This book gives voice, in unusual depth and immediacy, to ordinary villagers and landlords (Junkers) in the Prussian-German countryside, from the late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. The trials and fortunes of everyday life come into view - in the family, the workplace, in the private lives of both men and women, in courtroom and jailhouse, and under the gaze of the rising Prussian monarchy's officials and army officers. What emerges is a many-dimensioned, long-term study of a rural society, inviting comparisons on a world-historical level. The book also puts to a test the possibilities of empirical historical knowledge at the microhistorical or 'grass-roots' level. But it also reconceptualizes, on the scale of Prussian-German and European history, the rise of agrarian capitalism, challenging views widespread in the economic history literature on the common people's working standards, and including massive documentation on women's condition, rights and social roles.
From the ideological crucible of the Reformation emerged an embittered contest for the human soul. In the care of souls, the clergy zealously dispensed spiritual physic; for countless early modern Europeans, the first echelon of mental health care. During its heyday, spiritual physic touched the lives of thousands, from penitents and pilgrims to demoniacs and mad people. Ironically, the phenomenon remains largely unexplored. Why? Through case histories from among the records of over 1,000 troubled and desperate individuals, this regional study of Bavaria investigates spiritual physic as a popular ritual practice during a tumultuous era of religious strife, material crises, moral repression and witch hunting. By the mid-seventeenth century, secular forces ushered in a psychological revolution across Europe. However, spiritual physic ensconced itself by proxy upon emergent bourgeois psychiatry. Today, its remnants raise haunting questions about science and the pursuit of objective
Major study of the role of European Christian democratic parties in the making of the European Union. It radically re-conceptualises European integration in long-term historical perspective as the outcome of partisan competition of political ideologies and parties and their guiding ideas for the future of Europe. Wolfram Kaiser takes a comparative approach to political Catholicism in the nineteenth century, Catholic parties in interwar Europe and Christian democratic parties in postwar Europe and studies these parties' cross-border contacts and co-ordination of policy-making. He shows how well networked party elites ensured that the origins of European Union were predominately Christian democratic, with considerable repercussions for the present-day EU. The elites succeeded by intensifying their cross-border communication and coordinating their political tactics and policy making in government. This is a major contribution to the new transnational history of Europe and the history of
The process of globalisation in the late nineteenth century had a profound effect on the trajectories of German nationalism. While the existing literature on the subject has largely remained within the confines of national history, Sebastian Conrad uses the example of mobility and labour migration to show to what extent German nationalism was transformed under the auspices of global integration. Among the effects of cross border circulation were the emergence of diasporic nationalism, the racialisation of the nation, the implementation of new border regimes, and the hegemony of ideological templates that connected nationalist discourse to global geopolitics. Ranging from the African colonies, China and Brazil to the Polish speaking territories in Eastern Europe, this groundbreaking book demonstrates that the dynamics of German nationalism were not only negotiated in the Kaiserreich but also need to be situated in the broader context of globalisation before the First World War.
This book is a study of Catholic reform, popular Catholicism and the development of confessional identity in southwest Germany. Based on extensive archival study, it argues that Catholic confessional identity developed primarily from the identification of villagers and townspeople with the practices of Baroque Catholicism - particularly pilgrimages, processions, confraternities and the Mass. Thus the book is in part a critique of the confessionalization thesis which dominates scholarship in this field. The book is not however focused narrowly on the concerns of German historians. An analysis of popular religious practice and of the relationship between parishioners and the clergy in villages and small towns allows for a broader understanding of popular Catholicism, especially in the period after 1650. Local Baroque Catholicism was ultimately a successful convergence of popular and elite, lay and clerical elements, which led to an increasingly elaborate religious style.
This 2006 book is a controversial reappraisal of the Italian occupation of the Mediterranean during the Second World War, which Davide Rodogno examines within the framework of fascist imperial ambitions. He focuses on the European territories annexed and occupied by Italy between 1940 and 1943: metropolitan France, Corsica, Slovenia, Croatia, Dalmatia, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo, Western Macedonia, and mainland and insular Greece. He explores Italy's plans for Mediterranean expansion, its relationship with Germany, economic exploitation, the forced 'Italianisation' of the annexed territories, collaboration, repression, and Italian policies towards refugees and Jews. He also compares Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany through their dreams of imperial conquest, the role of racism and anti-Semitism, and the 'fascistization' of the Italian Army. Based on previously unpublished sources, this is a groundbreaking contribution to genocide, resistance, war crimes and occupation studies as well as
James Casey offers an innovative study of prestige, power and the role of the family in a Mediterranean city during the early modern period. He focuses on the structure and values of the ruling class of Granada, where a new elite consolidated its authority. The study suggests that their power was linked to the pursuit of honour, which demanded participation in the politics of the commonwealth and depended greatly on the network of personal relations which they were able to build with kinsmen, clients and patrons. It explores the way in which this system contributed to the relative tranquillity of the community during a turbulent time of religious and political change, that of the rise of absolutism and of the Counter Reformation. The book sheds fresh light on the nature of the early modern family and will be essential reading for historians of early modern Spain and Europe.
