Europe in the 20th Century, 1914-1970:
National, Transnational and International Histories
Convenors: Paul Betts (St. Antony’s) and Patricia Clavin (Jesus)
Hilary Term, 2014
Tuesdays, 11:00-1:00
Habbukuk Seminar Room, Jesus College
This course examines the history of 20th-century Europe by testing the concepts of
national, transnational and international history and their possible interactions. Its aim is
not so much to compare the history of individual European countries, but rather to
explore how notions of regional, national and international history have been used to
organize and interpret the history of 20th-century Europe. While the course is firmly
rooted in the empirical history of Europe and its relationships to the wider world in this
period, it will focus on questions of interpretation. Emphasis will be placed on analyzing
the utility and potential pitfalls inherent in reconsidering Modern European History from
various conceptual perspectives. The course is intended both for students who want an
introduction to this history and for those who would like an opportunity to extend and
reconsider their existing knowledge of it.
Week 1: The History of a Transnational Continent
* C. Maier, ‘Consigning the Twentieth Century to History: Alternative Narratives for the
Modern Era’, The American Historical Review, Vol. 105, No.3 (and online discussion)
* P. Clavin, ‘Time, Manner, Place’: Writing European History in Transnational and
International Contexts’, European History Quarterly, Vol. 40, 4 Oct (2010), 624-640.
* T. Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (2005), pp. 1-99, 226-237; 777-834.
* Tara Zahra, “’A Human Treasure:’ Displaced Children Between Nationalism and
Internationalism,” Past & Present 2011 vol. 210 (supp. 6), pp. 332-350.
*D. Chirot, “What Happened in Eastern Europe in 1989?” in The Revolutions of 1989, ed.
V. Tismaneanu (1989), chp 1.
Background:
KH Jarausch and Thomas Lindenberger, “Contours of a Critical History of Contemporary
Europe: A Transnational Agenda,” in their edited Contested Memories:
Europeanizing Contemporary Histories (2007), pp. 1-22.
R. Vinen, A History of Fragments: Europe in the 20th Century (2000)
S. Berger, M. Donovan, K. Passmore, Writing National Histories: Western Europe
Since 1800 (1999), parts III, IV and V.
M. Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s 20th Century (1998)
E. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes (1995)
PR Schlesinger, “Europe’s Contradictory Communicative Space,” Daedalus 123-2
(Spring 1994), pp. 25-52.
A. Dirlik, ‘Performing the World: Reality and Representation in the Making of World
Histor(ies), Journal of World History, Vol.16, No 4, Dec. 2005
T. Rosenberg, The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts after Communism (1995)
Week 2: Political Geographies: Regions, Nations, Empires
* Journal of Modern European History, special issue, ‘Beyond Hegemony? “Europe” and
the Politics of Non-Western Elites, 1900-1930,’ Vol. 4, No.2, 2006
* J. Darwin, After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000 (2007),
esp. chps 7-9.
*Wolfram Kaiser, Christian Democracy and the Origins of the European Union (2007),
chapters 1, 5 , 7.
* G. Garvani, After Empires: European Integration, Decolonization & the Challenge
from the Global South, 1957-1986 (2009)
Background:
Mary Nolan, The Transatlantic Century: Europe and America, 1890-2010 (2012)
Timothy Garton Ash, “The Crisis of Europe: How the Union Came Together and Why
It’s Falling Apart,” Foreign Affairs (Sept/Oct 2012), pp. 1-15.
Alan Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation State (1992), chps. 1 & 6
R. Kedward, La Vie en Bleu: France and the French Since 1900 (2005)
M. Sarotte, 1989: The Struggle to Create a Post-Cold War Europe (2009)
M. Geyer, ‘Historical Fictions of Autonomy and the Europeanization of National
History’, Central European History vol.22 (3/4), Sept. 1989
Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins
of Anticolonial Nationalism (2007)
Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (2005),
pp. 1-33
S. Zizek, ‘Europe’s Republics of Gilead,’ New Left Review 183 (1990)
S. Hoffmann, “Europe’s Identity Crisis Revisited,” Daedalus 123:2 (Spring 1994), 1-24.
Tony Judt, A Grand Illusion? An Essay on Europe (1996)
Week 3: Internationalism and Rights
* James Sheehan, The Monopoly of Violence. Why Europeans Hate Going to War (2007);
American title: Where Have All of the Soldiers Gone? (same book)
* S. Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (2010).
