Special EURO10,- discount for our ABG readers: now EURO24,50 instead of EURO34,50 Performing the Past is an investigation of the multiple social and culture practices through which Europeans have negotiated the space between their history and their memory over the past 200 years. In museums, in opera houses, in the streets, in the schools, in theatres, in films, on the internet and beyond, narratives about the past circulate today at a dizzying speed. Producing and selling them is big business; if the past is indeed a foreign country, there are tens of thousands of tourist agents, guides, and pundits around to help us on our way, for a fee, to be sure.This collection of essays by renowned scholars from, among others, Yale, Columbia, Amsterdam Oxford, Cambridge, New York University and the European University Institute in Florence, is essential reading for anyone interested in today's memory boom. Drawing on different national and disciplinary traditions, the authors ultimately engage us with the ways in which Europeans continue a venerable tradition of finding out who they are, and where they are going, by performing the past.

Antoine Prost's contributions to French history have enabled us to understand the failure of fascism in France and why the Republic survived the humiliation of occupation and collaboration in the Second World War. He is the pre-eminent historian of civil society in France. For the first time his seminal articles have been translated into English and collected in this single volume. Beginning with his classic account of war memorials, through his pioneering study of the people of a popular quarter of Paris in 1936, and of the troubled history of commemorating the Algerian war, this book expertly takes us through republican representations of war and peace, urban spaces and social identity, and discourse and social conflict in republican France. Amongst this range of topics, Prost considers the notion of social class and deference, the multiple uses of myth, the secularization of religious imagery, the centrality of primary schools in French political culture, and insults as staples of French political rhetoric. Included here are his famous essays 'Verdun' and 'War Memorials of the Great War', which have been hailed as indispensable additions to the study of European cultural history. Also notable is his fascinating investigation of rites de passage in Orleans, which artfully reveals how complex and semiologically rich rites de passage can be.
This book is essential reading for anyone wishing to gain a firm understanding of the history of nineteenth and twentieth century France and of the work of one of the most influential cultural historians of our day.

This is a masterful volume on remembrance and war in the twentieth century. Jay Winter locates the fascination with the subject of memory within a long-term trajectory that focuses on the Great War. Images, languages, and practices that appeared during and after the two world wars focused on the need to acknowledge the victims of war and shaped the ways in which future conflicts were imagined and remembered. At the core of the "memory boom" is an array of collective meditations on war and the victims of war, Winter says.
The book begins by tracing the origins of contemporary interest in memory, then describes practices of remembrance that have linked history and memory, particularly in the first half of the twentieth century. The author also considers "theaters of memory"--film, television, museums, and war crimes trials in which the past is seen through public representations of memories. The book concludes with reflections on the significance of these practices for the cultural history of the twentieth century as a whole.

The world's population has grown by five billion people over the past century, an astounding 300 percent increase. Yet it is actually the decline in family size and population growth that is the issue attracting greatest concern in many countries. This eye-opening book looks at demographic trends in Europe, North America, and Asia-areas that now have low fertility rates-and argues that there is an essential yet often neglected political dimension to a full assessment of these trends. Political decisions that promote or discourage marriage and childbearing, facilitate or discourage contraception and abortion, and stimulate or restrain immigration all have played significant roles in recent trends.

This set of essays introduces readers to new historical research on the creation of the new order in East-Central Europe in the period immediately following 1918. The book offers insights into the political, diplomatic, military, economic and cultural conditions out of which the New Europe was born. Experts from various countries take into account three perspectives. They give equal attention to both the Western and Eastern fronts; they recognise that on 11 November 1918, the War ended only on the Western front and violence continued in multiple forms over the next five years; and they show how state-building after 1918 in Central and Eastern Europe was marked by a mixture of innovation and instability. Thus, the volume focuses on three kinds of narratives: those related to conflicts and violence, those related to the recasting of civil life in new structures and institutions, and those related to remembrance and representations of these years in the public sphere. Taking a step towards writing a fully European history of the Great War and its aftermath, the volume offers an original approach to this decisive period in 20th-century European history.

