Traditional Europe is often considered to end with the French Revolution. Many historians treat it as a transformative event that separates the old regime from republicanism and traditionalism from modernity. The Revolution is undeniably an important historical marker, although many of the historians who use it as such wisely hedge their claims with various caveats. They recognize that important developments we associate with modernity often had their origins in pre-revolutionary Europe, and that many characteristic practices of the old regime survived the Revolution, some of them down to our day, albeit in muted or altered form. The politics and international relations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is best understood in terms of the uneasy coexistence and tensions between values and practices of pre-revolutionary Europe with those that emerged with modernity. These centuries represent a period of transition, and one that is not yet complete despite claims by some that we have already entered a postindustrial, postmodernist age.