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Presents an account of the development of Europe since 1870. This title provides coverage that ranges from one country to another, making comparisons along the way, and focusing on intellectual and social trends as well as political developments.
Whilst many books on the European economy have focused on the analysis of its industrial sectors, this book draws attention to the often ignored contribution made by the development of European agriculture over the past two centuries. In doing so, the authors adopt a revisionist perspective on the subject, addressing the lack of coherent study of the agricultural sector and reassessing old theories about the links between agricultural and economic development. In focusing on those countries which by 1870 still had a large agricultural sector, namely, France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, The Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, Greece and Turkey, this book determines the role of the agricultural sector in the economic development of Europe. These chapters demonstrate how the rate of development in the agricultural sector depended on specific industrial, political and market conditions; the diversity of ways and timings through which transformation was achieved is also considered.
This volume treats of two brief related epochs that might be described as the "grandeur" and the "decline" of Europe. The former covers the last three decades of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth. It was then that Europe seemingly climaxed its historical evolution with world supremacy in industrial production, military might and imperial domination, and with phenomenal progress in wealth and social betterment, in democracy and education, in the arts and sciences.
Armed force was used to make and prevent revolution in modern Europe, and as it spread it came to determine the affairs and fates of all the European nations. Beginning with the eve of the French Revolution, Geoffrey Best explains in lively detail the vast armed forces and militarized societies of the Napoleonic age. He then proceeds to analyse the contest between Europe's continuing revolutionary underground and the armies of reactionary and alien governments that culminated with the revolutions and wars of national liberation of 1848?66. Under the banners of Napoleon Bonaparte and other warrior heroes of the epoch, a military stamp was set on the European mind, the consequences of which Best critically assesses.
Published in 1963: The three essays bound together in ths book are based upon lectures given by the author as a Univesity Lecturer in Modern History at Oxford. The Lectures were not intended as a substitute for the excellent textbooks of modern European history published in recent years. The choice of subject and more of treatment were determined by the questions of students and others attempting to find in this history of modern Europe something more than a chronicale of events, a list of dates and names, a catalogue of political and consititutional changes.
With "verve and panache," this magisterial history of Europe since 1453 shows how struggles over the heart of the continent have shaped the world we live in today (The Economist). Whoever controls the core of Europe controls the entire continent, and whoever controls Europe can dominate the world. Over the past five centuries, a rotating cast of kings, conquerors, presidents, and dictators have set their sights on the European heartland, desperate to seize this pivotal area or at least prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. From Charles V and Napoleon to Bismarck and Cromwell, from Hitler and Stalin to Roosevelt and Gorbachev, nearly all the key power players of modern history have staked their titanic visions on this vital swath of land. In Europe, prizewinning historian Brendan Simms presents an authoritative account of the past half-millennium of European history, demonstrating how the battle for mastery of the continent's center has shaped the modern world. A bold and compelling work by a renowned scholar, Europe integrates religion, politics, military strategy, and international relations to show how history -- and Western civilization itself -- was forged in the crucible of Europe.
The study of modern racism has tended to treat anti-Semitism and anti-black racism as separate and unconnected phenomena. This innovative study argues that a full understanding of the origins and development of racism in Europe after 1870 needs to examine the structure and interrelationships between the two dominant forms of prejudice. Contrary to expectation. anti-black racism was not confined to the colonial maritime nations of western Europe, but pepetrated even the rural societies of central and eastern Europe. Likewise, anti-Semitism could flourish even in the almost total absence of Jews. MacMaster explores the conditions under which modern political movements, faced with the crisis of modernity, began to draw upon and mobilise the negative stereotypes that, through the development of the mass media, had become almost universal features of popular culture. By weaving together the changing spatial and temporal dimensions of anti-Semitic and anti-black prejudice the study provides a fresh and more global framework for understanding modern racism.
