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  3. New Approaches to European History

New Approaches to European History is an innovative series of textbooks, providing concise, authoritative surveys of major themes and problems in European history since the Renaissance. Written at a level and length accessible to advanced school students and undergraduates, each book in the series addresses topics or themes that students of European history encounter daily.

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35 results in New Approaches to European History

Page 1 of 2

French Colonialism
  • From the Ancien Régime to the Present
  • Leonard V. Smith
  • Published online:
    23 June 2023
    Print publication:
    06 July 2023
  • France had the second largest empire in the world after Britain, but one with very different origins and purposes. Over more than four centuries, the French empire explained itself in many different ways through many different colonial regimes. Beginning in the early modern period, a vast mercantile empire based on furs and fish in the New World and sugar cultivated by the enslaved in the Caribbean rose and fell. At intervals thereafter, the French seemed to have an empire simply as an attribute of a Great Power, generally in competition with Britain. Relatively few French people ever moved to the empire, even to the settler colony of Algeria. Under the Third Republic, the French construed a “civilizing mission” melding selectively applied principles of democracy and colonial capitalism. Two world wars and two anticolonial wars broke French imperial power as it had previously existed, yet numberless traces of the French empire lived on, both in the former colonies and in today's French Republic. This narrative history recounts the unique course of the French empire, questioning how it made sense to the people who ruled it, lived under it, and fought against it.

The People's Dictatorship
  • A History of Nazi Germany
  • Alan E. Steinweis
  • Published online:
    20 January 2023
    Print publication:
    26 January 2023
  • In this up-to-date, succinct, and highly readable volume, Alan E. Steinweis presents a new synthesis of the origins, development, and downfall of Nazi Germany. After tracing the intellectual and cultural origins of Nazi ideology, the book recounts the rise and eventual victory of the Nazi movement against the background of the struggling Weimar Republic. The book details the rapid transformation of Germany into a dictatorship, focusing on the interplay of Nazi violence and the readiness of Germans to accommodate themselves to the new regime.  Steinweis chronicles Nazi efforts to transform German society into a so-called People's Community, imbued with hyper-nationalism, an authoritarian spirit, Nazi racial doctrine, and antisemitism. The result was less a People's Community than what Steinweis calls a People's Dictatorship – a repressive regime that acted brutally toward the targets of its persecution, its internal opponents, and its foreign enemies even as it enjoyed support across much of German society.

The Consumer Revolution, 1650–1800
  • Michael Kwass
  • Published online:
    13 January 2022
    Print publication:
    03 February 2022
  • The production, acquisition, and use of consumer goods defines our daily lives, and yet consumerism is seen as increasingly controversial. Movements for sustainable and ethical consumerism are gaining momentum alongside an awareness of how our choices in the marketplace can affect public issues. How did we get here? This volume advances a bold new interpretation of the 'consumer revolution' of the eighteenth century, when European elites, middling classes, and even certain labourers purchased unprecedented quantities of clothing, household goods, and colonial products. Michael Kwass adopts a global perspective that incorporates the expansion of European empires, the development of world trade, and the rise of plantation slavery in the Americas. Kwass analyses the emergence of Enlightenment material cultures, contentious philosophical debates on the morality of consumption, and new forms of consumer activism to offer a fresh interpretation of the politics of consumption in the age of abolitionism and the Atlantic Revolutions.

The Information Revolution in Early Modern Europe
  • Paul M. Dover
  • Published online:
    24 September 2021
    Print publication:
    14 October 2021
  • This provocative new history of early modern Europe argues that changes in the generation, preservation and circulation of information, chiefly on newly available and affordable paper, constituted an 'information revolution'. In commerce, finance, statecraft, scholarly life, science, and communication, early modern Europeans were compelled to place a new premium on information management. These developments had a profound and transformative impact on European life. The huge expansion in paper records and the accompanying efforts to store, share, organize and taxonomize them are intertwined with many of the essential developments in the early modern period, including the rise of the state, the Print Revolution, the Scientific Revolution, and the Republic of Letters. Engaging with historical questions across many fields of human activity, Paul M. Dover interprets the historical significance of this 'information revolution' for the present day, and suggests thought-provoking parallels with the informational challenges of the digital age.

