Europe's Utopias of Peace explores attempts to create a lasting European peace in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars and the two world wars. The book charts the 250 year cycle of violent European conflicts followed by new utopian formulations for peace. The utopian illusion was that future was predictable and rules could prescribe behaviour in conflicts to come. Bo Stråth examines the reiterative bicentenary cycle since 1815, where each new postwar period built on a design for a project for European unification. He sets out the key historical events and the continuous struggle with nationalism, linking them to legal, political and economic thought. Biographical sketches of the most prominent thinkers and actors provide the human element to this narrative. Europe's Utopias of Peace presents a new perspective on the ideological, legal, economic and intellectual conditions that shaped Europe since the 19th century and presents this in a global context. It challenges the conventional narrative on Europe's past as a progressive enlightenment heritage, highlighting the ambiguities of the legacies that pervade the institutional structures of contemporary Europe. Its long-term historical perspective will be invaluable for students of contemporary Europe or modern European history.

This book explores and proposes original definitions of central terms in political sociology and social theory, including political culture, imaginary, ideology, and utopia, in a manner that renders the individual definitions consistent with one another as part of a single and general conceptual framework for understanding social action. Through a Weberian distinction between means, ends, and values, together with the thought of Alfred Schütz and phenomenological sociology more generally, it sheds light on the ways in which the book’s key concepts make sense of social action, advancing the view that, rather than some promised land or aspiration, utopia is a project of broad and far-reaching collective action realized in its own enactment. As such, the book will appeal to scholars of social theory, political sociology, and political theory.

Provides the first historical analysis of the evolution of social justice in Europe during the twentieth century.

Presenting a new historical narrative on European integration and identity this title examines how the concept of Europe has been entangled in a dynamic and dramatic tension between calls for unity and arguments for borders and division. Through an in-depth intellectual history of the idea of Europe, Mats Andren interrogates the concept of integration and more recent debates surrounding European identity across the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the post-war period. Applying a broad range of original sources this unique work will be key reading for students and researchers studying European History, European Studies, Political History and related fields.

The European Experience brings together the expertise of nearly a hundred historians from eight European universities to internationalise and diversify the study of modern European history, exploring a grand sweep of time from 1500 to 2000. Offering a valuable corrective to the Anglocentric narratives of previous English-language textbooks, scholars from all over Europe have pooled their knowledge on comparative themes such as identities, cultural encounters, power and citizenship, and economic development to reflect the complexity and heterogeneous nature of the European experience. Rather than another grand narrative, the international author teams offer a multifaceted and rich perspective on the history of the continent of the past 500 years. Each major theme is dissected through three chronological sub-chapters, revealing how major social, political and historical trends manifested themselves in different European settings during the early modern (1500–1800), modern (1800–1900) and contemporary period (1900–2000). This resource is of utmost relevance to today’s history students in the light of ongoing internationalisation strategies for higher education curricula, as it delivers one of the first multi-perspective and truly ‘European’ analyses of the continent’s past. Beyond the provision of historical content, this textbook equips students with the intellectual tools to interrogate prevailing accounts of European history, and enables them to seek out additional perspectives in a bid to further enrich the discipline.

Throughout history rivers have always been a source of life and of conflict. This book investigates the Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine’s (CCNR) efforts to secure the principle of freedom of navigation on Europe’s prime river. The book explores how the most fundamental change in the history of international river governance arose from European security concerns. It examines how the CCNR functioned as an ongoing experiment in reconciling national and common interests that contributed to the emergence of European prosperity in the course of the long nineteenth century. In so doing, it shows that modern conceptions and practices of security cannot be understood without accounting for prosperity considerations and prosperity policies. Incorporating research from archives in Great Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands, as well as the recently opened CCNR archives in France, this study operationalises a truly transnational perspective that effectively opens the black box of the oldest and still existing international organisation in the world in its first centenary. In showing how security-prosperity considerations were a driving force in the unfolding of Europe’s prime river in the nineteenth century, it is of interest to scholars of politics and history, including the history of international relations, European history, transnational history and the history of security, as well as those with an interest in current themes and debates about transboundary water governance. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

'A dense narrative and a wealth of examples' Literary Review 'Reid-Henry narrates this story with elegance and gusto' Washington Post '[Reid-Henry] conveys an important message: Individual political action must become accountable to society's interests' Kirkus 'Reid-Henry's scholarship is impressive, gathering a wide range of historical anecdotes and referencing a diverse set of thinkers' Publishers Weekly The first panoramic history of the Western world from the 1970s to the present day: Empire of Democracy is the story for those asking how we got to where we are. In this epic narrative of the events that have shaped our own times, Simon Reid-Henry shows how liberal democracy, and Western history with it, was profoundly re-imagined when the postwar Golden Age ended. As the institutions of liberal rule were reinvented, a new generation of politicians emerged: Thatcher, Reagan, Mitterrand, Kohl. The late twentieth-century heyday they oversaw carried the Western democracies triumphantly to victory in the C old War and into the economic boom of the 1990s. But equally it led them into the fiasco of Iraq, to the high drama of the financial crisis in 2007/8, and ultimately to the anti-liberal surge of our own times. The present crisis of liberalism enjoins us to revisit these as yet unscripted decades. The era we have all been living through is closing out, democracy is turning on its axis once again. As this panoramic history poignantly reminds us, the choices we make going forward require us first to come to terms with where we have been.

This book offers an accessible and lively survey of the global history of the age of industrialization and globalization that arose in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars and collapsed in the maelstrom of the First World War. Through a combination of industrialization, technological innovation and imperial expansion, the industrializing powers of the world helped to create inter-connected global space that left few regions untouched. In ten concise chapters, this book relays the major shifts in global power, economics and society, outlining the interconnections of global industrial, imperial and economic change for local and regional experiences, identities and politics. It finishes with an exposé on the catastrophic impact of the First World War on this global system. The First Age of Industrial Globalization weaves together the histories of industrialization, world economy, imperialism, international law, diplomacy and war, which historians usually treat as separate developments, and integrates them to offer a new analysis of an era of fundamental historical change. It shows that the revolutionary changes in politics, society and international affairs experienced in the 19th century were inter-connected developments. It is essential reading for any student of modern global history.

This volume examines the development of the idea of 'technocratic internationalism': the promotion of the involvement of experts in the workings of international relations, especially in international organizations such as the United Nations and European Union.

The third edition of this acclaimed textbook on peace-making after the First World War advances that the responsibility for the outbreak of a new, even more ruinous, war in 1939 cannot be ascribed entirely to the planet's most powerful men and their meeting in Paris in January 1919 to reassemble a shattered world. Giving a concise overview of the problems and pressures these key figures were facing, Alan Sharp provides a coherent introduction to a highly complex and multi-dimensional topic. This is an ideal resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students taking modules on the Versailles Settlement, European and International History, Modern History, Interwar Europe, The Great War, 20th Century Europe, German History, or Diplomatic History, on either history courses or international relations/politics courses.