Progress—that most modern of all modern categories—has seen its own ethical, political and historical meanings turned upside down and inside out. Once, not too long ago, it had been the culminating synthesis of all the revolutionary aspirations of the French eighteenth century; but its ties to democratic reforms began to fray after the failed European revolution of 1848, and to disintegrate entirely with the expansion of colonial and postcolonial wars to the four corners of the world.