The history of civilization in Europe

In response to the reactionary arguments of ultra-royalists, Francois Guizot (1787-1874) showed that aristocratic social conditions had gone for ever.

The growth of towns and a market economy had forged the bourgeoisie and created a 'democratic' (or capitalist) society based on individual rights.

Yet in France, if not in England, this just and inevitable process had been accompanied by the destruction of local autonomy and the creation of an overpowerful state bureaucracy.

The History stresses the role of class conflict as a catalyst for social change, and the energizing effect of Europe's plural traditions (Roman, Christian and Germanic).

Such themes, argues Siedentop, deeply influenced the thinking of his three great contemporaries Tocqueville, Marx and Mill, revealing Guizot as both 'the key to an epoch' and 'the most trenchant historical mind of the nineteenth century'.