Sixties Europe
  • Timothy Scott Brown
  • Published online:
    16 July 2020
    Print publication:
    06 August 2020
  • Sixties Europe examines the border-crossing uprisings of the 1960s in Europe on both sides of the Cold War divide. Placing European developments within a global context formed by Third World liberation struggles and Cold War geopolitics, Timothy Scott Brown highlights the importance of transnational exchanges across bloc boundaries. New Left ideas and cultural practices easily crossed bloc boundaries, but Brown demonstrates that the 1960s in Europe did not simply unfold according to a normative western model. Everywhere, innovations in the arts and popular culture synergized radical politics as advocates of workers' democracy emerged to pursue longstanding demands predating the Cold War divide. Tracing the development of a distinctive blend of cultural and political activism across diverse national settings, Sixties Europe examines an important, historically-recent attempt to address unresolved questions about human social organization that remain relevant in the present, and it offers an original history of Europe across a transformative decade.

Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe
  • Economies in the Era of Early Globalization, c. 1450 – c. 1820
  • 2nd edition
  • Robert S. DuPlessis
  • Published online:
    19 September 2019
    Print publication:
    26 September 2019
  • Between the end of the Middle Ages and the early nineteenth century, the long-established structures and practices of European trade, agriculture, and industry were disparately but profoundly transformed. Revised, updated, and expanded, this second edition of Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe narrates and analyses the diverse trends that greatly enlarged European commerce, permanently modified rural and urban production, gave birth to new social classes, remade consumer habits, and altered global economic geographies, culminating in capitalist industrial revolution. Broad in chronological and geographical scope and explicitly comparative, Robert S. DuPlessis' book introduces readers to a wealth of information drawn from throughout Eastern, Western and Mediterranean Europe, as well as to classic interpretations, current debates, new scholarship, and suggestions for further reading.

1989
  • A Global History of Eastern Europe
  • James Mark, Bogdan C. Iacob, Tobias Rupprecht, Ljubica Spaskovska
  • Published online:
    29 August 2019
    Print publication:
    29 August 2019
  • The collapse of the Berlin Wall has come to represent the entry of an isolated region onto the global stage. On the contrary, this study argues that communist states had in fact long been shapers of an interconnecting world, with '1989' instead marking a choice by local elites about the form that globalisation should take. Published to coincide with the thirtieth anniversary of the 1989 revolutions, this work draws on material from local archives to international institutions to explore the place of Eastern Europe in the emergence, since the 1970s, of a new world order that combined neoliberal economics and liberal democracy with increasingly bordered civilisational, racial and religious identities. An original and wide-ranging history, it explores the importance of the region's links to the West, East Asia, Africa, and Latin America in this global transformation, reclaiming the era's other visions such as socialist democracy or authoritarian modernisation which had been lost in triumphalist histories of market liberalism.

The Habsburg Monarchy, 1618–1815
  • 3rd edition
  • Charles W. Ingrao
  • Published online:
    17 August 2019
    Print publication:
    29 August 2019
  • Geographically and linguistically diverse, by 1789 the Habsburg monarchy had laid the groundwork for a single European polity capable of transcending its unique cultural and historic heritage. Challenging the conventional notion of the Habsburg state and society as peculiarly backward, Charles W. Ingrao traces its emergence as a military and cultural power of enormous influence. In doing so, he unravels a web of social, political, economic and cultural factors that shaped the Habsburg monarchy during the period. Firmly established as the leading survey of the early modern Habsburg monarchy, this third edition incorporates a quarter of a century of new, international scholarship. Extending its narrative reach, Ingrao gives greater attention to 'peripheral' territories, manifestations of high culture, and suggests links between the early modern monarchy and the problems of contemporary Europe. This elegant account of a complex story is accessible to specialists and non-specialists alike.

The Enlightenment
  • 4th edition
  • Dorinda Outram
  • Published online:
    08 June 2019
    Print publication:
    13 June 2019
  • What is the Enlightenment? A period rich with debates on the nature of man, truth and the place of God, with the international circulation of ideas, people and gold. But did the Enlightenment mean the same for men and women, for rich and poor, for Europeans and non-Europeans? In this fourth edition of her acclaimed book, Dorinda Outram addresses these and other questions about the Enlightenment and its place at the foundation of modernity. Studied as a global phenomenon, Outram sets the period against broader social changes, touching on how historical interpretations of the Enlightenment continue to transform in response to contemporary socio-economic trends. Supported by a wide-ranging selection of documents online, this new edition provides an up-to-date overview of the main themes of the period and benefits from an expanded treatment of political economy and imperialism, making it essential reading for students of eighteenth-century history and philosophy.

Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe
  • 4th edition
  • Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
  • Published online:
    07 March 2019
    Print publication:
    24 January 2019
  • This fourth edition of Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks's prize-winning survey features significant changes to every chapter, designed to reflect the newest scholarship. Global issues have been threaded throughout the book, while still preserving the clear thematic structure of previous editions. Thus readers will find expanded discussions of gendered racial hierarchies, migration, missionaries, and consumer goods. In addition, there is enhanced coverage of recent theoretical directions; the ideas, beliefs, and practices of ordinary people; early industrialization; women's learning, letter writing, and artistic activities; emotions and sentiments; single women and same-sex relations; masculinities; mixed-race and enslaved women; and the life course from birth to death. With geographically broad coverage, including Russia, Scandinavia, the Ottoman Empire, and the Iberian Peninsula, this remains the leading text on women and gender in Europe in this period. Accompanying this essential reading is a completely revised website featuring extensive updated bibliographies, web links, and primary source material.

The Stalinist Era
  • David L. Hoffmann
  • Published online:
    17 November 2018
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018
  • Placing Stalinism in its international context, David L. Hoffmann presents a new interpretation of Soviet state intervention and violence. Many 'Stalinist' practices - the state-run economy, surveillance, propaganda campaigns, and the use of concentration camps - did not originate with Stalin or even in Russia, but were instead tools of governance that became widespread throughout Europe during the First World War. The Soviet system was formed at this moment of total war, and wartime practices of mobilization and state violence became building blocks of the new political order. Communist Party leaders in turn used these practices ruthlessly to pursue their ideological agenda of economic and social transformation. Synthesizing new research on Stalinist collectivization, industrialization, cultural affairs, gender roles, nationality policies, the Second World War, and the Cold War, Hoffmann provides a succinct account of this pivotal period in world history.

Childhood in Modern Europe
  • Colin Heywood
  • Published online:
    31 August 2018
    Print publication:
    06 September 2018
  • This invaluable introduction to the history of childhood in both Western and Eastern Europe between c.1700 and 2000 seeks to give a voice to children as well as adults, wherever possible. The work is divided into three parts, covering in turn, childhood in rural village societies during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; in the towns during the Industrial Revolution period (c.1750–1870); and in society generally during the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Each part has a succinct introduction to a number of key topics, such as conceptions of childhood; infant and child mortality; the material conditions of children; their cultural life; the welfare facilities available to them from charities and the state; and the balance of work and schooling. Combining a chronological with a thematic approach, this book will be of particular interest to students and academics in a number of disciplines, including history, sociology, anthropology, geography, literature and education.

The Habsburg Monarchy 1815–1918
  • Steven Beller
  • Published online:
    25 May 2018
    Print publication:
    10 May 2018
  • This clear and compelling account of the Habsburg Monarchy in its last century explains why, a century after its disappearance, it has never been more relevant. With extensive discussion of recent historiographic controversies about the Monarchy's character and viability, Steven Beller presents a detailed account of the main strands of the Monarchy's political history and how its economic, social and cultural development interacted with this main narrative. While recognizing the importance of these larger trends, readers will learn how the historical accident of personality and the complexities of high politics and diplomacy still had a central impact on the Monarchy's fate. Although some would see the Monarchy as an atavistic irrelevance in the modern age, its multicultural, multinational experience and inclusive 'logic' was in many ways more relevant to our modernity than the nationalism that did so much to bring about its demise.

Reformation Europe
  • 2nd edition
  • Ulinka Rublack
  • Published online:
    20 October 2017
    Print publication:
    21 September 2017
  • How could the Protestant Reformation take off from Wittenberg, a tiny town in Saxony, which contemporaries regarded as a mud hole? And how could a man of humble origins, deeply scared by the devil, become a charismatic leader and convince others that the Pope was the living Antichrist? Martin Luther founded a religion which to this day determines many people's lives, as did Jean Calvin in Geneva one generation later. In this new edition of her best selling textbook, Ulinka Rublack addresses these two tantalising questions. Including evidence from the period's rich material culture, alongside a wealth of illustrations, this is the first textbook to use the approaches of the new cultural history to analyse how Reformation Europe came about. Updated for the anniversary of the circulation of Luther's ninety-five theses, Reformation Europe has been restructured for ease of teaching, and now contains additional references to 'radical' strands of Protestantism.

The Origins of the First World War
  • 2nd edition
  • William Mulligan
  • Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    13 April 2017
  • A second edition of this leading introduction to the origins of the First World War and the pre-war international system. William Mulligan shows how the war was a far from inevitable outcome of international politics in the early twentieth century and suggests instead that there were powerful forces operating in favour of the maintenance of peace. He discusses key issues ranging from the military, public opinion, economics, diplomacy and geopolitics to relations between the great powers, the role of smaller states and the disintegrating empires. In this new edition, the author assesses the extensive new literature on the war's origins and the July Crisis as well as introducing new themes such as the relationship between economic interdependence and military planning. With well-structured chapters and an extensive bibliography, this is an essential classroom text which significantly revises our understanding of diplomacy, political culture, and economic history from 1870 to 1914.

