Chapter 21: The French Revolution and Empire

If you compare the histories of Great Britain and France in the 16th through 18th Centuries, you see how they led to very different transitions into modernity. For Britain it was the Industrial Revolution. For France it was the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon. This is what Eric Hobsbawm called the “dual revolution.”
Today, we explore Hobsbawm further as we step over to France and see how the chaos of these years transformed the political, religious, and economic orders of Continental Europe.