A narrative of the fifty years of political struggles at the Russian court, 1671–1725. This book shows how Peter the Great was not the all-powerful tsar working alone to reform Russia, but that he colluded with powerful and contentious aristocrats in order to achieve his goals. After the early victory of Peter's boyar supporters in the 1690s, Peter turned against them and tried to rule through favourites - an experiment which ended in the establishment of a decentralized 'aristocratic' administration, followed by an equally aristocratic Senate in 1711. The aristocrats' hegemony came to an end in the wake of the affair of Peter's son, Tsarevich Aleksei, in 1718. After that moment Peter ruled through a complex group of favourites, a few aristocrats and appointees promoted through merit, and carried out his most long-lasting reforms. The outcome was a new balance of power at the centre and a new, European, conception of politics.
What does it mean to write a history of the night? Evening's Empire is a fascinating study of the myriad ways in which early modern people understood, experienced, and transformed the night. Using diaries, letters, and legal records together with representations of the night in early modern religion, literature and art, Craig Koslofsky opens up an entirely new perspective on early modern Europe. He shows how princes, courtiers, burghers and common people 'nocturnalized' political expression, the public sphere and the use of daily time. Fear of the night was now mingled with improved opportunities for labour and leisure: the modern night was beginning to assume its characteristic shape. Evening's Empire takes the evocative history of the night into early modern politics, culture and society, revealing its importance to key themes from witchcraft, piety, and gender to colonization, race, and the Enlightenment.
This 2001 book examines the diplomatic role of royal families in the era before the outbreak of the First World War. It argues that previous historians have neglected for political reasons the important political and diplomatic role of monarchs during the period. Particular attention is given to the Prusso-German, Russian and British monarchies. The Prusso-German and Russian monarchies were central in their countries' diplomacy and foreign policy, principally as a result of their control over diplomatic and political appointments. However, the book also argues that the British monarchy played a much more influential role in British diplomacy than has been accepted hitherto by historians. Individual themes examined include relations between Kaiser Wilhelm II and Tsar Nicholas II, the political significance of the ill-feeling between Wilhelm II and his uncle King Edward VII, the role of Edward VII in British diplomacy, and the impact of royal visits on pre-1914 Anglo-German relations.
Napoleon's contribution to Germany's development was immense. Under his hegemony, the millennium-old Holy Roman Empire dissolved, paving the way for a new order. Nowhere was the transformation more profound than in the Rhineland. Based upon an extensive range of German and French archival sources, this book locates the Napoleonic episode in this region within a broader chronological framework, encompassing the Old Regime and Restoration. It analyses not only politics, but also culture, identity, religion, society, institutions and economics. It reassesses in turn the legacy bequeathed by the Old Regime, the struggle between Revolution and Counter-Revolution in the 1790s, Napoleon's attempts to integrate the German-speaking Rhineland into the French Empire, the transition to Prussian rule, and the subsequent struggles that ultimately helped determine whether Germany would follow its own Sonderweg or the path of its western neighbours.
This book is about a major historical figure, Napoleon III, and a political regime. It examines how Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (nephew of the first Napoleon) was able to secure election as President of the Republic and subsequently to launch a coup d'état to establish a Second Empire. It then considers the ways in which power was exercised by the new imperial regime. Later, apparent stability led Napoleon III to engage in a difficult process of transition towards a more liberal regime; but at the point of success the decision was taken to go to war against Prussia which resulted in a catastrophic defeat and the destruction of his regime. This is a most thoroughly researched book on the Second Empire, which makes a contribution to our knowledge of a vitally important period of French history following the 1848 revolution and the intense mid-century crisis.
This is the first book in English to study the history of the Estates General of Burgundy during the classic period of absolute monarchy. Although not a representative institution in any modern sense, the Estates were constantly engaged in a process of bargaining with the French crown, and this book examines that relationship under the Ancien Régime. Julian Swann analyses the organization, membership and powers of the Estates and explores their administration, their struggles for power with rival institutions and their relationship with the crown and with the Burgundian people. The Estates proved remarkably resilient when confronted by the challenges posed by the Bourbon monarchy, and by the reign of Louis XVI they were seemingly more powerful than ever. However the desire to protect their privileges and to extend their authority had not been accompanied by an attempt to forge a meaningful relationship with the people they claimed to serve.
