In most histories of Europe before the First World War, modern life in Habsburg Mitteleuropa takes on a decidedly gloomy cast. Centering on Vienna in the twilight years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, such accounts describe the failure of rationalism and the rise of a dangerous politics of fantasy. This book tells a different story, highlighting a generation of Czech writers and artists distinguished by their affirmative encounter with the modern world in the first decades of the twentieth century. Novelist and playwright Karel Capek, along with other members of his cohort, embraced the possibilities of the post-Habsburg era. Tracing the roots of Capek's generation to cubist art and turn-of-the-century philosophy, author Thomas Ort shows that the form of modernism they championed led not into the thickets of fascism or communism but in fact closer to liberal political ideals.

British social reformers Emma Cons (1838-1911) and Lucy Cavendish (1841-1924) broke new ground in their efforts to better the lot of the working poor in London: they hoped to transform these people's lives through great art, music, high culture, and elite knowledge. Although they did not recognize it as such, their work was in many ways an affirmation and display of citizenship. This book uses Cons's and Cavendish's partnership and work as an illuminating point of departure for exploring the larger topic of women's philanthropic campaigns in late Victorian and Edwardian society.

Andrea Geddes Poole demonstrates that, beginning in the late 1860s, a shift was occurring from an emphasis on charity as a private, personal act of women's virtuous duty to public philanthropy as evidence of citizenly, civic participation. She shows that, through philanthropic works, women were able to construct a separate public sphere through which they could speak directly to each other about how to affect matters of significant public policy - decades before women were finally granted the right to vote.

The word “lynching” has immediate and graphic connotations for virtually all people who hear and use the word. When Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas claimed he was lynched by a Senate investigating committee, he intentionally and deliberately drew on two key components of the term -- race and punishment – that stemmed from the long and ugly history of lynching in America. Yet if we follow the history of the term itself – which is over two centuries old – we learn that lynching has had several different meanings over time, with murder endorsed by the community as one of its most enduring definitions. Tracing the use and meaning of the word “lynching” from the colonial period to the present, historian Christopher Waldrep reveals that while the notion of lynching as a form of extralegal punishment sanctioned by the community did not alter significantly over time, the meaning of the word itself changed drastically, paralleling changes in how Americans grappled with law enforcement, community, and most importantly, race relations.

France and Britain, indispensable allies in two world wars, remember and forget their shared history in contrasting ways. The book examines key episodes in the relationship between the two countries, including the outbreak of war in 1914, the battles of the Somme and Verdun, the Fall of France in 1940, Dunkirk, and British involvement in the French Resistance and the 1944 Liberation. The contributors discuss how the two countries tend to forget what they owe to each other, and have a distorted view of history which still colours and prejudices their relationship today, despite government efforts to build a close political and military partnership.

The scientific and technological revolution in shipbuilding in the early twentieth century had a great impact on both the military and the industrial/commercial world. Miwao Matsumoto focuses on the relationship between this revolution and the structure and function of 'technology gatekeepers' during the process of transfer of marine science and technology from Britain to Japan in this period. His analysis is undertaken in light of a new 'composite model' of Japanese industrialization, which reveals more profound and subtle sociological implications than 'success or failure' type accounts of industrialization usually suggest.

During the twentieth century, Germans experienced a long series of major and often violent disruptions in their everyday lives. Such chronic instability and precipitous change made it difficult for them to make sense of their lives as coherent stories-and for scholars to reconstruct them in retrospect. Ruptures in the Everyday brings together an international team of twenty-six researchers from across German studies to craft such a narrative. This collectively authored work of integrative scholarship investigates Alltag through the lens of fragmentary anecdotes from everyday life in modern Germany. Across ten intellectually adventurous chapters, this book explores the self, society, families, objects, institutions, policies, violence, and authority in modern Germany neither from a top-down nor bottom-up perspective, but focused squarely on everyday dynamics at work "on the ground."

Churchill's 'Black Dog' is widely believed to have been an inborn tendency towards prolonged and despairing depression. In this, the first book-length study of all the available biographical evidence, some of which has never before been published, the truth emerges as significantly less grave than legend has it, but more psychologically complex.

