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This volume investigates competing ideas, images, and stereotypes
of a European ‘East’, exploring its role in defining European
and national conceptions of self and other since the eighteenth
century. Through a set of original case studies, this collection
explores the intersection between discourses about a more distant,
exotic, or colonial ‘Orient’ with a more immediate ‘East’.
The book considers this shifting, imaginary border from different
points of view and demonstrates that the location, definition, and
character of the ‘East’, often associated with socio-economic
backwardness and other unfavourable attributes, depended on
historical circumstances, political preferences, cultural
assumptions, and geography. Spanning two centuries, this study
analyses the ways that changing ideals and persistent clichéd
attitudes have shaped the conversation about and interpretations of
Eastern Europe. Europe and the East will be essential reading for
anyone interested in images and ideas of Europe, European identity,
and conceptions of the ‘East’ in intellectual and cultural
history.
This book looks at the representations of modern war by analysing
texts and examining the ways in which authors relate to the
atrocious horrors of war. Rejecting the assumption that violence is
simply a denial of reason or, at best, a pathological form of
collective sadism, this book considers it 'a cultural act' that
needs to be understood as underpinned by a series of shared and
accepted norms and values stemming from a society at a given moment
of its history and shaped by its language. Traditional vocabulary
and language seem inadequate to describe soldiers' experience of
modern warfare. The problem for writers is to depict and render
intelligible a dramatically unprecedented reality through recourse
to something familiar. For some historians and literary critics,
the absurdity of the First World War has shaped our ironic and
disenchanted reading of the entire twentieth century. Yet these
ways of coping with the urge to communicate inexpressible feelings
and emotions in most cases are not sufficient to overcome the
incoherence of the sentiments felt and the events witnessed. The
contributors attempt to address the questions and issues that are
posed by the highly ambiguous views, texts, and representations
examined in this volume. This book was originally published as a
special issue of the journal European Review of History: Revue
Europeenne d'Histoire.
The period between 1917 and 1957, starting with the birth of the
USSR and the American intervention in the First World War and
ending with the Treaty of Rome, is of the utmost importance for
contextualizing and understanding the intellectual origins of the
European Community. During this time of 'crisis,' many
contemporaries, especially intellectuals, felt they faced a
momentous decision which could bring about a radically different
future. The understanding of what Europe was and what it should be
was questioned in a profound way, forcing Europeans to react. The
idea of a specifically European unity finally became, at least for
some, a feasible project, not only to avoid another war but to
avoid the destruction of the idea of European unity. This volume
reassesses the relationship between ideas of Europe and the
European project and reconsiders the impact of long and short-term
political transformations on assumptions about the continent's
scope, nature, role and significance.
The period between 1917 and 1957, starting with the birth of the
USSR and the American intervention in the First World War and
ending with the Treaty of Rome, is of the utmost importance for
contextualizing and understanding the intellectual origins of the
European Community. During this time of 'crisis,' many
contemporaries, especially intellectuals, felt they faced a
momentous decision which could bring about a radically different
future. The understanding of what Europe was and what it should be
was questioned in a profound way, forcing Europeans to react. The
idea of a specifically European unity finally became, at least for
some, a feasible project, not only to avoid another war but to
avoid the destruction of the idea of European unity. This volume
reassesses the relationship between ideas of Europe and the
European project and reconsiders the impact of long and short-term
political transformations on assumptions about the continent's
scope, nature, role and significance.
How can we understand what caused World War I? What role did
Germany play? This book encourages us to re-think the events that
led to global conflict in 1914.Historians in recent years have
argued that German leaders acted defensively or pre-emptively in
1914, conscious of the Reich's deteriorating military and
diplomatic position. Germany and the Causes of the First World War
challenges such interpretations, placing new emphasis on the idea
that the Reich Chancellor, the German Foreign Office and the Great
General Staff were confident that they could win a continental war.
This belief in Germany's superiority derived primarily from an
assumption of French decline and Russian weakness throughout the
period between the turn of the century and the eve of the First
World War. Accordingly, Wilhelmine policy-makers pursued offensive
policies - at the risk of war at important junctures during the
1900s and 1910s.The author analyses the stereotyping of enemy
states, representations of war in peacetime, and conceptualizations
of international relations. He uncovers the complex role of ruling
elites, political parties, big business and the press, and contends
that the decade before the First World War witnessed some critical
changes in German foreign policy. By the time of the July crisis of
1914, for example, the perception of enemies had altered, with
Russia - the traditional bugbear of the German centre and left -
becoming the principal opponent of the Reich. Under these changed
conditions, German leaders could now pursue their strategy of
brinkmanship, using war as an instrument of policy, to its logical
conclusion.
