This is the first comprehensive, multi-author survey of German history that features cutting-edge syntheses of major topics by an international team of leading scholars. Emphasizing demographic, economic, and political history, this Handbook places German history in a denser transnational context than any other general history of Germany. It underscores the centrality of war to the unfolding of German history, and shows how it dramatically affected the development of German nationalism and the structure of German politics. It also reaches out to scholars and students beyond the field of history with detailed and cutting-edge chapters on religious history and on literary history, as well as to contemporary observers, with reflections on Germany and the European Union, and on 'multi-cultural Germany.'
Covering the period from around 1760 to the present, this Handbook represents a remarkable achievement of synthesis based on current scholarship. It constitutes the starting point for anyone trying to understand the complexities of German history as well as the state of scholarly reflection on Germany's dramatic, often destructive, integration into the community of modern nations. As it brings this story to the present, it also places the current post-unification Federal Republic of Germany into a multifaceted historical context. It will be an indispensable resource for scholars, students, and anyone interested in modern Germany.

The civil wars that brought down the Roman Republic were fought on more than battlefields. Armed gangs infested the Italian countryside, in the city of Rome mansions were besieged, and bounty-hunters searched the streets for "public enemies." Among the astonishing stories to survive from these years is that of a young woman whose parents were killed, on the eve of her wedding, in the violence engulfing Italy. While her future husband fought overseas, she staved off a run on her father's estate. Despite an acute currency shortage, she raised money to help her fiance in exile. And when several years later, her husband, back in Rome, was declared an outlaw, she successfully hid him, worked for his pardon, and joined other Roman women in staging a public protest. The wife's tale is known only because her husband had inscribed on large slabs of marble the elaborate eulogy he gave at her funeral. Though no name is given on the inscriptions, starting as early as the seventeenth century, scholars saw saw similarities between the contents of the inscription and the story, preserved in literary sources, of one Turia, the wife of Quintus Lucretius. Although the identification remains uncertain, and in spite of the other substantial gaps in the text of the speech, the "Funeral Speech for Turia" (Laudatio Turiae), as it is still conventionally called, offers an extraordinary window into the life of a high-ranking woman at a critical moment of Roman history. In this book Josiah Osgood reconstructs the wife's life more fully than it has been before by bringing in alongside the eulogy stories of other Roman women who also contributed to their families' survival while working to end civil war. He shows too how Turia's story sheds rare light on the more hidden problems of everyday life for Romans, including a high number of childless marriages. Written with a general audience in mind, Turia: A Roman Woman's Civil War will appeal to those interested in Roman history as well as war, and the ways that war upsets society's power structures. Not only does the study come to terms with the distinctive experience of a larger group of Roman women, including the prudence they had to show to succeed , but also introduces readers to an extraordinary tribute to married love which, though from another world, speaks to us today.

Amsterdam was, after London and Paris, the third largest city in early modern Europe, and was renowned throughout Europe for its widespread and visible prostitution. Delving deep into a wide range of sources, but making particular use of the transcripts of thousands of trials, The Burgher andthe Whore reconstructs Amsterdam's whoredom in detail. The colourful and fascinating descriptions of the prostitutes, their bawds, their clients, and the police shed new light on the cultural, social, and economic conditions of the lives of poor women in a seafaring society.
Lotte van de Pol explores how the vice trade was embedded in Amsterdam's society, economy, and judicial system, and how legislation and policing were shaped by misogynist attitudes towards women and fear of God's wrath and venereal diseases towards sex. The story concentrates on the people living at the margins of a rich metropolis, in which there was a large surplus of women, many of them poor immigrants with little prospect of marriage. Many changes are visible in the 150 years under scrutiny, including the view of prostitution from immorality to trade, and of prostitutes from whores and criminals to paupers. The result is a book that can be read as the history of the Dutch Golden Age from below.

Gustav Stresemann was the exceptional German political figure of his time. His early death in 1929 has long been viewed as the beginning of the end for the Weimar Republic and the opening through which Hitler was able to come to power. Stresemann's personality and talents as a politican held together the coalition that provided the only serious opposition to the Nazi party in the 1920s. On his death this opposition collapsed and along with it the only chance of establishing a stable and democratic Germany at the heart of a stable Europe.