Through the life of one extraordinary man, this biography reveals what the term human rights meant to the men and women who endured two world wars, and how this major political and intellectual movement ultimately inspired and enshrined the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Rene Cassin was a man of his generation, committed to moving from war to peace through international law, and whose work won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1968. His life crossed all the major events of the first seventy years of the twentieth century, and illustrates the hopes, aspirations, failures and achievements of an entire generation. It shows how today's human rights regimes emerged from the First World War as a pacifist response to that catastrophe and how, after 1945, human rights became a way to go beyond the dangers of absolute state sovereignty, helping to create today's European project.

This is the second volume of a pioneering two-volume comparative history of the capital cities of Britain, France and Germany during the Great War. Leading historians explore these wartime cities, from the railway stations where newcomers took on new identities to the streets they surveyed and the pubs, cafes and theatres they frequented, and examine notions of identity, the sites and rituals of city life, and wartime civic and popular culture. This volume, first published in 2007, offers a comparative cultural history of London, Paris and Berlin and reveals the great affinities and similarities between cities on both sides of the line. It shows the transnational character of metropolitan life and the different cultural resources which the men and women of these cities drew upon during 1500 days of war. The practices of metropolitan life go well beyond national histories and this volume suggests the outlines of a fully European history of the Great War.

Long before Rwanda and Bosnia and the Holocaust, the first genocide of the twentieth century occurred in Turkish Armenia in 1915. The essays in this collection examine how Armenians learned of this catastrophe and tried to help its victims. Knowledge and compassion, however, were not enough to stop the killings, and a terrible precedent was born in 1915. The Armenian genocide has haunted the U.S. and other Western countries throughout the twentieth century.

This set of essays introduces readers to new historical research on the creation of the new order in East-Central Europe in the period immediately following 1918. The book offers insights into the political, diplomatic, military, economic and cultural conditions out of which the New Europe was born. Experts from various countries take into account three perspectives. They give equal attention to both the Western and Eastern fronts; they recognise that on 11 November 1918, the War ended only on the Western front and violence continued in multiple forms over the next five years; and they show how state-building after 1918 in Central and Eastern Europe was marked by a mixture of innovation and instability. Thus, the volume focuses on three kinds of narratives: those related to conflicts and violence, those related to the recasting of civil life in new structures and institutions, and those related to remembrance and representations of these years in the public sphere. Taking a step towards writing a fully European history of the Great War and its aftermath, the volume offers an original approach to this decisive period in 20th-century European history.

This collection of essays looks at cultural transfers and comparisons between English and French intellectuals. The contributions, which have been written by scholars from a variety of disciplines, address a broad range of issues, including the international circulation of economic, political and literary ideas, the translation and reception of authors in various contexts, and the contest for 'Englishness' or 'Frenchness' both at home and abroad. The Anglo-French relationship is used here as an entry into the conflicting demands that intellectual life should be trans-national and cosmopolitan, and that intellectuals should be the representatives of the national mind. The conversations, disputes and silences between English and French intellectuals were once believed to be at the centre of the international republic of letters. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, the rise of new cultural powers re-shaped Anglo-French intellectual attitudes. Anglo-French attitudes will be read by scholars working in the areas of cultural history, intellectual history, gender studies, the social history of intellectuals, history of science, and literature. -- .

Beyond Memory: Silence and the Aesthetics of Remembrance analyses the intricate connections between silence, acts of remembrance and acts of forgetting, and relates the topic of silence to the international research field of Cultural Memory Studies. It engages with the most recent work in the field by viewing silence as a remedy to the traditionally binary approach to our understanding of remembering and forgetting. The international team of contributors examine case studies from colonialism, war, politics and slavery from across the globe, as well as drawing examples from literature, philosophy and sites of memory to draw three main conclusions. Firstly, that the relationship between remembering and forgetting is relational rather than 'hermetic', and the space between the two is often occupied by silence. Secondly, silence is a force in itself, capable of stimulating more or less remembrance. Finally, that silence is a necessary and key element in the interaction between the human mind and the 'outer world', and enables people to challenge their understanding of art, music, literature, history and memory. With an introduction by the editors discussing Memory Studies, and concluding remarks by Astrid Erll, this collection demonstrates that acceptance and consideration of silence as having both a performative and aesthetic dimension is an essential component of history and memory studies.

