Mastering Modern European History

The aim of this first-year class is to help students think about the processes of political and social transformation in nineteenth century Europe, from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the 'Age of the Masses', which began at the dawn of the twentieth-century. Our analysis focuses on the joint evolutions of regimes and political organisations (the persistence and reform of multinational empires, nation state building, and the rise of new colonial empires), cultural and political sensitivities (liberalism, conservatism, democracy, socialism), and practices of mobilisation (revolts and insurrections, formal and informal politicisation, war commitments, religious or associative engagements, etc.). Political history is understood in a broad sense, in light of the economic, social, and cultural changes that have affected, at different scales, nineteenth century societies. Europe is not considered in a homogeneous way; we are interested in the tensions and conflicts which have divided it, the imagination of its borders and its limits. Nor will it be considered in an isolated or self-centred way; European expansion will be placed in the context of the 'globalisation' of the nineteenth century and Europe's interactions with the Americas, Africa and Asia. While remaining focused on a well-defined issue, the class will integrate recent contributions of research in transnational history, imperial history, and global history, among other areas, and engage students with primary sources from which narrative and historical analyses are built.

European History Quarterly, 2009

As the five books under review attest, the dynamic and lively state of scholarship on eighteenth-century France has led to a broadening in the categories of analysis used over the past two decades. The majority of the books considered here transcend the revisionist interpretation of the French Revolution, which took shape 25 years ago and peaked during the bicentenary celebrations in 1989. 1 This interpretation characterized the Revolution as essentially negative because it failed to produce a political order founded upon freedom and individual rights. For all of the liberal rhetoric of 1789, the revisionists claimed, the Revolution was destined to descend into Terror from the beginning. 2 However, in recent years, there has been a questioning of the revisionist interpretation of the French Revolution, much of it in the form of a revitalized social history. Indeed, social history has made a noticeable comeback, albeit not in its classic pre-revisionist form. 3 Historians such as Gary Kates and Jeremy D. Popkin have identified much of this new historiography as 'neo-liberal' because it focuses on the problems of transforming a society from one of hierarchy to one of civil equality as well as emphasizing the role of free will and human choices in european history quarterly  European History Quarterly

2016

History of European Ideas, 2002

Revolution simultaneously legitimises and denies the coordinate centre of the political order of Modernity. It is difficult to describe the historical evolution from the early industrial, class-national forms of political organisation to late or global Modernity other than in terms of a low-intensity revolution in the rate of social change. On the other hand, this permanent modernisation is not revolutionary in the sense that the periodic splits of elites, colour revolutions, coups and national liberation movements do not in and of themselves make demands for fundamental change in the value-institutional core of the political order of Modernity. The potential for a new revolution can be consequent only on a repudiation of Modernity in favour of an alternative political project having a greater capability for universalisation and totalisation. If, in legitimising its liberal consensus and nation-state models as the dominant political format of their synthesis, capitalism is the value-institutional quintessence of the political order of Modernity, it is precisely in challenges to capitalism, the liberal consensus and nationalism that provide the most obvious means for crystallising revolutionary movements. From such a perspective, capitalism increasingly comes up against the global limits of its expansion, with class ideologies degenerating into a fragmented, technologically-intermediated populism, and nationstates experiencing increasing pressure from alternative political formats (city networks, multinational corporations, etc.) as they attempt to preserve the model of the social state. While various discourses and social groups profess to play the role of revolutionary utopias 1 The article is prepared with the support of RFBR grant No. 18-011-00211 "Social Consensus in Russia: Mechanisms for Ideological and Institutional Regulation".

2020

Around the world, social movements have become legitimate, yet contested, actors in local, national and global politics and civil society, yet we still know relatively little about their longer histories and the trajectories of their development. This series seeks to promote innovative historical research on the history of social movements in the modern period since around 1750. We bring together conceptually-informed studies that analyse labour movements, new social movements and other forms of protest from early modernity to the present. We conceive of 'social movements' in the broadest possible sense, encompassing social formations that lie between formal organisations and mere protest events. We also offer a home for studies that systematically explore the political, social, economic and cultural conditions in which social movements can emerge. We are especially interested in transnational and global perspectives on the history of social movements, and in studies that engage critically and creatively with political, social and sociological theories in order to make historically grounded arguments about social movements. This new series seeks to offer innovative historical work on social movements, while also helping to historicise the concept of 'social movement'. It hopes to revitalise the conversation between historians and historical sociologists in analysing what Charles Tilly has called the 'dynamics of contention'.