xxiv Preface
as well as, finally, decolonization, the European powers and cultures have
affected the histories of non-Western peoples. The construction of stronger
and more efficient states facilitated the development of national identities—
consider, for example, the role of the British Empire in the emergence in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of the sense of being British, and of
the wrenching bewilderment among many Britons when the empire ended
after World War II. At the same time, national identities developed in the
newly independent states that were once colonies. Reflecting recent scholar¬
ship, this third edition describes in greater detail the end of the British
Empire in Africa, specifically the bloody story of decolonialization in Kenya.
The third edition emphasizes the dynamism of European trade, settle¬
ment, and conquest and their great impact not only on Asia, Africa, and the
Americas, but also on the history of European peoples. Comparisons are
made between the Spanish Empire in Latin America and the English
colonies in the Americas. Unlike the Spanish Empire, trade was the basis of
the burgeoning English Empire. The Spanish Empire reflected the combina¬
tion of the absolutism of the Spanish monarchy and the determination to
convert—by force if necessary—the indigenous populations to Catholicism.
In sharp contrast, many settlers came to the North American English
colonies in search of religious freedom. And, again in contrast to the build¬
ing of the Spanish Empire a century earlier, the English colonists sought not
to convert the indigenous peoples to Christianity, but rather to push them
out of colonial areas of settlement. While the Spanish colonies reflected
state centralization, their English counterparts evolved in a pattern of
decentralization that would culminate in the federalist structure of the
United States. British rule in India, particularly interesting because of the
cultural interaction that took place there, receives more well-deserved atten¬
tion. And so does the expansion of Dutch rule in Southeast Asia and the
response of China and Japan to the Western powers.
Many of the chapters have been usefully reduced in size. There are other
changes, as well. The section on the middle classes has been moved to Chap¬
ter 14, “The Industrial Revolution,” so that “Liberal Challenges to Restora¬
tion Europe” stands alone as Chapter 15. In the twentieth century, Joseph
Stalin and Stalinism have been moved from the chapter on “Revolutionary
Russia and the Soviet Union” (Chapter 23) to the discussion of the Europe
of dictators (Chapter 25). I have amplified the discussion of the National
Socialism of the Nazis and fascism as a European-wide phenomenon during
the inter-war period. The post—World War II chapters have been reorganized
and streamlined. Decolonialization and the Cold War, certainly two of the
major occurrences in the decades that followed the war, have been com¬
bined in Chapter 28. The final chapter has been shortened and brought up
to date.
We move away from the traditional textbook strategy of continually con¬
trasting Western and Eastern Europe. For example, the third edition of A
History of Modem Europe places the emergence of the concept of political