Lisa Pine assembles an impressive array of influential scholars in Life and Times in Nazi Germany to explore the variety and complexity of life in Germany under Hitler's totalitarian regime. The book is a thematic collection of essays that examine the extent to which social and cultural life in Germany was permeated by Nazi aims and ambitions. Each essay deals with a different theme of daily German life in the Nazi era, with topics including food, fashion, health, sport, art, tourism and religion all covered in chapters based on original and expert scholarship. Life and Times in Nazi Germany, which also includes 24 images and helpful end-of-chapter select bibliographies, provides a new lens through which to observe life in Nazi Germany - one that highlights the everyday experience of Germans under Hitler's rule. It illuminates aspects of life under Nazi control that are less well-known and examines the contradictions and paradoxes that characterised daily life in Nazi Germany in order to enhance and sophisticate our understanding of this period in the nation's history. This is a crucial volume for all students of Nazi Germany and the history of Germany in the 20th century.

Did homes in ancient Greece have kitchens and bathrooms? If so, why have archaeologists had such troubles finding their remains? What did the concepts of "home "and "house" mean to the ancient Greeks? This book offers an illuminating reappraisal of domestic space in classical Greece. Beginning with the premise that we must cease to view the classical Greek house through the lens of contemporary Western notions, Janett Morgan provides a fresh evaluation of what home meant to different communities in the ancient Greek world. By employing textual analysis alongside archaeological scholarship, "The Classical Greek House" seeks to explain some of the contradictions that previous approaches have left unresolved. Of value to students and academics alike, Morgan's work offers an exciting new perspective on relations between men and women, public and private, and between home and city in the ancient world.

Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe is a topic laced by prejudice on one hand and apologetics on the other. Beginning in the Middle Ages, Jews were often portrayed as criminals driven by greed. While these accusations were, for the most part, unfounded, in other cases criminal accusations against Jews were not altogether baseless. Drawing on a variety of legal, liturgical, literary, and archival sources, Ephraim Shoham-Steiner examines the reasons for the involvement in crime, the social profile of Jews who performed crimes, and the ways and mechanisms employed by the legal and communal body to deal with Jewish criminals and with crimes committed by Jews. A society's attitude toward individuals identified as criminals - by others or themselves - can serve as a window into that society's mores and provide insight into how transgressors understood themselves and society's atttudes toward them. The book is divided into three main sections. In the first section, Shoham-Steiner examines theft and crimes of a financial nature. In the second section, he discusses physical violence and murder, most importantly among Jews but also incidents when Jews attacked others and cases in which Jews asked non-Jews to commit violence against fellow Jews. In the third section, Shoham-Steiner approaches the role of women in crime and explores the gender differences, surveying the nature of the crimes involving women both as perpetrators and as victims, as well as the reaction to their involvement in criminal activities among medieval European Jews. While the study of crime and social attitudes toward criminals is firmly established in the social sciences, the history of crime and of social attitudes toward crime and criminals is relatively new, especially in the field of medieval studies and all the more so in medieval Jewish studies. Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe blazes a new path for unearthing daily life history from extremely recalcitrant sources. The intended readership goes beyond scholars and students of medieval Jewish studies, medieval European history, and crime in pre-modern society.

The Russo-Turkish War""was one of the most decisive conflicts of the 18th century. In this book, Brian Davies offers a thorough survey of the war and explains why it was crucial to the political triumph of Catherine the Great, the southward expansion of the Russian Empire, and the rollback of Ottoman power from southeastern Europe. The war completed the incorporation of Ukraine into the Russian Empire, ended the independence of the great Cossack hosts, removed once and for all the military threat from the Crimean Khanate, began the partitions of Poland, and encouraged Catherine II to plan projects to complete the "liberation" of the lower Danubian and Balkan Slavs and Greeks. The war legitimated and secured the power of Catherine II, finally made the Pontic steppe safe for agricultural colonization, and won ports enabling Russia to control the Black Sea and become a leading grain exporter. Traditionally historians (Sorel, for example) have treated this war as the beginning of the "Eastern Question," the question of how the European powers should manage the decline of the Ottoman Empire. A thorough grasp of the Russo-Turkish War is essential to understanding the complexity and volatility of diplomacy in 18th-century Europe. This book will be an invaluable resource for all scholars and students on European military history and the history of Eastern Europe.

