European History Quarterly最新文献

{"title":"Book Review: <i>Travellers in the Great Steppe: From the Papal Envoys to the Russian Revolution</i> by Nick Fielding","authors":"Derek Offord","doi":"10.1177/02656914231199945c","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02656914231199945c","url":null,"abstract":"matter, as the authors of Mussolini’s Nature, for all their determination to be virtuously antifascist, repeatedly admit. Nuances surface. Thus, the reclamations, if doubtlessly couched in the vocabulary of war, bore much continuity with what had been started under liberalism. Perhaps worse, for all the talk about thereby hardening a united race ready for victory, expensive government intervention brought greater benefit to canny large landowners and industrialists than to more ordinary people. In the Pontine marshes and elsewhere, there was always ‘a gap between the regime’s rhetoric and [its] practice’ (58), a reality that combined ‘low tech. modernisation ... and violence’ (62). Hydro-electrical developments were scarcely a fascist invention and the spread of ‘remote dams’ ‘spoke the language of the big banking and industrial groups, not that of the rural [mountain] folk so celebrated by the regime’ (79). In regard to the design of national parks, policy changed in the 1930s as the regime, allegedly, ‘grew more totalitarian’ (93). Mining and drilling were part of the colonialist venture (with its rape of nature and local people’s identities). AGIP, for example, sought oil off Massawa. But no one found it where, later it might seem to have been obvious, in Libya. Qualification follows qualification in the portrayal of totalitarianism, Italian style. Words and facts fit uneasily together. ‘Nature as an enemy and fascists’ wars on nature’, we hear in the conclusion, ‘were as much narrative devices as they were the practices of environmental governance’ (182). With such a warning, Armiero, Biasillo and von Hardening have purposefully initiated what may be later studies of the complex relationship between the Italians of Mussolini’s regime and the environment.","PeriodicalId":44713,"journal":{"name":"European History Quarterly","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134978168","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Book Review: <i>Dnipro: An Entangled History of a European City</i> by Andrii Portnov","authors":"Olena Palko","doi":"10.1177/02656914231199945r","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02656914231199945r","url":null,"abstract":"human body (this was nonetheless fashionable in the second half of the nineteenth century, and ironically Marx himself occasionally succumbed to it). To this is dedicated Chapter 2, but these arguments resurface also in Chapter 3 (on the interwar period, the League of Nations, and the end of the mandate in Iraq), Chapter 4 (on the end of empires and decolonization, with special reference to South West Africa) and Chapter 5 (on civilization-based arguments in the twenty-first century, with special reference to the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq). While it is obvious that nineteenthand twentieth-century imperialism has entailed exploitation of the colonies, I find it less plausible that colonial expansionism is a necessary consequence of a capitalist economy, and, therefore, that arguments based on one civilization being superior to another are necessitated by capitalism. Capitalism as Civilisation grounds the necessary link between capitalism and imperialism – which was in fact popularized by the first generation of Marxists – in a reading of the first book of Capital (in which Marx makes no explicit link between capitalism and imperialism, despite what some Marxists read into it. For that matter, there are more explicit, if unsubstantiated, links in the Communist Manifesto, which is a work of Marx as much as it is by Engels, and, also for that reason, cannot be taken without further elaboration to represent Marx’s definitive view). Historiography on the origins of empire has added nuance ever since and suggests including the role of ideas and strategy in addition to a crude materialistic or economic reading (see above all the 1998 Oxford History of the British Empire). If one accepts the link between capitalism and imperialism, the key contention of the book is argued for convincingly: arguments based on a distinction between ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized’ people are ‘a historically contingent response to the need to make sense of and regulate a world shaped and reshaped by these dynamics of unequal, yet global, capitalist development’ (4). In fact, even though the introduction may give the impression that the book is confined to very niche debates (such as the contribution of Marxist studies to deconstruction, whose intellectual significance for the historiography of international law is probably marginal), the book’s four case studies are a valuable contribution on the uses of ‘civilization’ arguments, and this is the case whether or not one agrees with the (more ambitious) theoretical framework through which they are presented.","PeriodicalId":44713,"journal":{"name":"European History Quarterly","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134937856","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Book Review: <i>Germany and the Confessional Divide: Religious Tensions and Political Culture, 1871–1989</i> by Mark Edward Ruff and Thomas Großbölting, eds","authors":"Jacob Saliba","doi":"10.1177/02656914231199945t","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02656914231199945t","url":null,"abstract":"of the most enlightened realms the world has