Children born out of wedlock were commonly stigmatized as "bastards" in early modern France. Deprived of inheritance, they were said to have neither kin nor kind, neither family nor nation. But why was this the case? Gentler alternatives to "bastard" existed in early modern French discourse, and many natural parents voluntarily recognized and cared for their extramarital offspring. Drawing upon a wide array of archival and published sources, Matthew Gerber has reconstructed numerous disputes over the rights and disabilities of children born out of wedlock in order to illuminate the changing legal condition and practical treatment of extramarital offspring over a period of two and half centuries. His book reveals that the exclusion of extramarital offspring from the family was perpetually contested in early modern France. Legal debate over illegitimacy carried political implications for France's dynastic monarchy. When Louis XIV, the Sun King, created a political firestorm by declaring his own extramarital offspring to be capable of inheriting the French crown, political theorists drew upon precedents of private law to argue for or against the exclusion of children born out of wedlock from the throne. Conversely, lawyers and litigants frequently invoked political interest in the course of private lawsuits involving extramarital offspring. In tracing the evolution of early modern debates over illegitimacy, Bastards offers a political history of the family from the oblique perspective of those who were theoretically excluded from it. With a cast of characters ranging from royal bastards to foundlings, Bastards offers a broad exploration of the relationship between social and political change in the early modern era. It offers new insight into the changing nature of early modern French law, revealing its evolving contribution to the historical construction of both the family and the state.

Calvet's Web is a study of a circle of French antiquarians, naturalists, and bibliophiles in the period 1750-1810. By using the surviving correspondence of its members, Laurence Brockliss assembles a vivid picture of the French Republic of Letters in an era of rapid change, showing how the world of scholarship relates to the movement historians call the Enlightenment and how it is torn apart, then reconstructed, in the social and political turmoil of the French Revolution.

Jean Desmarets, later Sieur de Saint-Sorlin, was a late Renaissance `universal man': first Chancellor and founder-member of the Academie-francaise, last jester of the French royal court and star performer in ballets, novelist, playwright, poet, architect, inventor, and mystic. He was also the first man to publicize the notion of `a century of Louis XIV'. Hugh Gaston Hall's book examines that notion by looking afresh at Desmarets' vigorous career and relating the `century of Louis XIV' to its origins in the reign of Louis XIII. It questions historical misconceptions about Cardinal Richelieu's cultural policies and demonstrates the importance for the Court ballet of his patronage. Giovanni Bernini's illusionist sets and lighting effects for the Grand'Salle, which later became Moliere's theatre and the Opera, are discussed here in English for the first time. Desmarets' many high-level court offices, his family connections, and works - ballets, plays, poems, and religious and polemical pieces - reveal new and important links with contemporary institutions and preoccupations. In particular Dr Hall considers the plays in the light of exemplary eloquence, and considers the intentions of the Academie-francaise, and the Quarrel of the Imaginaires, in relation to royal policy and the Cartesian revolution.

First published to wide critical acclaim in 1992, "The Two Cities" has become an essential text for students of medieval history. For the second edition, the author has thoroughly revised each chapter, bringing the material up to date and taking the historiography of the past decade into account.
"The Two Cities" covers a colorful period from the schism between the eastern and western churches to the death of Dante. It encompasses the Crusades, the expansionist force of the Normans, major developments in the way kings, emperors and Popes exercised their powers, a great flourishing of art and architecture and the foundation of the very first universities. Running through it is the defining characteristic of the high Middle Ages--the delicate relationship between the spiritual and secular worlds. In medieval times, these two essential elements of life were seen as the two 'cities' of the title, they could not be divided but there was constant tension between them.
This survey provides all the facts and background information that students need, and is defined into straightforward thematic chapters. It makes extensive use of primary sources, and makes new trends in research accessible to students. Its fresh approach gives students the most rounded, lively and integrated view of the high Middle Ages available.

This is the first complete biography of one of the most brilliant fifteenth-century monarchs, Alfonso V of Aragon. Ryder traces Alfonso's life from his childhood in the chivalric world of Castile to the newly-acquired states of Aragon and his subsequent accession to the Aragonese throne. In addition to being a shrewd politician, Alfonso is revealed to have been an accomplished diplomat, acutely aware of the power of commerce, and one of the greatest patrons of the early Renaissance. He brought humanism to life in Southern Italy and made his court the most brilliant in Europe. Offering not only an insightful look at Alfonso's life but a vivid portrait of political and cultural life during his reign, this volume will hold special appeal for scholars and students of early modern European history, fifteenth-century Italian and Spanish history, and Renaissance studies.