In a world historically dominated by male rulers, the women who have sat on thrones of their own shine out brightly. Some queens and empresses were born to greatness, while others fought their way to power. Queens ranges from the ancient world to the present day, telling the stories of these women who ruled, from murderous former courtesan Wu Zetian in 7th century China to Elizabeth I, the 'Virgin Queen' of England. In 6th century Constantinople, Empress Theodora, who had been a street performer before catching the eye of Emperor Justinian, extended rights for women, passing laws that allowed them to divorce and own property and made rape a crime punishable by death. In 12th century Europe, Eleanor of Aquitaine first married the king of France and then the king of England. At the Mughal court in Lahore in the early 17th century, Nur Jahan, wife of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir, was the political powerhouse behind the throne. In more recent history, the book explores the reigns of Catherine the Great, revealing how a minor German aristocrat came to rule and expand the Russian Empire, Queen Victoria, whose family dominated the world in the early 20th centuty, and her more recent descendent, Elizabeth II, the longest-ruling queen in history. Female rulers are often described as ambitious rather than bold, as devious rather than diplomatically astute and as intriguers and meddlers, all characterizations that are destructive to the reality of women's lives in the world's monarchies. Even genealogies still often leave out the women of royal families, overlooking their genuine contributions. To some extent, we will never know these great women of history as well as we know their menfolk; the sources simply leave too many gaps. However, we can and will do better in giving the women rulers of history the recognition they deserve Carefully researched, superbly entertaining and illustrated throughout with more than 180 photographs and artworks, Queens highlights the true personalities and real lives of the women who became monarchs and empresses.

At the end of the 19th century, German historical scholarship had grown to great prominence. Academics around the world imitated their German colleagues. Intellectuals described historical scholarship as a foundation of the modern worldview. To many, the modern age was an 'age of history'. This book investigates how German historical scholarship acquired this status. Modern Historiography in the Making begins with the early Enlightenment, when scholars embraced the study of the past as a modernizing project, undermining dogmatic systems of belief and promoting progressive ideals, such a tolerance, open mindedness and reform-readiness. Kasper Risbjerg Eskildsen looks at how this modernizing project remained an important motivation and justification for historical scholarship until the 20th century. Eskildsen successfully argues that German historical scholarship was not, as we have been told since the early 20th century, a product of historicism, but rather of Enlightenment ideals. The book offers this radical revision of the history of scholarship by focusing on practices of research and education. It examines how scholars worked and why they cared. It shows how their efforts forever changed our relationship not only to the past, but also to the world we live in.

Beginning in 1609, Jesuit missionaries established missions (reductions) among sedentary and non-sedentary native populations in the larger region defined as the Province of Paraguay (Rio de la Plata region, eastern Bolivia). One consequence of resettlement on the missions was exposure to highly contagious old world crowd diseases such as smallpox and measles. Epidemics that occurred about once a generation killed thousands. Despite severe mortality crises such as epidemics, warfare, and famine, the native populations living on the missions recovered. An analysis of the effects of epidemics and demographic patterns shows that the native populations living on the Paraguay and Chiquitos missions survived and retained a unique ethnic identity. A comparative approach that considers demographic patterns among other mission populations place the case study of the Paraguay and Chiquitos missions into context, and show how patterns on the Paraguay and Chiquitos missions differed from other mission populations. The findings challenge generally held assumptions about Native American historical demography.

Bestselling author Giles Tremlett traverses the rich and varied history of Spain, from prehistoric times to today, in a brief, accessible primer for visitors, curious readers and hispanophiles. 'Tremlett is a fascinating socio-cultural guide, as happy to discuss Spain's World Cup win as its Moorish rule' Guardian 'Negotiates Spain's chaotic history with admirable clarity and style' The Times Spain's position on Europe's south-western corner has exposed it to cultural, political and actual winds blowing from all quadrants. Africa lies a mere nine miles to the south. The Mediterranean connects it to the civilizational currents of Phoenicians, Romans, Carthaginians, and Byzantines as well as the Arabic lands of the near east. Bronze Age migrants from the Russian steppe were amongst the first to arrive. They would be followed by Visigoths, Arabs, Napoleonic armies and many more invaders and immigrants. Circular winds and currents linked it to the American continent, allowing Spain to conquer and colonize much of it. As a result, Spain has developed a sort of hybrid vigour. Whenever it has tried to deny this inevitable heterogeneity, it has required superhuman effort to fashion a 'pure' national identity - which has proved impossible to maintain. In Espana, Giles Tremlett argues that, in fact, that lack of a homogenous identity is Spain's defining trait.