ever known’ (181). On the other hand, the book has many strengths. The authors show deep knowledge of primary sources and look critically at original narratives in them that have been too readily accepted by numerous later historians. They display a command of the secondary literature on their subject. They carefully examine such complex matters as inter-familial and inter-clan relationships and rivalries, the rise and decline of different regions within the lands of Rus, and shifts in the complex understandings and practices governing inheritance and succession. It should also be said that the book is attractively produced and generously illustrated (although a small number of the family trees that are helpfully included in every chapter are difficult to read in the landscape orientation that is used). Nor, finally, should the contemporary resonance of this re-examination of Rus be overlooked. By challenging the anachronistic notion of Rus as a proto-Russian state ruled by a dynasty supposedly founded in the ninth century, Raffensperger and Ostrowski weaken the claims of Great Russian Muscovite rulers and their modern admirers to exercise legitimate autocratic control over all the lands in which Eastern Slavs mingled or competed with other ethnic groups in the Middle Ages.","PeriodicalId":44713,"journal":{"name":"European History Quarterly","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134938137","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Book Review: <i>The Conquest of Ruins: The Third Reich and the Fall of Rome</i> by Julia Hell","authors":"R. J. B. Bosworth","doi":"10.1177/02656914231199945j","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02656914231199945j","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44713,"journal":{"name":"European History Quarterly","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134938139","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Book Review: <i>Words in Space and Time: Historical Atlas of Language Politics in Modern Central Europe</i> by Tomasz Kamusella","authors":"Francis King","doi":"10.1177/02656914231199945k","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02656914231199945k","url":null,"abstract":"fading from most political, cultural and economic minds since it is more than one generation since a knowledge of Latin, so long the first qualification for arrival into power in Europe, diminished into a forgotten and deprecated skill of those who once were? Satirists may have labelled Trump ‘Il Douche’ but it is hard to see his aggressive/pessimistic MAGAism as much prompted by his reflection on Virgil and the classics. In gazing at Hell’s remarkable book, am I in reality observing a ruin of two millennia of classicists’ intellectuality, now to be surpassed by AI and a genuinely globalized world which may or may not save itself from environmental calamity?","PeriodicalId":44713,"journal":{"name":"European History Quarterly","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134978091","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Book Review: <i>The Shaping of French National Identity: Narrating the Nation’s Past, 1715–1830</i> by Matthew D’Auria","authors":"Carolina Renata Armenteros Muñoz De Laborde","doi":"10.1177/02656914231199945f","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02656914231199945f","url":null,"abstract":"powerful, as people in charge of society. Any art form could be pressed into the service of Banks’ thesis. Painting, literature and spoken theatre reflect the same cultural preoccupations. Nevertheless, Banks argues, opera was vital because of its emotional appeal. He suggests that Beethoven’s Fidelio may have incited the Vienna Congress delegates to abolish slavery. To reconcile the two timescales is no straightforward matter. Opera treats history in a mythologized version. For this reason, Banks does not start from its mythologized representation. In the beginning was Creation, artistically represented in Haydn’s Creation and Wagner’s prelude to Das Rheingold. Banks distinguishes 36 topics, which he organizes into three parts: (1) new answers to timeless questions: the basics, such as humanity’s relation to God, to history, to the individual, or to a sense of home; (2) the modern West liberates itself from the Middle Ages – not a narration of the passing of the Middle Ages into Modern Times, but of the treatment of the Middle Ages in opera; and (3) from despotism to pluralism – covering everything from a critique of absolute rulership to the rise of the creative artist and the emancipation of ordinary people. In the way Banks develops his thesis, his great familiarity with the repertoire is well demonstrated. Operas are creatively selected and juxtaposed to illustrate a theme. The disadvantage, however, is the treatment of opera as an art form of cultural signals rather than of content. Opera still comes across as an emotionally exalted art form, rather than a medium for profound and nuanced thinking. Precisely those operas that acquired fame for their philosophical nuance are conspicuously absent. There is no trace of Don Giovanni, nor of The Magic Flute, no Rusalka, not even Pelléas et Mélisande. Messiaen’s Saint-François d’Assise could have offered the necessary balance in a rather one-sided reading of religion as an oppressive force. The fallacy of treating complex art works as mere symptoms runs throughout the book as a whole. Reducing Faust, for instance, to a moralizing story about a sexual liaison in a small bourgeois town amounts to an extreme reduction of one of the most complex philosophical undertakings of western culture. For which readership can this book be