Introduction Europeans invented the modern world. These days that undeniable truth makes numerous people uncomfortable, to the point that, as objectively undeniable as it may be, it is in fact strenuously denied by most academic historians, even (or especially) in those portions of the globe where those of European ancestry reside. That is because the anti-intellectual trends which have captured the historical profession over the past sixty years--trends such as postmodernism, deconstructionism, critical race theory, radical feminism, and "wokeness" in general--condemn Western civilization for having produced most of the ills besetting the world in the twenty-first century. This is a comparatively new perspective. As recently as sixty years ago, when I studied history in school, survey courses on Western civilization in general, and the ascent of Europe in particular, celebrated those persons and nations who had invented, defended, and spread such ideas and institutions as limited government, the rule of law, religious liberty, popular sovereignty, capitalist economics, industrialization, and the unprecedented prosperity to which they gave rise, not to mention universities, the scientific method, serial technological revolutions, maritime explorations, and globalization. Teachers and textbooks of that era did not overlook or minimize the nearly constant warfare, imperialism, racialism, and social oppression that tarnished European history, yet they still depicted Europeans and their overseas descendants as leaders in humanity's grand march of progress. My own exposure to the subject of this book first occurred at New Trier Township High School in Winnetka, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. I enrolled in a freshman survey on world history, then a sophomore survey on modern Europe. My teacher in the latter course assigned a textbook authored by a prominent twentieth-century historian named Carl Becker. That text, the subjects it dealt with, and my inspiring teacher hooked me on European history. Indeed, I became so fascinated by the excitement, pathos, glory, and tragedy of modern Europe that I later majored in history at Amherst College, even though I had no expectation that it would lead to a successful career. My minor fields, German and classical music, supplemented my studies of French, British, German, Austrian, Italian, and Russian history. During 1967 and 1968, my senior year, the Vietnam War was at its peak and American boys of my age group faced conscription. Upon graduation I enlisted in the army, more out of duty than patriotism, but not before applying to graduate programs in history. I figured that by the time my tour of duty was over I would have reached a decision about what I really wanted to do with my life--not realizing that soldiers at war do not think about anything other than coming home in one piece. So when I did return safely (thank you, Lord!) I matriculated at the University of Chicago. Only a couple weeks passed before I knew that this was exactly where I belonged. The University of Chicago's faculty was uniformly outstanding, and I took full advantage of lecture classes and seminars offered by esteemed scholars such as William H. McNeill, Donald Lach, Michael Confino, S. William Halperin, Peter Novick, and F. Gregory Campbell. I added a reading knowledge of French to the Latin I had learned in high school and the German I had learned in college. After passing my oral exams I undertook dissertation research at the Quai d'Orsay, the French foreign-ministry archives in Paris, and in libraries and archives elsewhere in London, Brussels, and Bonn, then the capital of West Germany. So tirelessly did I labor that I was awarded the doctoral degree in 1974, after just four and a half years of graduate school. The academic job market was already poor for aspiring historians. The baby-boom generation had grown up, and college and university faculties were stagnant, if not shrinking. Nevertheless, I was fortunate to be recruited by two institutions: Clemson University in South Carolina and the University of California at Berkeley. Needless to say, I accepted an assistant professorship in the world-class history department at UC Berkeley, and I distinctly recall driving my rental car from the San Francisco airport across the Bay Bridge, singing "California, here I come!" Nevertheless, I was apprehensive in September 1975 when the fall semester began. Since the University of Chicago's undergraduate college was small, its faculty did not employ graduate students as teaching assistants. As a result, when I arrived to deliver my initial lecture at Berkeley, it was the first time I had ever faced students. Would I enjoy teaching history? Would I be any good at it? After ten minutes I learned the answers were yes and yes. Once again, I knew that I was precisely where I belonged. My primary responsibility was to teach a two-semester sequence on European diplomatic history from the French Revolution to the Cold War (then in full flush). Within two years my reputation had spread across campus such that my course enrollments surpassed three hundred students per semester. Perhaps that popularity aroused the envy of some of my colleagues, or perhaps they judged a Vietnam veteran who taught about power politics to be reprehensible (don't forget this was Berkeley in the 1970s!), so I had to struggle for no less than nine years before the provost promoted me to associate professor with tenure. It was during those years that another popular professor named William Slottman decided to retire. He had taught History 5, a survey of modern Europe from the Renaissance to the present. Since I liked and admired him, I decided to attend his last lecture and pay my respects. I took a seat near the back of the large lecture hall, expecting my presence would go unnoticed. Imagine my surprise when Slottman ended his lecture with these words: "As you all know I shall be retiring at the end of this year, but I am pleased to report that I shall be placing History 5 in the capable hands of Professor McDougall." I have been teaching versions of that course for forty years, not only at Berkeley but throughout the decades following 1988, when I accepted a chair at the University of Pennsylvania. That course inspired me to write the book you are now reading. The contents of my lectures have been periodically updated as new scholarship has appeared and new themes have become relevant, among them the end of the Cold War in 1989-91 and the onset of wars against Islamic terrorists after September 11, 2001. My lectures have also integrated several generations of new technology, especially PowerPoint. I know many audiences consider slide presentations a MEGO ("my eyes glaze over"), but my PowerPoint presentations are not at all boring. I carefully select colorful images of people, events, battles, maps, and other images illustrating the times and places described in the lectures. The slides contain informative captions as well. To purchase the rights for the enormous variety of images that accompany this course would take years and cost a small fortune. But I have nevertheless included at least two images in each chapter of this book, and I encourage readers to Google anyone or anything that strikes their fancy or about which they desire to have visual aids. In live lectures I also screen ten-minute YouTube clips of classical music in the hope of interesting college students in the rich repertory of European orchestral music. Readers of this book may enjoy Googling masterworks by Monteverdi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms as accompaniments for those chapters which discuss the Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical, and Romantic eras of European culture. Nowadays grand surveys of modern European history are seldom if ever published, while academic monographs on aspects of European history are often arcane, tendentious, and theoretical rather than descriptive. Too often academic treatises these days are insufferably "woke" or even unreadable, thanks to their postmodern jargon. This book, by contrast, consists of old-fashioned, meat-and-potatoes history. Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), the poet laureate of the British Empire, once said that if history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten. Long before I knew of that precept, I was practicing it. Narrative history, loaded with drama, tension, passion, and irony, is what most readers crave. To be sure, textbooks that describe the sweep of European history in chronological fashion are still being published. But textbook authors and editors tend to strangle drama, tension, passion, and irony by chopping up their subjects into short sections and by interrupting the flow with numerous boxes, charts, tables, and snippets from primary sources. Moreover, textbooks these days are compiled by teams of scholars and therefore lack a clear narrative voice. I could have coauthored a textbook, which would have been far more lucrative. But I have no interest in collaborative projects that entail tedious debates with one's colleagues over what to include and what to omit. Hence this volume is one historian's earnest effort to tell the tale of the ascent of Europe from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century. The tale is highly stochastic, which is to say too complex to be understood through simple patterns of cause-and-effect, much less reductionist "laws." I have tackled the chore of telling the tale in the faith that history, when all is said and done, amounts to far more than Hamlet's "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." That faith is the reason why I dedicate this volume to the real and abiding Author of history. Excerpted from The Mighty Continent: A Candid History of Modern Europe by Walter A. McDougall All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