In this classic work which analyzes the context in which thirty years of war and revolution wracked the European continent, the great historian Arno Mayer emphasizes the backwardness of the European economies and their political subjugation by aristocratic elites and their allies. Mayer turns upside down the vision of societies marked by modernization and forward-thrusting bourgeois and popular social classes, thereby transforming our understanding of the traumatic crises of the early twentieth century. The Verso World History Series This series provides attractive new editions of classic works of history, making landmark texts available to a new generation of readers. Covering a timespan stretching from Ancient Greece and Rome to the twentieth century, and with a global geographical range, the series will also include thematic volumes providing insights into such topics as the spread of print cultures and the history of money.

This book investigates the role of bourgeoisie society and the political developments of the nineteenth century in the peculiarities of German history. Most historians attribute German exceptionalism to the failure or absence of bourgeois revolution in German history and the failure of the bourgeoisie to conquer the pre-industrial traditions of authoritarianism. However, this study finds that there was a bourgeois revolution in Germany, though not the traditional type. This so-called silent bourgeois revolution brought about the emergence and consolidation of the capitalist system based on the sanctity and disposability of private property and on production to meet individual needs through a system of exchange dominated by the market. In this connection, this book proposes a redefinition of the concept of bourgeois revolution to denote a broader pattern of material, institutional, legal, and intellectual changes whose cumulative effect was all the more powerful for coming to be seen as natural.

Karl Barth (1886-1968) was a prolific theologian of the 20th century. Dr Gorringe places the theology in its social and political context, from World War I through to the Cold War by following Barth's intellectual development through the years that saw the rise of national socialism and the development of communism. Barth initiated a theological revolution in his two "Commentaries on Romans", begun during World War I. His attempt to deepen this during the turbulent years of the Weimar Republic made him a focus of theological resistance to Hitler after the rise to power of the Nazi party. Expelled from Germany, he continued to defy fashionable opinion by refusing to condemn communism after World War II. Drawing on a German debate largely ignored by Anglo-Saxon theology, Dr Gorringe shows that Barth responds to the events of his time not just in his occasional writings, but in his magnum opus, the "Church Dogmatics". In conclusion Dr Gorringe asks what this admittedly patriarchal author still has to contribute to contemporary theology, and in particular human liberation. This book is intended for undergraduate courses in theology and history of doctrine.

This all-encompassing guide: * Includes over 600 pages of current political, economic and social affairs of the region * Provides an impartial perspective on all the countries and territories of Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia * Combines detailed analysis by acknowledged experts, the latest statistics and invaluable directory material.

The emergence of the book was not merely an event of world historical importance, but the dawn of modernity. In this much praised work, Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin mesh together economic and technological history, sociology and anthropology, with the study of consciousness itself to root the development of printing in the changing social relations and ideological struggles of Western Europe. Now that the printed page may become a thing of the past, "The Coming of the Book" is more pertinent than ever.
The Verso World History Series This series provides attractive new editions of classic works of history, making landmark texts available to a new generation of readers. Covering a time-span stretching from Ancient Greece and Rome to the twentieth century, and with a global geographical range, the series will also include thematic volumes providing insights into such topics as the spread of print cultures and the history of money.

One of the most fascinating figures of seventeenth-century music, composer and singer Antonia Padoani Bembo (c.1640 - c.1720) was active in both Venice and Paris. Her work provides a unique cross-cultural window into the rich musical cultures of these cities, yet owing to her clandestine existence in France, for almost three centuries Bembo's life was shrouded in mystery. In this first-ever biography, Clare Fontijn unveils the enthralling and surprising story of a remarkable woman who moved in the musical, literary, and artistic circles of these European cultural centers. Rebuffed in the attempt to divorce her abusive husband, Bembo fled to Paris, leaving her children in Venice. Joining ranks with composers glorifying Louis XIV, her song charmed the Sun King and won over his court's sympathy to the cause of women. She obtained his sponsorship to live in a semi-cloistered community in Paris, where she wrote music for the spiritual and worldly needs of the royal family. Offering fine examples of sacred and secular vocal repertory for chamber settings and large ensembles, Bembo's oeuvre reveals her preoccupation with female agency through dynamic portrayals of such powerful figures as the Virgin Mary and the Duchess of Burgundy. The genres in which she worked-love song, opera, motet, cantata, trio sonata, and air-testify to the magic of her voice and to her place alongside Strozzi, Jacquet de La Guerre, and other major women composers of her time. Expertly engaging with musicology, history, and gender studies, Claire Fontijn tells the story of a brave and daring woman while providing a valuable key to a long-hidden treasure trove of music. A groundbreaking biography, Desperate Measures details the compelling life and music of a woman with courage, determination, and talent who thrived within the dictates of society and culture.

