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Books > History > European history > General
In nineteenth-century Paris, passionate involvement with revolution
turned the city into an engrossing object of cultural speculation.
For writers caught between an explosive past and a bewildering
future, revolution offered a virtuoso metaphor by which the city
could be known and a vital principle through which it could be
portrayed. In this engaging book, Priscilla Ferguson locates the
originality and modernity of nineteenth-century French literature
in the intersection of the city with revolution. A cultural
geography, Paris as Revolution "reads" the nineteenth-century city
not in literary works alone but across a broad spectrum of urban
icons and narratives. Ferguson moves easily between literary and
cultural history and between semiotic and sociological analysis to
underscore the movement and change that fueled the powerful
narratives defining the century, the city, and their literature. In
her understanding and reconstruction of the guidebooks of Mercier,
Hugo, Valles, and others, alongside the novels of Flaubert, Hugo,
Valles, and Zola, Ferguson reveals that these works are themselves
revolutionary performances, ones that challenged the modernizing
city even as they transcribed its emergence. This title is part of
UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of
California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest
minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist
dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed
scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology.
This title was originally published in 1994.
The place of religion in the Enlightenment has been keenly debated
for many years. Research has tended, however, to examine the
interplay of religion and knowledge in Western countries, often
ignoring the East. In Enlightenment and religion in the Orthodox
World leading historians address this imbalance by exploring the
intellectual and cultural challenges and changes that took place in
Orthodox communities during the eighteenth century. The two main
centres of Orthodoxy, the Greek-speaking world and the Russian
Empire, are the focus of early chapters, with specialists analysing
the integration of modern cosmology into Greek education, and the
Greek alternative 'enlightenment', the spiritual Philokalia.
Russian experts also explore the battle between the spiritual and
the rational in the works of Voulgaris and Levshin. Smaller
communities of Eastern Europe were faced with their own particular
difficulties, analysed by contributors in the second part of the
book. Governed by modernising princes who embraced Enlightenment
ideals, Romanian society was fearful of the threat to its
traditional beliefs, whilst Bulgarians were grappling in different
ways with a new secular ideology. The particular case of the
politically-divided Serbian world highlights how Dositej
Obradovic's complex humanist views have been used for varying
ideological purposes ever since. The final chapter examines the
encroachment of the secular on the traditional in art, and the
author reveals how Western styles and models of representation were
infiltrating Orthodox art and artefacts. Through these innovative
case studies this book deepens our understanding of how Christian
and secular systems of knowledge interact in the Enlightenment, and
provides a rich insight into the challenges faced by leaders and
communities in eighteenth-century Orthodox Europe.
A fascinating reassessment of a turning point in the First World
War, revealing its role in shaping the German psyche On May 7,
1915, the Lusitania, a large British luxury liner, was sunk by a
German submarine off the Irish coast. Nearly 1,200 people,
including 128 American citizens, lost their lives. The sinking of a
civilian passenger vessel without warning was a scandal of
international scale and helped precipitate the United States'
decision to enter the conflict. It also led to the immediate
vilification of Germany. Though the ship's sinking has preoccupied
historians and the general public for over a century, until now the
German side of the story has been largely untold. Drawing on varied
German sources, historian Willi Jasper provides a comprehensive
reappraisal of the sinking and its aftermath that focuses on the
German reaction and psyche. The attack on the Lusitania, he argues,
was not simply an escalation of violence but signaled a new
ideological, moral, and religious dimension in the struggle between
German Kultur and Western civilization.
The historical development of Russia remains one of the most unique
yet ambiguous timelines in the realm of political science and
sociology. Understanding the state of culture as a single, dynamic,
and interrelated phenomenon is a vital component regarding the
memoirs of this prominent nation. Political, Economic, and Social
Factors Affecting the Development of Russian Statehood: Emerging
Research and Opportunities is a collection of innovative research
on the historical aspects of the formation of the political system
in Russia and proposes directions for the further development of
modern Russian statehood. While highlighting topics including
socio-politics, Soviet culture, and capitalization, this book is
ideally designed for economists, government officials,
policymakers, historians, diplomats, intelligence specialists,
political analysts, professors, students, and professionals seeking
current research on the history of public administration in Russia.
This book depicts the long rich life and wide ranging work of Count
Athanasius Raczynski (1788-1874). By exploring his complex
personality, his processes of thought and his accomplishments, it
reveals a man at once a wealthy aristocrat, a Pole in the Prussian
diplomatic service, an active participant in and perceptive
observer and critical commentator on political life, a connoisseur
and art collector of European renown, and the author of ground
breaking studies on German and Portuguese art - in short a
distinguished and fascinating nineteenth century figure.
Historian Michael H. Kater chronicles the rise and fall of one of
Germany's most iconic cities in this fascinating and surprisingly
provocative history of Weimar. Weimar was a center of the arts
during the Enlightenment and hence the cradle of German culture in
modern times. Goethe and Schiller made their reputations here, as
did Franz Liszt and the young Richard Strauss. In the early
twentieth century, the Bauhaus school was founded in Weimar. But
from the 1880s on, the city also nurtured a powerful right-wing
reactionary movement, and fifty years later, a repressive National
Socialist regime dimmed Weimar's creative lights, transforming the
onetime artists' utopia into the capital of its first Nazified
province and constructing the Buchenwald death camp on its
doorstep.
Kater's richly detailed volume offers the first complete history
of Weimar in any language, from its meteoric eighteenth-century
rise up from obscurity through its glory days of unbridled creative
expression to its dark descent back into artistic insignificance
under Nazi rule and, later, Soviet occupation and beyond.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which
commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out
and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and
impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes
high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using
print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in
1974.