* P. Clavin, Securing the World Economy: The Reinvention of the League of Nations
(2013), Introduction and Chapter 5 (Available online through SOLO)
*G. Sluga, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism (2013)
* T. Imlay, ‘International Socialism and Decolonization during the 1950s: Competing
Rights and the Postcolonial Order’, American Historical Review 118:4 (2013),
pp.1105-1132
* DT Thomas, The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights and the Demise
of Communism (2001)
Background:
S. Pedersen, ‘Back to the League of Nations’, AHR (112:4): 1091-1117
M. Mazower, ‘The Strange Triumph of Human Rights, 1933-1950,’ Historical Journal
47: 2 (June 2004), pp. 379-98
M. Mazower, Governing the World. The History of an Idea (2012)
H. Nehring & H. Pharo, 'Introduction: A Peaceful Europe? Negotiating Peace in
the 20c', Contemporary European History. 17:3 (2008), pp. 277-99
2
P. Betts, “Socialism, Social Rights, Human Rights: The Case of East Germany,”
Humanity, special issue on Social/Human Rights in the 20th Century,
(Winter 2012), pp. 407-426.
 See other articles in this issue on Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa.
Stefan –Ludwig Hoffmann, ed. Human Rights in History (2010).
S. Conrad and D. Sachsenmaier, (eds.), Competing Visions of World Order. Global
Moments and Movements, 1880s-1930s (2007)
S.-L. Hoffmann, ed., Human Rights in the 20th Century (2011)
M. Macmillan, Peacemakers: Six Months that Changed the World (2001)
S. Amrith and G. Sluga, ‘New Histories of the United Nations’, Journal of World History,
vol. 19, 3, Sept. 2008, pp. 297-325.
Contemporary European History, special issue on Europe and The Development Decade,
vol. 12, 4 (2003). See See, in particular, the introduction and articles by Marc Frey
and Gérard Bousset.
Eckard Conze, 'Security as a Culture: Reflections on a "Modern Political History" of the
Federal Republic of Germany', Bulletin of the German Historical Institute London
vol, 28, 1 (May 2006) Direct link:
http://www.ghil.ac.uk/index.php?eID=tx_nawsecuredl&u=0&file=fileadmin/redaktion/do
kumente/bulletin/GHIL%20Bulletin%2028%20%282006%29,1.pdf&t=1290251812&has
h=228908456a68abdb723ceddb60d7c796
Week 4: Varieties of Political Representation
* S. Fitzpatrick & M. Geyer, eds., Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalin and Nazism Compared
(2009), Introduction & Part I: Governance
* M. Conway & P, Romijn, eds, The War for Legitimacy in Politics and Culture 19361946 (2008), ch. 2: Legitimacy in Inter-War Europe
* M. Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy
(1997)
* K. Canning. ‘Class v. Citizenship: Keywords in German Gender History’, Cent. Eur.
Hist., vol. 37, 2 (2004), pp. 225-44
* European History Quarterly, vol. 32, 1, Jan. 2002: special issue on ‘Democracy’, esp.