The World We Want compares the future world that Enlightenment intellectuals had hoped for with our own world at present. In what respects do the two worlds differ, and why are they so different? To what extent is and isn't our world the world they wanted, and to what extent do we today still want their world? Unlike previous philosophical critiques and defenses of the Enlightenment, the present study focuses extensively on the relevant historical and empirical record first, by examining carefully what kind of future Enlightenment intellectuals actually hoped for; second, by tracking the different legacies of their central ideals over the past two centuries.
But in addition to documenting the significant gap that still exists between Enlightenment ideals and current realities, the author also attempts to show why the ideals of the Enlightenment still elude us. What does our own experience tell us about the appropriateness of these ideals? Which Enlightenment ideals do not fit with human nature? Why is meaningful support for these ideals, particularly within the US, so weak at present? Which of the means that Enlightenment intellectuals advocated for realizing their ideals are inefficacious? Which of their ideals have devolved into distorted versions of themselves when attempts have been made to realize them? How and why, after more than two centuries, have we still failed to realize the most significant Enlightenment ideals? In short, what is dead and what is living in these ideals?

What was the role of mousike, the realm of the Muses, in Greek life? More wide-ranging in its implications than the English 'music', mousike lay at the heart of Greek culture, and was often indeed synonymous with culture. In its commonest form, it represented for the Greeks a seamless complex of music, poetic word, and physical movement, encompassing a vast array of performances - from small-scale entertainment in the private home to elaborate performances involving the entire community. Yet the history of the field, particularly in anglophone scholarship, has been hitherto narrowly conceived, and the broader cultural significance of mousike largely ignored. Focusing mainly on classical Athens these new and specially commissioned essays analyse the theory and practice of musical performance in a variety of social contexts and demonstrate the centrality of mousike to the values and ideology of the polis. The so-called 'new musical revolution' in late fifth-century Athens receives serious treatment in this volume for the first time. A major theme of the book is the musical and mousike dimension of Greek religion, rarely analysed in its own right. The ethical and philosophical aspects of Athenian mousike are another central concern, with the figure of the dancing philosopher as an emblem of music's role in intellectual life. The book as a whole provides an integrated cultural analysis of central aspects of Greek mousike, which will be of interest to classical scholars, to cultural historians, and to anyone concerned with understanding the power of music as a cultural phenomenon.

Although much has been written about Lyon during the Great Terror of 1793-1794, this is the first detailed, integrated study of the four turbulent years which left France's second city marked out for savage repression by the Jacobin Republic. Taking account of recent research, the author emphasizes the interaction of social tensions with political rivalries in the succession of crises which set Lyon on a collision course with the national government. Deep social divisions had a close bearing on the two most notable features of the city's revolutionary history: the precocious emergence of a popular democratic movement, and the violent radicalism of the Lyonnais Jacobins. Through close study of these factors, the book contributes to the history of Jacobinism and political participation during the first European democratic revolution. It also throws light on Lyon's part in the `federalist' revolt against Jacobinism in 1793 and on the causes of the Great Terror. A postscript surveys the impact of the Terror on the defeated city.

The Cambridge History of Religion in the Classical World provides a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the religions of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean world in the third millennium BCE to the fourth century BCE.

