| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Europe: Early Modern and Modern

Michael Rowe. From Reich to State: The Rhineland in the Revolutionary Age, 1780–1830. (New Studies in European History.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 2003. Pp. xi, 331. $65.00.
On one level, this book is an insightful political, economic, and cultural history of the Rhineland during a very turbulent period in German history. On another and more original level, it is the story of the immense power of tradition in shaping ideas and attitudes across several generations. In particular, however, Michael Rowe intends to make a contribution to three debates in German history: the first has to do with the old reich and the question of whether its institutions left any legacy for later German history; the second deals with the Napoleonic period and its contribution to state-building in Germany; and the third examines the impact of Bürgertum and its ideology of liberalism on state-building.	1
Beginning with the politically fragmented Rhineland of the old reich, the author demonstrates the devotion of Rhinelanders to the institutions of the reich (especially the imperial courts), which in their minds protected them from arbitrary government and helped to preserve and bolster their loyalty to their cities and territories (Stadt and Land). The vigorous debates between orthodox Catholicism and the Catholic Enlightenment helped to develop the public sphere, as did the political conflicts of the period, often dismissed as trivial by historians, which in Rowe's presentation were important because of "the political culture they reflected, reinforced and bequeathed" (p. 46), and which made the Rhineland of the old regime more progressive than most historians have credited it for being. Similarly, he credits the political and social structures of the old-regime Rhineland with being more conducive to economic development than they have been presented in past histories.	. . .

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