It has seemed to the author that particularly from
the Commercial Revolution of the sixteenth century dates the remarkable
and steady evolution of that powerful middle class--the bourgeoisie--
which has done more than all other classes put together to condition
the progress of the several countries of modern Europe and to create
the life and thought of the present generation throughout the world.
The rise of the bourgeoisie is the great central theme of modern
history; it is the great central theme of this book.
Not so very long ago distinguished historians were insisting that the
state, as the highest expression of man's social instincts and as the
immediate concern of all human beings, is the only fit subject of
historical study, and that history, therefore, must be simply "past
politics"; under their influence most textbooks became compendiums of
data about kings and constitutions, about rebellions and battles. More
recently historians of repute, as well as eminent economists, have
given their attention and patronage to painstaking investigations of
how, apart from state action, man in the past has toiled or traveled or
done the other ordinary things of everyday life; and the influence of
such scholars has served to provide us with a considerable number of
convenient manuals on special phases of social history.
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