the post-1945 articles
* American Historical Review, vol. 114 (Feb/April 2009): Forum on 1968, The
International 1968, Part I and Part II, both Introductions, & any of the articles
Background:
M. Berezin, Making the Fascist Self: The Political Culture of Interwar Italy (1997)
G. Luebbert, Liberalism, Fascism or Social Democracy: Social Classes and the Political
Origins of Regimes in Inter-war Europe (1991)
G. Eley, Forging Democracy: The History of the European Left 1850 -2000 (2002)
S. Berman, The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe’s
Twentieth Century (2006)
Tom Buchanan & Martin Conway, eds., Political Catholicism in Europe 1918-1965
(1996)
I. Kershaw, The Hitler Myth (1987)
P. Betts, Within Walls: Private Life in the German Democratic Republic (2010)
T. Childers, ‘The Social Language of Politics in Germany .The Sociology of Political
Discourse in the Weimar Republic’, AHR vol. 95, 2 (Apr. 1990), 331-58
3
K. Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change
(1999)
Alon Confino. P. Betts and D. Schumann, Between Mass Death and Individual Loss: The
Place of the Dead in 20th Century Germany (2008)
Week 5: Consumption Regimes
* Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through the 20th Century
Europe (2005)
* C. Maier, ‘The Two Postwar Eras and the Conditions for Stability in Twentieth-Century
Western Europe’, AHR vol.86, 2 (Apr. 1981); & comments by Kindleberger &
Schuker, & Maier’s response, pp. 327-67
* G. Aly, Hitler’s Beneficiaries: How the Nazis Bought the German People (2006)
* Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the 20th Century,
ed. S. Strasser, C. McGovern and M. Judt (1998).
* Paulina Bren & Mary Neuberger, Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War
Eastern Europe (2012) (read a few of the articles in it)
OR
* Susan Reid and David Crowley, Style and Socialism (1998)
Background:
Jonathan Wiesen, Creating the Nazi Marketplace: Commerce and Consumption in the
Third Reich (2011)
Barry Eichengreen, The European Economy Since 1945. Coordinated Capitalism and
Beyond (Princeton, 2007), chs. 1 & 2, pp. 1-51
K. Verdery, What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? (1996), esp. chap 1.
David Crowley and Jane Pavitt, ed., Cold War Modern (2011)
A. Weinbaum, L. Thomas, P. Ramamurthy, U. Poiger, M. Dong and T. Barlow, eds.,
The Modern Girl Around the World:Consumption, Modernity and Globalization 2008
P. Baldwin, ‘Class interests and the post-war welfare state in Europe: A historical
perspective’, International Social Security Review, vol. 43, 1 (1990), pp. 255-68
J. Grunow, Caviar with Champagne: Common Luxury and Ideals of the Good Life in
Stalin’s Russia (2004)
Patricia Clavin, The Great Depression in Europe, 1929-1939 (2000), ch. 7 and
Conclusion, pp. 159-210
P. Betts, The Authority of Everyday Objects: A Cultural History of West German
Industrial Design (2004)
S. Kotkin, ‘Modern Times: The Soviet Union and the Interwar Conjuncture’, Kritika.
Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Vol.2, No.1 (Winter 2001), 111-164.
P. Baldwin, The Politics of Social Solidarity. Class Bases of the European Welfare State
1875-1975, 1990
Week 6: Boundaries and Identities
* Kate Brown, A Biography of No Place. From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland
(2005)
* E. Weitz, ‘From the Vienna to the Paris System: International Politics and the
Entangled Histories of Human Rights, Forced Deportations and Civilizing Missions’,
AHR vol ,113, 5 (2008), pp. 1313-43
* Edith Sheffer, “On Edge: Building the Border in East and West Germany,” Central
4
European History 40:2 (June 2007), 307-339.
* American Historical Review, Forum: Transnational Sexualities, Dec. 2009, Vol 114: 5,
esp. M. Canaday, ‘Thinking Sex in the Transnational Turn: An Introduction’, pp.
1250-1257 & D. Herzog, ‘Syncopated Sex: Transforming European Sexual Cultures’,
pp. 1287-1308
Background:
C. Skran, Refugees in Inter-war Europe: The Emergence of a Regime (1995)
Perry Anderson, The New Old World (2009)
A. Confino, Foundational Pasts (2011)
A. Applebaum, Iron Curtain: Eastern Europe 1945-1956 (2012)
J. McLellan, Love in the Time of Communism (2011)
P. Ginsborg, “The Politics of the Family in 20th Century Europe,” Contemporary
European History 9:3 (Nov 2000), 411-444.
C. Fink, “Minority Rights as an International Question,” Contemp. European History 9:3
(Nov 2000), 385-400.
