The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture

Abstract

Abstract This book is an account of Old Regime Europe that explores the cultural revolution that transformed 18th-century Europe. During this period the court culture exemplified by Louis XIV’s Versailles was pushed from the centre to the margins by the emergence of a new kind of space — the public sphere. The book shows how many of the world’s most important cultural institutions developed in this space: the periodical, the newspaper, the novel, the lending library, the coffee house, the voluntary association, the journalist, and the critic. It was here that public opinion staked its claim to be the ultimate arbiter of culture and politics. For the established order this new force was to prove both a challenge and an opportunity and the book’s comparative study of power and culture shows how regimes sought to keep their balance as the ground moved beneath their feet. In the process the book explains, among other things, why Britain won the ‘Second Hundred Years War’ against France, how Prussia rose to become the dominant power in German-speaking Europe, and why the French monarchy collapsed.

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