How can we understand what caused World War I? What role did
Germany play? This book encourages us to re-think the events that
led to global conflict in 1914.Historians in recent years have
argued that German leaders acted defensively or pre-emptively in
1914, conscious of the Reich's deteriorating military and
diplomatic position. Germany and the Causes of the First World War
challenges such interpretations, placing new emphasis on the idea
that the Reich Chancellor, the German Foreign Office and the Great
General Staff were confident that they could win a continental war.
This belief in Germany's superiority derived primarily from an
assumption of French decline and Russian weakness throughout the
period between the turn of the century and the eve of the First
World War. Accordingly, Wilhelmine policy-makers pursued offensive
policies - at the risk of war at important junctures during the
1900s and 1910s.The author analyses the stereotyping of enemy
states, representations of war in peacetime, and conceptualizations
of international relations. He uncovers the complex role of ruling
elites, political parties, big business and the press, and contends
that the decade before the First World War witnessed some critical
changes in German foreign policy. By the time of the July crisis of
1914, for example, the perception of enemies had altered, with
Russia - the traditional bugbear of the German centre and left -
becoming the principal opponent of the Reich. Under these changed
conditions, German leaders could now pursue their strategy of
brinkmanship, using war as an instrument of policy, to its logical
conclusion.
The German Empire before 1914 had the fastest growing economy in
Europe and was the strongest military power in the world. Yet it
appeared, from a reading of many contemporaries' accounts, to be
lagging behind other nation-states and to be losing the race to
divide up the rest of the globe. This book is an ambitious
re-assessment of how Wilhelmine Germans conceived of themselves and
the German Empire's place in the world in the lead-up to the First
World War. Mark Hewitson re-examines the varying forms of national
identification, allegiance and politics following the creation and
consolidation of a German nation-state in light of contemporary
debates about modernity, race, industrialization, colonialism and
military power. Despite the new claims being made for the
importance of empire to Germany's development, he reveals that the
majority of transnational networks and contemporaries' interactions
and horizons remained intra-European or transatlantic rather than
truly global.
Mark Hewitson reassesses the relationship between politics and the
nation during a crucial period in order to answer the question of
when, how and why the process of unification began in Germany. He
focuses on how the national question was articulated in the public
sphere by the press, political writers and key political
organizations.
This volume analyses and compares different forms of nationalism
across a range of European countries and regions during the long
nineteenth century. It aims to put detailed studies of nationalist
politics and thought, which have proliferated over the last ten
years or so, into a wider European context. By means of such
contextualization, together with new and systematic comparisons,
What is a Nation? Europe 1789-1914 reassesses the arguments put
forward in the principal works on nationalism as a whole, many of
which pre-date the proliferation of case studies in the 1990s and
which, as a consequence, make only inadequate reference to the
national histories of European states. The study reconsiders
whether the distinction between civic and ethnic identities and
politics in Europe has been overstated and whether it needs to be
replaced altogether by a new set of concepts or types. What is a
Nation? explores the relationship between this and other
typologies, relating them to complex processes of
industrialization, increasing state intervention, secularization,
democratization and urbanization. Debates about citizenship,
political economy, liberal institutions, socialism, empire, changes
in the states system, Darwinism, high and popular culture,
Romanticism and Christianity all affected - and were affected by -
discussion of nationhood and nationalist politics. The volume
investigates the significance of such controversies and
institutional changes for the history of modern nationalism, as it
was defined in diverse European countries and regions during the
long nineteenth century. By placing particular nineteenth-century
nationalist movements and nation-building in a broader comparative
context, prominent historians of particular European states give an
original and authoritative reassessment, designed to appeal to
students and academic readers alike, of one of the most contentious
topics of the modern period.
This original study examines the interrelationship between the construction of national identity and the transformation of political thought in Germany before the First World War. By analysing Wilhelmine depictions of the French Third Republic, Hewitson revises accepted interpretations of German politics and nationalism.
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