intended? Historians may find it of little use. Opera lovers may be a likely audience. The best place for this book is in education. It is widely documented, beautifully illustrated, and above all written with verve. In a single volume, it offers much material that may be of use in an educational setting, especially if treated as a starting point for discussion.","PeriodicalId":44713,"journal":{"name":"European History Quarterly","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134978171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Book Review: <i>Mussolini’s Nature: An Environmental History of Italian Fascism</i> by Marco Armiero, Roberta Basillo and Wilko Graf von Hardenberg","authors":"R. J. B. Bosworth","doi":"10.1177/02656914231199945b","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02656914231199945b","url":null,"abstract":"sponsored economic growth’ (251). Two silent revolutions lay behind the economic boom of the 1880s and 1890s: the abolition of the soul tax (291), which allowed the peasantry to save, purchase and invest; and the stabilization of the banking system (298). The result was that the Russian Empire ‘lost its archaic and pyramidal structure’, but failed to replace it with new political institutions and therefore suffered from ‘microcephaly’, making it hard to find an application for its new economic strength because its small head was ‘full of contradictory thoughts, both wonderful as well as destructive’ (357). Nonetheless, Alexander III became the beneficiary of White émigré nostalgia amidst the revolutions and civil war of the early twentieth century. ‘By contrast, the times of Alexander III and the emperor himself were drawn in their heads in an idyllic light’ (227). While ‘autocratic politics gained a decisive victory’ under Alexander III, ‘the ideology of autocracy experienced a decisive defeat’ (366). Unfortunately, Akunin concludes his volume, Nicholas II would fail to correct the system and instead ‘swung wildly from the course of his father and grandfather, repeating the mistakes of both’ (380). Akunin does not quote many historians, but the one whose name appears most often is Richard Pipes, which is not surprising since the leitmotif of Akunin’s history is the ‘Horde-like [ordynskoe] government’ of Russia, the Mongol legacy that Russia never exorcised from its political culture. Beautifully written, this volume offers remarkably insightful flashes when Akunin rises above the trap of binarist judgements.","PeriodicalId":44713,"journal":{"name":"European History Quarterly","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134978174","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Book Review: <i>Istoriia rossiiskogo gosudarstva. Tsar’-osvoboditel’ i tsar’-mirotvorets. Lekarstvo dlia imperii [History of the Russian State. The Tsar-Liberator and the Tsar-Peacemaker. Medicine for the Empire]</i> by Boris Akunin","authors":"Anton Fedyashin","doi":"10.1177/02656914231199945a","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02656914231199945a","url":null,"abstract":"identity-formation as a key factor in the development of total, global war. If the war was about ‘us’ versus ‘them’, who or what was part of ‘us’? Here lies the greatest strength of the book. It tells a mostly familiar story, but does so by illuminating just how pervasive and how far-reaching some of the transformations wrought by the war were, and how deeply they impacted ordinary lives. From the neutral Liberian economy destroyed by blockade to the Ngati Porou tribe of New Zealand saluting the Belgian flag following its invasion by Germany, from the desperate letters from an Indian soldier begging his brother not to volunteer for war in ‘civilized’ Europe to the parallel imperial war waged by the French in Volta Bani (current-day Burkina Faso and Mali) in 1915–1917, their tales stay with the reader long after they have finished reading. What is more, these stories serve to illuminate the book’s central argument: that the total, global First World War produced, enhanced or illuminated so many contradictory hopes, fears, claims, expectations and hatreds that no post-war settlement could ever hope to satisfy them all, producing a world with glaringly visible and globally connected inequalities ‘infused with the grief and anger that the violence of the war had unleashed on the world’ (173). I do wonder, however, whether the book completely succeeds in making its point. Firstly, the book’s conscious focus on ‘outlier’ examples from places often very far from the familiar Western Front occasionally makes it harder to see the contradictions in the responses to the war that are so central to the core argument Abbenhuis and Tames are making, especially since many of those examples point in similar directions. Moreover, in replicating the familiar structure of many older and decidedly less ‘global’ First World War surveys, it runs the risk of instilling in the reader the sense that the First World War was something that ‘radiated’ out of Europe, rather than a truly worldwide event that was experienced and interpreted using local interpretative frameworks. A more ‘provincialized’ approach to the war is, perhaps, the next milestone for the ongoing quest to understand total and global war. In the meantime, this book is impressive in its breadth, elegantly written, and provides a short and succinct introduction to the state of the art of research into an ever more global First World War.","PeriodicalId":44713,"journal":{"name":"European History Quarterly","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134937849","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Autonomy Over Independence: Self-Determination