At the end of the Second World War, mass forced migration and population movement accompanied the collapse of Nazi Germany's occupation and the start of Soviet domination in East-Central Europe. Hugo Service examines the experience of Poland's new territories, exploring the Polish Communist attempt to 'cleanse' these territories in line with a nationalist vision, against the legacy of brutal wartime occupations of Central and Eastern Europe by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The expulsion of over three million Germans was intertwined with the arrival of millions of Polish settlers. Around one million German citizens were categorised as 'native Poles' and urged to adopt a Polish national identity. The most visible traces of German culture were erased. Jewish Holocaust survivors arrived and, for the most part, soon left again. Drawing on two case studies, the book exposes how these events varied by region and locality.
Moritz Föllmer traces the history of individuality in Berlin from the late 1920s to the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961. The demand to be recognised as an individual was central to metropolitan society, as were the spectres of risk, isolation and loss of agency. This was true under all five regimes of the period, through economic depression, war, occupation and reconstruction. The quest for individuality could put democracy under pressure, as in the Weimar years, and could be satisfied by a dictatorship, as was the case in the Third Reich. It was only in the course of the 1950s, when liberal democracy was able to offer superior opportunities for consumerism, that individuality finally claimed the mantle. Individuality and Modernity in Berlin proposes a fresh perspective on twentieth-century Berlin that will engage readers with an interest in the German metropolis as well as European urban history more broadly.
The anti-authoritarian revolt of the 1960s and 1970s was a watershed in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. The rebellion of the so-called '68ers' - against cultural conformity and the ideological imperatives of the Cold War, against the American war in Vietnam, and in favor of a more open accounting for the crimes of the Nazi era - helped to inspire a dialogue on democratization with profound effects on German society. Timothy Scott Brown examines the unique synthesis of globalizing influences on West Germany to reveal how the presence of Third World students, imported pop culture from America and England, and the influence of new political doctrines worldwide all helped to precipitate the revolt. The book explains how the events in West Germany grew out of a new interplay of radical politics and popular culture, even as they drew on principles of direct-democracy, self-organization and self-determination, all still highly relevant in the present day.
Making the Soviet Intelligentsia explores the formation of educated elites in Russian and Ukrainian universities during the early Cold War. In the postwar period, universities emerged as training grounds for the military-industrial complex, showcases of Soviet cultural and economic accomplishments and valued tools in international cultural diplomacy. However, these fêted Soviet institutions also generated conflicts about the place of intellectuals and higher learning under socialism. Disruptive party initiatives in higher education - from the xenophobia and anti-Semitic campaigns of late Stalinism to the rewriting of history and the opening of the USSR to the outside world under Khrushchev - encouraged students and professors to interpret their commitments as intellectuals in the Soviet system in varied and sometimes contradictory ways. In the process, the social construct of intelligentsia took on divisive social, political and national meanings for educated society in the postwar
At the end of the Second World War, mass forced migration and population movement accompanied the collapse of Nazi Germany's occupation and the start of Soviet domination in East-Central Europe. Hugo Service examines the experience of Poland's new territories, exploring the Polish Communist attempt to 'cleanse' these territories in line with a nationalist vision, against the legacy of brutal wartime occupations of Central and Eastern Europe by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The expulsion of over three million Germans was intertwined with the arrival of millions of Polish settlers. Around one million German citizens were categorised as 'native Poles' and urged to adopt a Polish national identity. The most visible traces of German culture were erased. Jewish Holocaust survivors arrived and, for the most part, soon left again. Drawing on two case studies, the book exposes how these events varied by region and locality.
This book gives voice, in unusual depth and immediacy, to ordinary villagers and landlords (Junkers) in the Prussian-German countryside, from the late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. The trials and fortunes of everyday life come into view - in the family, the workplace, in the private lives of both men and women, in courtroom and jailhouse, and under the gaze of the rising Prussian monarchy's officials and army officers. What emerges is a many-dimensioned, long-term study of a rural society, inviting comparisons on a world-historical level. The book also puts to a test the possibilities of empirical historical knowledge at the microhistorical or 'grass-roots' level. But it also reconceptualizes, on the scale of Prussian-German and European history, the rise of agrarian capitalism, challenging views widespread in the economic history literature on the common people's working standards, and including massive documentation on women's condition, rights and social roles.
This book examines the interface between the old and the new France in the period 1760–1820. It adopts an unusual 'comparative micro-historical' approach in order to illuminate the manner in which country dwellers cut themselves loose from the congeries of local societies that made up the Ancien Régime, and attached themselves to the wider polity of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic state. The apprehensions and ambitions of six groups of villagers located in different parts of the kingdom are explored in close-up across the span of a single adult lifetime. Contrasting experiences form a large part of the analysis, but the story is ultimately one of fusion around a set of values that no individual villager could possibly have anticipated, whether in 1750 or 1789. The book is at once an institutional, a social and a political history of life in the village in an epoch of momentous change.