Volume 3 of The Cambridge History of the First World War explores the social and cultural history of the war and considers the role of civil society throughout the conflict; that is to say those institutions and practices outside the state through which the war effort was waged. Drawing on twenty-five years of historical scholarship, it sheds new light on culturally significant issues such as how families and medical authorities adapted to the challenges of war and the shift that occurred in gender roles and behaviour that would subsequently reshape society. Adopting a transnational approach, this volume surveys the war's treatment of populations at risk, including refugees, minorities and internees, to show the full extent of the disaster of war and, with it, the stubborn survival of irrational kindness and the generosity of spirit that persisted amidst the bitterness at the heart of warfare, with all its contradictions and enduring legacies. This volume concludes with a reckoning of the costs and consequences of The Great War.

This Element is a user's guide to the cultural history of warfare since 1914. It provides summaries of the basic questions historians have posed in what is now a truly global field of research. It is divided into three parts. The first provides an introduction to the cultural history of the state, focusing on the institutions of violence, both political and military, as well as introducing the key concept of the civilianization of war. The second part addresses civil society at war. It asks the question as to how do men and women try to make sense and attach meaning to the violence and cruelty of war. It also explores commemoration, religious life, humanitarianism, painting, cinema and the visual arts, and war literature and testimony. The third part explores the family, gender and migration in wartime, and shows how modern war continues to transform the world in which we live today.

This revised and updated edition of The Great War in History provides the first survey of historical interpretations of the Great War from 1914 to 2020. It demonstrates how the history of the Great War has now gone global, and how the internet revolution has affected the way we understand the conflict. Jay Winter and Antoine Prost assess not only diplomatic and military studies but also the social and cultural interpretations of the war across academic and popular history, family history, and public history, including at museums, on the stage, on screen, in art, and at sites of memory. They provide a fascinating case study of the practice of history and the first survey of the ways in which the Centenary deepened and deflected both public and professional interpretations of the war. This will be essential reading for scholars and students in history, war studies, European history and international relations.

What we know of war is always mediated knowledge and feeling. We need lenses to filter out some of its blinding, terrifying light. These lenses are not fixed; they change over time, and Jay Winter's panoramic history of war and memory offers an unprecedented study of transformations in our imaginings of war, from 1914 to the present. He reveals the ways in which different creative arts have framed our meditations on war, from painting and sculpture to photography, film and poetry, and ultimately to silence, as a language of memory in its own right. He shows how these highly mediated images of war, in turn, circulate through language to constitute our 'cultural memory' of war. This is a major contribution to our understanding of the diverse ways in which men and women have wrestled with the intractable task of conveying what twentieth-century wars meant to them and mean to us.

Volume 3 of The Cambridge History of the First World War explores the social and cultural history of the war and considers the role of civil society throughout the conflict; that is to say those institutions and practices outside the state through which the war effort was waged. Drawing on 25 years of historical scholarship, it sheds new light on culturally significant issues such as how families and medical authorities adapted to the challenges of war and the shift that occurred in gender roles and behaviour that would subsequently reshape society. Adopting a transnational approach, this volume surveys the war's treatment of populations at risk, including refugees, minorities and internees, to show the full extent of the disaster of war and, with it, the stubborn survival of irrational kindness and the generosity of spirit that persisted amidst the bitterness at the heart of warfare, with all its contradictions and enduring legacies.

This first volume of The Cambridge History of the First World War provides a comprehensive account of the war's military history. An international team of leading historians charts how a war made possible by globalization and imperial expansion unfolded into catastrophe, growing year by year in scale and destructive power far beyond that which anyone had anticipated in 1914. Adopting a global perspective, the volume analyses the spatial impact of the war and the subsequent ripple effects that occurred both regionally and across the world. It explores how imperial powers devoted vast reserves of manpower and material to their war efforts and how, by doing so, they changed the political landscape of the world order. It also charts the moral, political and legal implications of the changing character of war and, in particular, the collapse of the distinction between civilian and military targets.