in Catalonia, Flanders and South Tyrol in the Aftermath of the Great War.","authors":"Emmanuel Dalle Mulle,&nbsp;Mona Bieling","doi":"10.1177/02656914231198182","DOIUrl":"10.1177/02656914231198182","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The end of the First World War was a crucial time for nationalist leaders and minority communities across the European continent and beyond. The impact of the post-war spread of self-determination on the redrawing of Eastern European borders and on the claims of colonial independence movements has been extensively researched. By contrast, the international historiography has paid little attention to minority nationalist movements in Western Europe. This article focuses on three regions (Catalonia, Flanders and South Tyrol) that experienced considerable sub-state national mobilization in the interwar period. We aim to understand whether the leaders of Western European minorities and stateless nations shared the same enthusiasm as their anti-colonial and Eastern European counterparts for the new international order that self-determination seemed to foreshadow in the months following the end of the First World War. Because the American President Woodrow Wilson stood out as the most prominent purveyor of the new international legitimacy of self-determination, the article further examines how Western European nationalist movements exploited Wilson's image and advocacy to achieve their own goals. Nationalist forces in Catalonia, Flanders and South Tyrol initially mobilized self-determination and referred to Wilson as a symbol of national liberation, but this instrumentalization of self-determination was not sustained. Large-scale mobilization occurred only in Catalonia, and, even there, it disappeared suddenly in spring 1919. Furthermore, sub-state nationalist movements in Western Europe tended to mobilize self-determination to gain regional autonomy, rather than full independence, thus pursuing internal, not external, self-determination. The willingness of these movements to privilege autonomy over full independence made them more receptive to compromise. Radical forces would become stronger only in the 1930s and largely for reasons not directly connected to the post-war mobilization around self-determination.</p>","PeriodicalId":44713,"journal":{"name":"European History Quarterly","volume":"53 4","pages":"641-663"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10558288/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41151993","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Book Review: <i>The Popes Against the Protestants: The Vatican and Evangelical Christianity in Fascist Italy</i> by Kevin Madigan","authors":"Oliver Logan","doi":"10.1177/02656914231199945m","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02656914231199945m","url":null,"abstract":"America’s economic and financial position. Blaming competitors, disputes about monetary and economic matters assumed ‘an exceptional viciousness and were conducted in highly nationalistic terms hitherto unheard of among the transatlantic partners’ (261). In this context, Nixon’s preoccupation with re-election during his first term in office further contributed to worsening relations, as did the ongoing Vietnam War, especially Europe’s furious response to the 1972 Christmas bombing campaign. In 1973 Kissinger delivered a speech, ‘Year of Europe’, intended to improve relations. It didn’t. European leaders considered his proposed Atlantic Charter as condescending and aimed at undermining and preventing further European integration. The October 1973 Yom Kippur War between Israel and a coalition of Arab states caused further disruption to relations. These were considerably worsened when later that month a small committee of the National Security Council put all US nuclear forces on global alert, DEFCON III, the same level of alert that had occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis. France and the UK, NATO’s other nuclear powers, were not consulted. Nor was NATO informed until European leaders heard about it the next day. Despite vigorous protests, the US remained unapologetic. Europe was shocked that amid a global crisis the US took such an extraordinary and reckless measure. European trust and confidence in US leadership was shaken. Nonetheless, as Larres makes crystal clear, the fact was that however upset Europeans were, there was little they could do. They lacked the required unity and strength, especially in the security realm, to challenge American hegemony. The signing of a new Atlantic Charter some months later marked European acceptance of US authority over the Atlantic alliance. Larres persuasively argues that despite Nixon and Kissinger’s constructive détente policies towards the communist bloc, they were determined to maintain full control of the western alliance. They re-asserted a transatlantic alliance operated on a basis of subservience rather than equality or mutual respect. Today’s global crisis confirms the extent to which Washington continues ‘to insist on a pliant and domesticated Europe that pa[ys] its dues and follow[s] US policies and its guidance and advice without asking too many, if any, critical questions’ (272). Larres’ excellent scholarship presents telling insights into American attitudes toward Europe and European responses. A must-read for students, it will be of interest to all parties concerned about the direction of Europe in today’s world. Highly recommended.","PeriodicalId":44713,"journal":{"name":"European History Quarterly","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134937857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}