the closest any time and place has ever come to (p)recreating it.4While I disagree that it made diplomacy and warfare more interesting, I of course find fascinating the elections and political parties brought about by the empowerment of the masses; otherwise I wouldn't have spent so many threads arguing about 19th century American politics.
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