The age of enlightenment: eighteenth-century thought -- The French revolution -- The age of Napoleon and the triumph of romanticism -- The conservative order and the challenges of reform (1815-1832) -- Economic advance and social unrest (1830-1850) -- The age of nation-states -- The building of European supremacy: society and politics to World War I -- The birth of modern European thought -- The age of Western Imperialism -- Alliances, war, and a troubled peace -- The Interwar Years: the challenge of dictators and depression -- World War II -- The Cold War Era, decolonization, and the emergence of a New Europe -- The West at the dawn of the Twenty-First Century.
The birth of civilization -- The rise of Greek civilization -- Classical and Hellenistic Greece -- Rome: from Republic to Empire -- The Roman Empire -- Late antiquity and the early Middle Ages: creating a new European society and culture (476-1000) -- The high Middle Ages: the rise of European empires and states (1000-1300) -- Medieval society: hierarchies, towns, universities, and families (1000-1300) -- The late Middle Ages: social and political breakdown -- Renaissance and discovery -- The age of reformation -- The age of religious wars -- European state consolidation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries -- New directions in thought and culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries -- Society and economy under the old regime in the eighteenth century -- The transatlantic economy, trade wars and colonial rebellion.