War And Change In Twentieth Century Europe

A summary of the main issues relating to war, peace and social change in 20th-century Europe. The book discusses the nature and causes of war and analyzes the debates over exactly what effects the two world wars have had on both geopolitical and social developments in the 20th century.

What do we mean by social and cultural change? What is the nature of total war? How do wars come to happen? What are the consequences of war? In exploring these four key themes, this collection provides a major resource for the study of 20th century war and defence in European history and exemplifies different historical methods and approaches. The authors are drawn from a range of disciplines including those of economics, literature and the arts as well as military, social and political history, and together they raise some of the most significant problems and debates in the study of history. The essays range from standard seminal works by Stanley Hoffmann, Arno J. Mayer and Charles Maier to more recent contributions by Richard Bessell, Mark Harrison and Hew Strachan.

Wars cannot be fought and sustained without food and this unique collection explores the impact of war on food production, allocation and consumption in Europe in the twentieth century. A comparative perspective which incorporates belligerent, occupied and neutral countries provides new insights into the relationship between food and war. The analysis ranges from military provisioning and systems of food rationing to civilians' survival strategies and the role of war in stimulating innovation and modernization.

In retrospect, historical change often appears to be both logical and inevitable. Yet, as a process, as a series of moments, it is by nature open-ended. The protagonists are unaware of the potential consequences of their choices, as well as the meaning of their actions in the greater scheme of things. An individual, in real time and in the middle of events, has little scope for understanding the whole. The dynamic of a regime change involves a journey away from a particular past towards a chosen future, while the practices of the old regime are called into question. The competing visions for a better future often include a reactionary option, looking back towards an older period, perceived as a golden age waiting to be restored. In the aftermath of a regime change the new cadres, seeking to consolidate their power, form the new conservative bloc of the society. When revolutionary forces again begin to gather, the regime disintegrates, and the cycle begins again. So far, regime changes have been analysed as unique, one-off events. This book traces what such processes, regardless of their ideological colour, have in common. How does political power change hands? What are the mental and material tools of change? From the last stages of World War I to the present Crimean crisis, the case studies in this book offer timeless insights for understanding ideological and military conflicts, including the undercurrents of the present Russo-Western relations.

The authors in this collection of essays address the largely neglected but significant economic aspects of the national question in its historical context during the course of the twentieth century. There exists a large gap in our understanding of the historical relationship between the 'national question' and economic change. Above all, there is insufficient knowledge about the economic dimension of the historical experience with regard to the former multi-national states, such as the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia; and equally too little is known about the economic component of national tensions and conflicts in bilingual Belgium or Finland, or the multilingual Spain or Switzerland. At the same time as emphasis is placed on the complex relationships between the economy and society in individual European countries, questions of state, identity, language, religion and racism as instruments of economic furtherance are at the centre of the contributors' attention.

Halperin traces the persistence of traditional class structures during the development of industrial capitalism in Europe, and the way in which these structures shaped states and state behavior and generated conflict. She documents European conflicts between 1789 and 1914, including small and medium scale conflicts often ignored by researchers and links these conflicts to structures characteristic of industrial capitalist development in Europe before 1945. This book revisits the historical terrain of Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation (1944), however, it argues that Polanyi's analysis is, in important ways, inaccurate and misleading. Ultimately, the book shows how and why the conflicts both culminated in the world wars and brought about a 'great transformation' in Europe. Its account of this period challenges not only Polanyi's analysis, but a variety of influential perspectives on nationalism, development, conflict, international systems change, and globalization.