This lecture is a road map to the period in which the world of Europe becomes like our own and a new "self," set in a new social reality, becomes the dominant actor.
The life of the Duke of Saxony and King of Poland is far from unique among the rulers of his time and is a way to understand the lost world of "old regime" Europe.
England's first modern prime minister belongs to an aristocratic, premodern social order. Yet his shrewd, corrupt, and comfortable administration clearly offers a look at our own world beginning to take shape.
This monarch's 46 years of rule embody the principle of rational autocracy and reveal its limitations, for no ruler, no matter how brilliant, can avoid the paradoxes built into mortality and human nature.
Novelist, philosopher, and political theorist, this major figure of the Enlightenment is the first representative of what becomes our modern sense of self.
The most famous literary figure of 18th-century England is himself the subject of the greatest biography in the English language, and represents a new stage in the evolution of modern communications: the emergence of mass media and the public sphere.
Ruler over a complex of states and territories, but forbidden by gender to claim her title as Holy Roman Empress, this remarkable woman raises for the first time in this course the "Austrian problem" that would dominate European politics from 1740 to 1914.
Now widely regarded as the greatest philosopher of knowledge, Hume's publication of A Treatise of Human Nature in 1739 applies the experimental method to ideas and demolishes all the existing rules of thought.
The most distinguished son of J.S. Bach develops an expressive style far different from that of his father and spearheads the emergence of art as a commodity, suddenly available to a new middle-class public.
Seeking to Westernize Russia, Catherine's astonishing successes and equally clamorous failures illustrate the dilemma of striving for her nation's modernity while preserving its soul.
Maria Theresa's son is the champion of rule by pure reason, but his attempt to impose rationality unleashes history's law of unintended consequences and spotlights the inherent dilemma of enlightened despotism.
The first bourgeois artist to become a megastar, Goethe is to Germany what Shakespeare is to England; his unleashing of romanticism causes an entire generation to reframe its values.
A Scottish moral philosopher discovers the nature of modern capitalist markets and the division of labor but sets limits that his champions overlook to this day.
A young queen's notorious reputation for pleasure and extravagance comes to symbolize the blindness of the old regime in the face of the need for change.
Rising to high office on the strength of intellect alone, this "extraordinary man" pens Reflections on the Revolution in France and invents modern conservative thought.
Terror becomes a modern political concept as this provincial French lawyer's attempt to force people to be free, virtuous, and happy leads to the execution of 40,000 "enemies of the people" and, ultimately, himself.
Her eventual death after childbirth makes biology her destiny in the most terrible way, but not until the career of this "first feminist" launches a debate whose impact is still felt.
The most important life covered in this course represents the implementation throughout Europe—by force—of the principles of the French Revolution, but reduced and contained in the interests of political order.
A genius at persuasion makes Metternich Napoleon's greatest adversary—not on the battlefield but over the lacquered tables of diplomacy—as he attempts to restore the balance of power in Europe after 1815.
The "English" Rothschild provides the financial foundation for Britain's victory over France, but the problem of emancipated Jews as symbols of capitalism and change also helps create modern anti-Semitism.
Goya's uncompromising portrait of his times represents a starting point for 19th-century culture, exploiting the new romantic cult of genius to exert influence beyond art's conventional boundaries.
Combining Romanticism with a largely "imagined" nationalism, Mazzini creates an explosive mixture that fails to create the mass movement he envisions, even though his ideal of an "Italian people" ultimately becomes reality.
The "greatest English novelist" scandalizes her own generation as both a "professional woman" and as a person "living in sin," reflecting in her great work, Middlemarch, the changes through which she is living.
This "collective biography" of a starving people reflects both the limits of 19th-century liberalism and the problems of population growth, disease, and subsistence.
Obsessed with his uncle's legacy, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte tries to end the instability of French politics by restoring the first Napoleon's system in the "land of revolutions."
The most important pope of the 19th century declares war on the modern secular state and enunciates the doctrine of papal infallibility, setting the terms of the Church's struggle to adapt to the modern world.
The first prophet of the new irrationality and the cult of art seeks to redefine art as an alternative to conventional religion.
Two dramatically different men nevertheless form a perfect working relationship, and their lifelong collaboration alters the course of history.
Germany is reunified, without destroying the old absolutist state, by a diplomatic realist whose character is very different from the image handed down by history.
Though arriving at Cambridge to study for the ministry, Darwin creates still another crisis in faith, creating the new theory of evolution and almost single-handedly destroying the old account of creation.
Giving her name to an entire era, this remarkable queen makes the British monarchy the popular symbol of the middle classes while becoming the catalyst by which the British political system transforms itself.
Monarchy, feudalism, technology, capitalism, the new sexuality, and the mass press all combine in this family story of a huge industrial concern torn by contradictory forces of modernity and autocracy.
A French chemist and pioneer microbiologist changes the way we live in this examination of scientific creativity and the structures developed by 19th-century society to make scientific work possible.
The struggle of Russia to retain its soul while modernizing resurfaces in the story of a privileged aristocrat whose inner journey brings him to a real-life ending far different from its beginnings.
The false accusation of a Jewish French officer is both the last act of the French Revolution of 1789 and the first act of the tragedy that will lead to the Holocaust.
The youngest character in our series is also one of the most extraordinary, breaking the power of the House of Lords, introducing social security, and creating the modern welfare state.