This collection of essential documents bearing on the long-standing Arab-Israeli conflict begins with Leo Pinsker's pamphlet of 1882 which first proposed the establishment of a Jewish state, preferably in Palestine, and ends with the United Nations Security Council resolution of 1990. Issued by the various official and quasi-official governments and organizations that have been parties to the dispute, the documents provide the background to political Zionism and illustrate Great Britain's role in both supporting the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine and in easing Arab fears. In addition, the collection demonstrates the major role played by the United States. Charles L. Geddes' introductions to each document are primarily based on other documents such as published memoirs of the participants, published and unpublished letters, reportage from international reporting services, and more. These prologues place each document in its historical context. To many of the documents Geddes has appended epilogues that contain detailed information on the results or reaction to that particular paper. Among the landmark works included in the collection are Theodor Herzl's Der Judenstaat; "The Basel Program" of the First Zionist Congress; the "Balfour Declaration; " the "Churchill White Paper; " and the PLO proclamation of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Most of the documents have been reproduced in their entirety directly from the relevant sources. From those too lengthy to reprint in full, only the conclusions or recommendations have been included. None have been paraphrased or truncated and no relevant information has been omitted. The result ofGeddes' 25-year experience teaching a course on the Arab-Israeli conflict, this scholarly work serves as a supplementary text for college courses on the subject and can also stand alone as an invaluable reference for students, media professionals, and informed general readers.

Dancing in the English style explores the development, experience, and cultural representation of popular dance in Britain from the end of the First World War to the early 1950s. It describes the rise of modern ballroom dancing as Britain's predominant popular style, as well as the opening of hundreds of affordable dancing schools and purpose-built dance halls. It focuses in particular on the relationship between the dance profession and dance hall industry and the consumers who formed the dancing public. Together these groups negotiated the creation of a 'national' dancing style, which constructed, circulated, and commodified ideas about national identity. At the same time, the book emphasizes the global, exploring the impact of international cultural products on national identity construction, the complexities of Americanisation, and Britain's place in a transnational system of production and consumption that forged the dances of the Jazz Age. -- .

This book examines the imaginative dimension of Irish-Indian imperial connections in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries by considerating the relationships between Irish and Indian nationalists, the construction of Irishmen as British imperial heroes, and Irish nationalist commemoration of the mutiny of a regiment of Irish soldiers in India.

This is the first comprehensive biography of Molotov and reflects the range of sources that have become available to historians since the fall of the USSR. It is a commentary on Soviet history. Molotov played his part in revolution, Civil War, Lenin's Russia, Stalin's struggle with the oppositions, collectivization, industrialization, the Terror, the Great Patriotic War, the beginnings of the Cold War, and in the Khrushchev era.

Leading scholars explore the role played by the American Embassy in London and the US Ambassador to the Court of St James's, not only in bilateral UK-US relations, but also in wider international issues over the years the Embassy has been in Grosvenor Square. This volume covers the period from 1938 to 2008, effectively the lifespan of what has often been termed "the special relationship," from its birth in the Second World War, through the challenges of the Cold War to the present day.
Debates about the "specialness" of the relationship in the post-war context are key, as are discussions about the impact of the development and demise of the "Cold War," the ongoing impact of European integration, the influence of nuclear weapons and NATO, and wider economic, cultural, demographic and environmental forces that have shaped the transatlantic relationship to arguably form the basis of a new model of "transatlantic diplomacy."

This original study discovers the bourgeois in the modernist and the dissenting style of Bohemia in the new artistic movements of the 1910s. Brooker sees the bohemian as the example of the modern artist, at odds with but defined by the codes of bourgeois society. "Bohemia in London" reconstructs the usual history, situating the canonic names of modernism in the world of groups and coteries which shaped the allied experiments in art and life. Thus it renews once more the complexities and radicalism of the modernist challenge.

The beginning of filmmaking in the German colonies coincided with colonialism itself coming to a standstill. Scandals and economic stagnation in the colonies demanded a new and positive image of their value for Germany. By promoting business and establishing a new genre within the fast growing film industry, films of the colonies were welcomed by organizations such as the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft (German Colonial Society). The films triggered patriotic feelings but also addressed the audience as travelers, explorers, wildlife protectionists, and participants in unique cultural events. This book is the first in-depth analysis of colonial filmmaking in the Wilhelmine Era.

Patrick Pearse was not only leader of the 1916 Easter Rising but also one of the main ideologues of the IRA. Based on new material on his childhood and underground activities, this book places him in a European context and provides an intimate account of the development of his ideas on cultural regeneration, education, patriotism and militarism.

What makes a space Jewish? This wide-ranging volume revisits literal as well as metaphorical spaces in modern German history to examine the ways in which Jewishness has been attributed to them both within and outside of Jewish communities, and what the implications have been across different eras and social contexts. Working from an expansive concept of "the spatial," these contributions look not only at physical sites but at professional, political, institutional, and imaginative realms, as well as historical Jewish experiences of spacelessness. Together, they encompass spaces as varied as early modern print shops and Weimar cinema, always pointing to the complex intertwining of German and Jewish identity.