A. Fahrmeir, Citizenship: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Concept (2007)
J Torpey and J Caplan, Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State
Practices in the Modern World (2001)
Week 7: Environmentalism and Transnationalism
* J. Radkau, Nature and Power: A Global History of the Environment (2008).
* J. R. McNeill, Something New under the Sun: An Environmental History of the
Twentieth-Century World (2000), 3-18, 84-193, 267-537.
* R. Guha, Environmentalism: A Global History (2000).
* K. Pomeranz, E. Burke (eds), The environment and world history (2009)
Background:
J. Donald Hughes, What is environmental history? (2006).
Peter Coates, “Defending Nation, Defending Nature? Militarized Landscapes and
Military Environmentalism in Britain, France and the United States,” Environmental
History 16:3 (2011), 450-491.
Ted Steinberg, “Down to Earth: Nature, Agency and Power in History,” AHR 107:3
(2012), 798-820.
A. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe 900-1900
(1986).
A. Crosby, Children of the Sun: A History of Humanity’s Unappeasable Appetite for
Energy (2006).
* R. Marks, The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative from
the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century (2007).
R. Tucker, Insatiable Appetite: The United States and the Ecological Degradation of the
Tropical World (2007).
D. Worster (ed.), The Ends of the Earth: Perspectives on Modern Environmental History
(1988), esp. introduction.
Bernhardt, C. (ed.), Environmental Problems in European Cities in the 19th and 20th
Century (2001)
Brimblecombe, P. & Pfister C. (eds.), The Silent Countdown: Essays in European
Environmental History (1990)
5
Clapp, B.W., An Environmental History of Britain since the Industrial Revolution (1994)
Frank Uekoetter, The Green and the Brown: A History of Conservation in Nazi Germany
Chris Pearson, Scarred Landscapes: War and Nature in Vichy France
Edmund Russell, Richard Tucker (eds), Natural Enemy, Natural Ally: Toward an
Environmental History of War (2004).
Frank Zelko, From Heimat to Umwelt: New Perspectives on German Environmental
History (2006)
M. Connelly, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population (2008)
M. Frey, ‘Neo-Malthusianism and development: shifting interpretations of a contested
paradigm’, Journal of Global History 6 (2011), pp.75-97.
A. Bashford, ‘Population, Geopolitics and International Organisations in the Mid
Twentieth Century’, Journal of World History, vol. 19: 3 (Sept. 2008), pp. 327-348.
Week 8: International Wars and Civil Wars
* Political Violence in 20th Century Europe, ed. D. Bloxham and R. Gerwarth (2011), esp
Chaps 2 and 5.
* V. R. Berghahn, Europe in the Era of Two World Wars. From Militarism and Genocide
to Civil Society (2006)
* I. Kershaw, ‘War and Political Violence in 20th century Europe’, Cent. Eur. Hist. 14,
2005
* H. Nehring, “The Era of ‘Non-Violence’: ‘Terrorism’ and the Emergence of
Conceptions of Non-Violent Statehood in Western Europe, 1967-1983,” European
Review of History 14:3 (2007), 343-371.
* O. Bartov, Murder in our Midst (1996), chps. 1 and 2.
Background:
N. Naimark, Fires of Hatred: A History of Ethnic Cleansing (1996)
T. Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2011)
Arne Odd Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of
Our Times (2007)
P. Gatrell & N. Baron, eds., Warlands: Population Resettlement and State Reconstruction
on the Soviet-East European Borderlands, 2009
C. Ealham & M. Richards, eds., The Splintering of Spain, 2005, chs. 1 & 4
Robert Gerwarth and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, “Internationalizing Historical Research on
Terrorist Movements in 20th Century Europe,” European Review of History 14:3
(2007), 275-281.
P. Gatrell & N. Baron, eds., Warlands: Population Resettlement and State Reconstruction
on the Soviet-East European Borderlands (2009)
S. Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews, 2 vols. (1997;2007)
P. Fritzsche, Life and Death in the Third Reich (2008)
6