The Russian Revolution, 1917
  • 3rd edition
  • Rex A. Wade
  • Published online:
    02 February 2017
    Print publication:
    16 January 2017
  • Rex A. Wade presents an essential overview of the Russian Revolution from its beginning in February 1917, through the numerous political crises under Kerensky, to the victory of Lenin and the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution. This thoroughly revised and expanded third edition introduces students to new approaches to the Revolution's political history and clears away many of the myths and misconceptions that have clouded studies of the period. It also gives due space to the social history of the Revolution, incorporating people and places too often left out of the story, including women, national minority peoples, peasantry, and front soldiers. The third edition has been updated to include new scholarship on topics such as the coming of the Revolution and the beginning of Bolshevik rule, as well as the Revolution's cultural context. This highly readable book is an invaluable guide to one of the most important events of modern history.

Europe after Empire
  • Decolonization, Society, and Culture
  • Elizabeth Buettner
  • Published online:
    05 June 2016
    Print publication:
    24 March 2016
  • Europe after Empire is a pioneering comparative history of European decolonization from the formal ending of empires to the postcolonial European present. Elizabeth Buettner charts the long-term development of post-war decolonization processes as well as the histories of inward and return migration from former empires which followed. She shows that not only were former colonies remade as a result of the path to decolonization: so too was Western Europe, with imperial traces scattered throughout popular and elite cultures, consumer goods, religious life, political formations, and ideological terrains. People were also inwardly mobile, including not simply Europeans returning 'home' but Asians, Africans, West Indians, and others who made their way to Europe to forge new lives. The result is a Europe fundamentally transformed by multicultural diversity and cultural hybridity and by the destabilization of assumptions about race, culture, and the meanings of place, and where imperial legacies and memories live on.

The Extermination of the European Jews
  • Christian Gerlach
  • Published online:
    05 March 2016
    Print publication:
    14 March 2016
  • This major reinterpretation of the Holocaust surveys the destruction of the European Jews within the broader context of Nazi violence against other victim groups. Christian Gerlach offers a unique social history of mass violence which reveals why particular groups were persecuted and what it was that connected the fate of these groups and the policies against them. He explores the diverse ideological, political and economic motivations which lay behind the murder of the Jews and charts the changing dynamics of persecution during the course of the war. The book brings together both German actions and those of non-German states and societies, shedding new light on the different groups and vested interests involved and their role in the persecution of non-Jews as well. Ranging across continental Europe, it reveals that popular notions of race were often more important in shaping persecution than scientific racism or Nazi dogma.

Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914–1918
  • 3rd edition
  • Roger Chickering
  • Published online:
    07 April 2023
    Print publication:
    10 July 2014
  • This book explores the impact of the First World War on Imperial Germany and examines military aspects of the conflict, as well as the diplomacy, politics, and industrial mobilization of wartime Germany. Including maps, tables, and illustrations, it also offers a rich portrait of life on the home front - the war's pervasive effects on rich and poor, men and women, young and old, farmers and city-dwellers, Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. It analyzes the growing burdens of war and the translation of hardship into political opposition. The new edition incorporates the latest scholarship and expands the coverage of military action outside Europe, military occupation, prisoners of war, and the memory of war. This survey represents the most comprehensive history of Germany during the First World War. It will be of interest to all students of German and European history, as well as the history of war and society.

European Colonialism since 1700
  • James R. Lehning
  • Published online:
    12 September 2018
    Print publication:
    29 August 2013
  • This masterful synthesis provides a much-needed, complete survey of European colonialism from 1700 to decolonization in the twentieth century. Written by an award-winning author, this advanced undergraduate and graduate level textbook bridges, for the first time, the early modern Atlantic empires and the later Asian and African empires of 'high imperialism'. Viewing colonialism as a phenomenon of contact between Europe and the rest of the world, the author takes an 'entangled histories' approach, considering the surprising ways in which the imperial powers of Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, France and the Netherlands displayed their identities in colonial settings, as much as in their imperial capitals. The author illuminates for students the common themes of colonial government, economic development and cultural contact across empires, and reveals the ways in which these themes played out, through contrast of the differing development, structure and impact of each empire.

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