This volume examines conflicts over food and their implications for European societies in the first half of the Twentieth century. Food shortages and famines, fears of deprivation, and food regulations and controls were a shared European experience in this period. Conflicts over food, however, developed differently in different regions, under different regimes, and within different social groups. These developments had stark consequences for social solidarity and physical survival. Ranging across Europe, from Scandinavia and Britain to Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union, this volume explores the political, economic and cultural dynamics that shaped conflicts over food and their legacies.

Shows that networks in European integration governance were not a phenomenon that developed in the 1980s out of a 'hollowing out' of the nation-states in the 1970s. Based throughout on newly accessible sources, the authors discuss various networks and show how they contributed to constitutional choices and policy decisions after World War II.

Both harrowing and redeeming, this is the history of a unique 'adoption' system. The book tells how, for generations, local families, grateful for the sacrifice of their liberators from Nazi occupation, have cared for the graves of over 10,000 US soldiers in the cemetery of Margraten in the Netherlands, keeping their memory alive.

This concise volume outlines developments in Hungarian foreign policy since the end of the Communist regime and the formation of the country's democratic coalition. After briefly reviewing Hungary's foreign relations between the wars, the Stalinist period, and the foreign policy principles of Prime Minister Imre Nagy during the 1956 Revolution, Joseph Kun discusses the 1990 elections that confirmed the rejection of Communist rule and the formation of a coalition government with Jozsef Antall as prime minister. Kun describes how the new government's foreign policy is oriented toward the West with the primary aim of establishing closer political and economic ties with the industrial nations. At the same time, Hungary is endeavoring to forge regional alliances in Central Europe to protect the large ethnic Hungarian communities who live in the neighboring Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, and the former Yugoslavia. The continuing tensions in Eastern Europe and the Soviet successor states demand the formulation of a firm but flexible foreign policy line. This study gives the specialist and student a sense of the achievements of the Antall government during its first years in office as well as an understanding of the disappointements that a new democracy experiences in its search for contacts in a well-meaning but pragmatic world.

The first comparative study of how the French Popular Front and its right-wing opponents transformed the masses into the people, whether in demonstrations and festivals, or theatre and film. Seven chapters examine the representation of the crowd, workers, electorate, nation and symbolic community, exploring parallels between left and right.

Wars of Words is the first comprehensive survey of the politics of language in Ireland during the colonial and post-colonial periods. Challenging received notions, Tony Crowley presents a complex, fascinating, and often surprising history which has suffered greatly in the past from over-simplification. Beginning with Henry VIII's Act for English Order, Habit, and Language (1537) and ending with the Republic of Ireland's Official Languages Act (2003) and the introduction of language rights under the legislation proposed by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (2004), this clear and accessible narrative follows the continuities and discontinuities of Irish history over the past five hundred years.
The major issues that have both united and divided Ireland are considered with regard to language, including ethnicity, cultural identity, religion, sovereignty, propriety, purity, memory, and authenticity. But rather than simply presenting the accepted wisdom on many of the language debates, this book re-visits the material and considers previously little-known evidence in order to offer new insights and to contest earlier accounts. The materials range from colonial state papers to the writings of Irish revolutionaries, from the work of Irish priest historians to contemporary loyalist politicians, from Gaelic dictionaries to Ulster-Scots poetry.
Wars of Words offers a reading of the crucial role language has played in Ireland's political history. It concludes by arguing that the Belfast Agreement's recognition that languages are 'part of the cultural wealth of the island of Ireland', will be central to the social development of the Republic and Northern Ireland. The finalchapter analyses the way in which contemporary poets have used Gaelic, Hiberno-English, Ulster-English, and Ulster-Scots, as vehicles for the various voices that demand to be heard in the new societies on both sides of the border.

The final years of the Ottoman Empire were catastrophic ones for its non-Turkish, non-Muslim minorities. From 1913 to 1923, its rulers deported, killed, or otherwise persecuted staggering numbers of citizens in an attempt to preserve "Turkey for the Turks," setting a modern precedent for how a regime can commit genocide in pursuit of political ends while largely escaping accountability. While this brutal history is most widely known in the case of the Armenian genocide, few appreciate the extent to which the Empire's Assyrian and Greek subjects suffered and died under similar policies. This comprehensive volume is the first to broadly examine the genocides of the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks in comparative fashion, analyzing the similarities and differences among them and giving crucial context to present-day calls for recognition.