Women and Gender in the Early Modern Low Countries, 1500-1750 brings together research on women and gender across the Low Countries, a culturally contiguous region that was split by the Eighty Years' War into the Protestant Dutch Republic in the North and the Spanish-controlled, Catholic Hapsburg Netherlands in the South. The authors of this interdisciplinary volume highlight women's experiences of social class, as family members, before the law, and as authors, artists, and patrons, as well as the workings of gender in art and literature. In studies ranging from microhistories to surveys, the book reveals the Low Countries as a remarkable historical laboratory for its topic and points to the opportunities the region holds for future scholarly investigations. Contributors: Martine van Elk, Martha Howell, Martha Moffitt Peacock, Sarah Joan Moran, Amanda Pipkin, Katlijne Van der Stighelen, Margit Thofner, and Diane Wolfthal.

With a broad chronological sweep, this book provides an historical account of Roman law and legal institutions which explains how they were created and modified in relation to political developments and changes in power relations. It underlines the constant tension between two central aspects of Roman politics: the aristocratic nature of the system of government, and the drive for increased popular participation in decision-making and the exercise of power. The traditional balance of power underwent a radical transformation under Augustus, with new processes of integration and social mobility brought into play. Professor Capogrossi Colognesi brings into sharp relief the deeply political nature of the role of Roman juridical science as an expression of aristocratic politics and discusses the imperial jurists' fundamental contribution to the production of an outline theory of sovereignty and legality which would constitute, together with Justinian's gathering of Roman legal knowledge, the most substantial legacy of Rome.

This open access book uncovers one important, yet forgotten, form of itinerant livelihoods, namely petty trade, more specifically how it was practiced in Northern Europe during the period 1820-1960. It investigates how traders and customers interacted in different spaces and approaches ambulatory trade as an arena of encounters by looking at everyday social practices. Petty traders often belonged to subjugated social groups, like ethnic minorities and migrants, whereas their customers belonged to the resident population. How were these mobile traders perceived and described? What goods did they peddle? How did these commodities enable and shape trading encounters? What kind of narratives can be found, and whose? These questions pertaining to daily practices on a grass-root level have not been addressed in previous research. Encounters and Practices embarks on hidden histories of survival, vulnerability, and conflict, but also discloses reciprocal relations, even friendships.

(The open access version of this book has been published with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation.) The book proposes a reassessment of royal portraiture and its function in the Middle Ages via a comparative analysis of works from different areas of the Mediterranean world, where images are seen as only one outcome of wider and multifarious strategies for the public mise-en-scene of the rulers' bodies. Its emphasis is on the ways in which medieval monarchs in different areas of the Mediterranean constructed their outward appearance and communicated it by means of a variety of rituals, object-types, and media. Contributors are Michele Bacci, Nicolas Bock, Gerardo Boto Varela, Branislav Cvetkovic, Sofia Fernandez Pozzo, Gohar Grigoryan Savary, Elodie Leschot, Vinni Lucherini, Ioanna Rapti, Juan Carlos Ruiz Souza, Marta Serrano-Coll, Lucinia Speciale, Manuela Studer-Karlen, Mirko Vagnoni, and Edda Vardanyan.

The right to free movement is the one privilege that EU citizens value the most in the Union, but one that has also created much political controversy in recent years, as the debates preceding the 2016 Brexit referendum aptly illustrate. This book examines how European politicians have justified and criticized free movement from the commencement of the first Commission of the EU-25 in November 2004 to the Brexit referendum in June 2016. The analysis takes into account the discourses of Heads of State, Governments and Ministers of the Interior (or Home Secretaries) of six major European states: the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Romania. In addition to these national leaders, the speeches of European Commissioners responsible for free movement matters are also considered. The book introduces a new conceptual framework for analysing practical reasoning in political discourses and applies it in the analysis of national free movement debates contextualised in respective migration histories. In addition to results related to political discourses, the study unearths wider problems related to free movement, including the diversified and variegated approaches towards different groups of movers as well as the exclusive attitudes apparent in both discourses and policies. The History and Politics of Free Movement within the European Union is of interest to anyone studying national and European politics and ideologies, contemporary history, migration policies and political argumentation.