In a very real sense, the bourgeois Europe which emerged after 1750 was something new under the sun.  Large elements of the population, previously engaged in producing and consuming the bare necessaries of food, shelter and clothing were increasingly engaged in trades and professions and rendering services unknown to the feudal countryside.  As the expansion of western civilization continued, entire European nations like the Low Countries, England and Germany turned to trade, commerce, industry, leaving only a dwindling minority engaged in agricultural pursuits.  The change was speeded by the revolution in science and technology.

Changes in economic and social relations are paralleled by corresponding alterations in the total way of living.  Western civilization was, in its entirety, a cultural departure from the pattern of any preceding experiment with civilization because of the drastic changes that the revolution in science and technology had introduced into human society.

Throughout the life-cycle of western civilization minor and major alterations have been made in its structure and its function.  Some of the earlier political changes were part and parcel of the bourgeois revolution.  They included: 

1.  The abolition of absolute monarchies and hereditary aristocracies and their replacement by limited monarchies and republics with various types of representative and popular governments selected by ballot.

2.  The replacement of personal tyrannies and autocracies by written constitutions and laws passed by elected parliaments.

3.  Replacement of war as the sport of kings and the chief instrument of policy makers, by negotiation, diplomacy, and treaties which became the core of existing “international law.”

4.  Arbitrary national sovereignty was supplemented by more or less permanent alliances and by the formal international organizations such as the Universal Postal Union, the World Court and the League of Nations.

5.  Regional Associations were organized; the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; the Organization of American States and the Organization for European Unity.

6.  Disarmament conferences were held.  General peace treaties were signed like the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact of 1928 and the United Nations Charter.

7.  Two major efforts were made to establish a general confederation of nations and empires—­the League of Nations in 1919 and the United Nations a quarter of a century later.  Both the League of Nations and the United Nations proved to be feeble and ineffectual efforts to bridge the gulf between limited national sovereignty and planet-wide order and peace.  But they were tentative steps in the direction of a federation of the world and they did mark a notable advance from the chaos and conflict incident to the planet-wide expansion of the European empires toward more stable economic and social conditions and more orderly international relationships.