This Handbook re-examines the concept of early modern history in a European and global context. The term 'early modern' has been familiar, especially in Anglophone scholarship, for four decades and is securely established in teaching, research, and scholarly publishing. More recently, however, the unity implied in the notion has fragmented, while the usefulness and even the validity of the term, and the historical periodisation which it incorporates, have been questioned. The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, 1350-1750 provides an account of the development of the subject during the past half-century, but primarily offers an integrated and comprehensive survey of present knowledge, together with some suggestions as to how the field is developing. It aims both to interrogate the notion of 'early modernity' itself and to survey early modern Europe as an established field of study. The overriding aim will be to establish that 'early modern' is not simply a chronological label but possesses a substantive integrity. Volume II is devoted to 'Cultures and Power', opening with chapters on philosophy, science, art and architecture, music, and the Enlightenment. Subsequent sections examine 'Europe beyond Europe', with the transformation of contact with other continents during the first global age, and military and political developments, notably the expansion of state power.

The Weimar period, which extended from 1919 to 1933, was a time of political violence, economic crisis, generational and gender tension, and cultural experiment and change in Germany. Despite these major issues, the Republic is often treated only as a preface to the study of the rise of Fascism. This text seeks to restore the balance, exploring the Weimar period in its own right. Amongst the topics discussed are: Weimar as the avant-garde artistic centre of Europe in the 1920s when many cultural figures were politically engaged on both sides of the political spectrum; Weimar as a German state racked by conflict over questions of morality versus ideas of greater sexual freedom for women, homosexual rights, abortion and birth control; the struggle to win the hearts and minds of German youth, a struggle won decisively by the right-wing; and Weimar as the first German state in which women played a significant political role. -- .

This Handbook re-examines the concept of early modern history in a European and global context. The term 'early modern' has been familiar, especially in Anglophone scholarship, for four decades and is securely established in teaching, research, and scholarly publishing. More recently, however, the unity implied in the notion has fragmented, while the usefulness and even the validity of the term, and the historical periodisation which it incorporates, have been questioned. The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, 1350-1750 provides an account of the development of the subject during the past half-century, but primarily offers an integrated and comprehensive survey of present knowledge, together with some suggestions as to how the field is developing. It aims both to interrogate the notion of 'early modernity' itself and to survey early modern Europe as an established field of study. The overriding aim will be to establish that 'early modern' is not simply a chronological label but possesses a substantive integrity. Volume I examines 'Peoples and Place', assessing structural factors such as climate, printing and the revolution in information, social and economic developments, and religion, including chapters on Orthodoxy, Judaism and Islam.

Written by twelve expert historians, this well-illustrated account of the great confrontations of medieval Europe (c.700-1500) examines major developments in the methods of warfare from the time of Charlemagne through to the end of the Crusades. The result is a rich and fascinating history of a culture steeped in martial ideas, whose aristocrats were also warriors in a society organized by its desire to wage war.

This is a profoundly original and entertaining history of France, from the first century bc to the present day, based on countless new discoveries and thirty years of exploring France on foot, by bicycle and in the library. Beginning with the Roman army's first recorded encounter with the Gauls and ending with the gilet jaunes protests in the era of Emmanuel Macron, each chapter is an adventure in its own right. Along the way, readers will find the usual faces, events and themes of French history - Louis XIV, the French Revolution, the French Resistance, the Tour de France - but all presented in a shining new light. Graham Robb's France: An Adventure History does not offer a standard dry list of facts and dates, but a panorama of France, teeming with characters, full of stories, journeys and coincidences, giving readers a thrilling sense of discovery and enlightenment. It is a vivid, living history of one of the world's most fascinating nations by a ceaselessly entertaining writer in complete command of subject and style.

The essays in this Handbook, written by an international team of distinguished scholars, combine to explore the way in which fascism is understood by contemporary scholarship, as well as pointing to areas of continuing dispute and discussion.
From a focus on Italy as, chronologically at least, the 'first Fascist nation', the contributors cover a wide range of countries, from Nazi Germany and the comparison with Soviet Communism to fascism in Yugoslavia and its successor states. The book also examines the roots of fascism before 1914 and its survival, whether in practice or in memory, after 1945. The analysis looks at both fascist ideas and practice, and at the often uneasy relationship between the two.
The book is not designed to provide any final answers to the fascist problem and no quick definition emerges from its pages. Readers will rather find there historical debate. On appropriate occasions, the authors disagree with each other and have not been forced into any artificial "consensus," offering readers the chance to engage with the debates over a phenomenon that, more than any other single factor, led humankind into the catastrophe of the Second World War.