In The Theatre of the Street: Public Violence in Antwerp During the
First Half of the Twentieth Century Antoon Vrints offers a
historical analysis of the meanings and functions of street
violence in a modern European city. Commonly perceived as the
senseless outcome of social disintegration in urban contexts,
public violence appears here as a meaningful strategy to settle
conflicts informally. Making use of Antwerp police records, Vrints
shows that the prevailing discourse on public violence does not
pass the test of empirical facts. The presumed correlation between
the occurrence of public violence and the decline of neighbourhood
life must even be reversed to some extent. The nature of public
violence paradoxically points to the crucial importance of
neighbourhood networks.
In the wake of the Second World War, ideas of Europe abounded. What
did Europe mean as a concept, and what did it mean to be European?
Europeanising Spaces in Paris, c. 1947-1962 makes the case that
Paris was both a leading and distinctive forum for the expression
of these ideas in the post-war period. It examines spaces in the
French capital in which ideas about Europe were formulated,
articulated, exchanged, circulated, and contested during this
post-war period, roughly between the escalation of the Cold War and
the end of France's war of decolonisation in Algeria. Such
processes of making sense of Europe are elucidated in urban,
political and cultural spaces in the French capital. Specifically,
the Parisian cafe, home and street are each examined in terms of
how they were implicated in ideas about Europe. Then, the
Paris-based Mouvement socialiste des etats unis d'Europe (The
Socialist Movement for the United States of Europe) and the
far-right wing Federation des etudiants nationalistes (The
Federation of Nationalist Students) are examined as examples of
political movements that mobilised around - very different -
concepts of Europe. The final section on cultural Europeanising
spaces draws attention to the specificities of the Europeanism of
exiles from Franco's Spain in Paris; the work of the great scholar
of the Arab world, Jacques Berque, in the context of his
understanding of the Mediterranean world and his understanding of
faith; and finally, the work of the legendary photographer, Henri
Cartier-Bresson, by looking at the capacities and limitations of
the photographic medium for the representation of Europe, and how
these corresponded with Cartier-Bresson's political, social, and
aesthetic commitments.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which
commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out
and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and
impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes
high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using
print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in
1954.
Traditional historiography has tended to disregard and even deny
Spain's role in the Enlightenment, banishing the country to a
benighted geographical periphery. In The Spanish Enlightenment
revisited a team of experts overturns the myth of the 'dark side of
Europe' and examines the authentic place of Spain in the
intellectual economy of the Enlightenment. Contributors to this
book explore how institutional and social changes in
eighteenth-century Spain sharpened the need for modernisation.
Examination of major constitutional and social initiatives, such as
the development of new scientific projects and economic societies,
the reform of criminal law, and a re-evaluation of the country's
colonial policies, reveals how ideas, principles and practices from
the wider European Enlightenment are adapted for the country's
specific context. Through detailed analysis authors investigate:
the evolution of public opinion, and the Republic of letters; the
growth of political economy as an intellectual discipline; the
transmission and reception of an Enlightenment discourse in the
Spanish Empire; Spain's role in shaping a modern conception of the
natural sciences. The portrait of a demarginalised, modernising and
enlightened Spain emerges clearly from this book; in so doing, it
opens up new avenues of research both within the history of the
pan-European Enlightenment, and in colonial studies.
The Dutch Republic was the most religiously diverse land in early
modern Europe, gaining an international reputation for toleration.
In Reformation and the Practice of Toleration, Benjamin Kaplan
explains why the Protestant Reformation had this outcome in the
Netherlands and how people of different faiths managed subsequently
to live together peacefully. Bringing together fourteen essays by
the author, the book examines the opposition of so-called
Libertines to the aspirations of Calvinist reformers for uniformity
and discipline. It analyzes the practical arrangements by which
multiple religious groups were accommodated. It traces the dynamics
of religious life in Utrecht and other mixed communities. And it
explores the relationships that developed between people of
different faiths, especially in 'mixed' marriages.
During the early modern period the public postal systems became
central pillars of the emerging public sphere. Despite the
importance of the post in the transformation of communication,
commerce and culture, little has been known about the functioning
of the post or how it affected the lives of its users and their
societies. In Postal culture in Europe, 1500-1800, Jay Caplan
provides the first historical and cultural analysis of the
practical conditions of letter-exchange at the dawn of the modern
age. Caplan opens his analysis by exploring the economic,
political, social and existential interests that were invested in
the postal service, and traces the history of the three main
European postal systems of the era, the Thurn and Taxis, the French
Royal Post and the British Post Office. He then explores how the
post worked, from the folding and sealing of letters to their
collection, sorting, and transportation. Beyond providing service
to the general public, these systems also furnished early modern
states with substantial revenue and effective surveillance tools in
the form of the Black Cabinets or Black Chambers. Caplan explains
how postal services highlighted the tension between state power and
the emerging concept of the free individual, with rights to private
communication outside the public sphere. Postal systems therefore
affected how letter writers and readers conceived and expressed
themselves as individuals, which the author demonstrates through an
examination of the correspondence of Voltaire and Rousseau, not
merely as texts but as communicative acts. Ultimately, Jay Caplan
provides readers with both a comprehensive overview of the changes
wrought by the newly-public postal system - from the sounds that
one heard to the perception of time and distance - and a thought
provoking account of the expectations and desires that have led to
our culture of instant communication.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which
commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out
and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and
impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes
high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using
print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in
1972.
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