Before Rwanda and Bosnia, and before the Holocaust, the first genocide of the twentieth century happened in Turkish Armenia in 1915, when approximately one million people were killed. This volume is an account of the American response to this atrocity. The first part sets up the framework for understanding the genocide: Sir Martin Gilbert, Vahakn Dadrian and Jay Winter provide an analytical setting for nine scholarly essays examining how Americans learned of this catastrophe and how they tried to help its victims. Knowledge and compassion, though, were not enough to stop the killings. A terrible precedent was born in 1915, one which has come to haunt the United States and other Western countries throughout the twentieth century and beyond. To read the essays in this volume is chastening: the dilemmas Americans faced when confronting evil on an unprecedented scale are not very different from the dilemmas we face today.

This is the second volume of a pioneering two-volume comparative history of the capital cities of Britain, France and Germany during the Great War. Leading historians explore these wartime cities, from the railway stations where newcomers took on new identities to the streets they surveyed and the pubs, cafes and theatres they frequented, and examine notions of identity, the sites and rituals of city life, and wartime civic and popular culture. This volume, first published in 2007, offers a comparative cultural history of London, Paris and Berlin and reveals the great affinities and similarities between cities on both sides of the line. It shows the transnational character of metropolitan life and the different cultural resources which the men and women of these cities drew upon during 1500 days of war. The practices of metropolitan life go well beyond national histories and this volume suggests the outlines of a fully European history of the Great War.

Volume 2 of The Cambridge History of the First World War offers a history of the war from a predominantly political angle and concerns itself with the story of the state. It explores the multifaceted history of state power and highlights the ways in which different political systems responded to, and were deformed by, the near-unbearable pressures of war. Every state involved faced issues of military-civilian relations, parliamentary reviews of military policy, and the growth of war economies; and yet their particular form and significance varied in every national case. Written by a global team of historical experts, this volume sets new standards in the political history of the waging of war in an authoritative new narrative which addresses problems of logistics, morale, innovation in tactics and weapons systems, the use and abuse of science; all of which were ubiquitous during the conflict.

In a fully comparative, European context, this book offers a unique examination of the effects of the First World War on family life. The contributory essays, written by sixteen scholars in the field, focus primarily on the social, economic and ideological repercussions of the war. After a detailed study of living standards in wartime Europe, attention then turns to the ways in which the war affected women’s work and how it affected the state’s attitude to the family and encouraged the pro-natalist movements. The final section also considers broader speculations about the impact of war on family forms and alternative social affiliations. In general, the book highlights the fundamental dialectic between the effects of the First World War in disturbing family life and in releasing social and political forces, which helped to restore family life in its more traditional forms.

Drawing on material from Europe, America and the Middle East, leading scholars of twentieth century history address the issue of how wars, and the loss of life in wars, have been remembered collectively in the aftermath of conflicts such as the First and Second World Wars, the Spanish Civil War and the Algerian War. However, rather than focus on whole societies or ruling groups alone, this volume adopts a "social agency" approach to highlight the behavior of small groups and individuals who do the work of remembrance.

The thirteen essays in this book reflect the dual character of writing about the history of the British working class. The first section focuses on the outlook, organization, and policies of the Labour movement. The second section is concerned with central aspects of the social history of the working class. Together, these essays provide striking evidence of the ways in which the experience of class has pervaded virtually every corner of this nation's public life. They also show that the mixed political record of organized Labour, its hesitations and failures as well as its struggles and successes, cannot be understood without a full appreciation of the collective and individual lives of working people outside the political arena.

This ambitious volume marks a huge step in our understanding of the social history of the Great War. The authors have compiled a vast array of data and have drawn an original and coherent portrait of European cities at war. Contributors from several fields bring an interdisciplinary approach to the book, and represent the best of recent scholarship. One of the few truly comparative works on the Great War, this volume will transform social studies of the conflict and is likely to become a model for research.