A History of Modern Europe: From 1815 to the Present

Preface: The Dilemmas and Rewards of a Concise Historical Overview xiv
List of Maps xix
List of Figures xx

Acknowledgments xxii
Introduction: What Is Europe? 1
“Christendom” and Europe 2
Geographical Definitions 3
Europe’s Unusual Seas: The Mediterranean and Baltic 6
Europe’s Unusual Races 7
European Languages 8
Europe’s Religious Mixes 9
The Differing Rates of Growth in Europe’s Regions 10
Notes to the Reader 12
A Few Words about the Further Reading Sections 12
National and Thematic Overviews 13
Biographies 15
Historiography and Bibliography 15
Further Reading (to the Introduction) 16

Part I Romanticism and Revolt: The Seedtime of Modern Ideologies, 1815–40 17
____1 The Legacy of the French Revolution 19
________France’s Preeminence 19
________The Changes Made by the Revolution 20
________The Revolutionary Mystique 20
________The Opening Stages of the Revolution 21
________The Causes of the Revolution: Precedents 22
________The Ambiguous Ideal of Equality 23
________Civil Equality for Jews? 24
________The Many Meanings of Fraternity 24
________The Revolution: Progressive or Regressive? 25
________Further Reading 28
____2 The Congress of Vienna and Post-Napoleonic Europe: 1815–30 29
________A Uniquely European Meeting 29
________The Major Powers: Goals and Compromises 32
________Napoleon Returns: The Hundred Days 34
________The Issue of Poland 35
________Other Territorial Settlements 37
________Accomplishments of the Congress: Short-Term, Long-Term 39
________The Repressive Years in Britain 40
________Metternich’s Repressions 41
________Further Reading 42
____3 The Engines of Change 43
________Conceptualizing Historical Change 43
________The Industrial Revolution and Its Preconditions 44
________The British Model of Industrialization 45
________Industrialization in Other Countries 47
________Resistance to Industrialization 50
________Technological Innovation and Industrialization 50
________The Implications of Industrial Change 53
________Further Reading 54
____4 The Seedtime of Ideology: A Century of “Questions” 55
________Europe’s Major “Questions” and Its Belief in Progress 56
________The Elusive Genesis and Evolution of Europe’s Isms 56
________Conservatism, Liberalism, Socialism 57
________Edmund Burke: The Conservative Tradition and Its Opponents 59
________Feminism and the Woman Question 60
________The Evolution of Liberal Theory and Practice: Radicalism and Utilitarianism 61
________Classical Liberalism 62
________Mill on Socialism and Feminism 63
________Fourier’s Fantastic but “Scientific” Vision of Socialism 65
________The “Practical” Socialist, Robert Owen 66
________Saint-Simon, Prophet of Modernism 67
________The Communist Tradition 68
________Romanticism and Classicism 69
________Further Reading 70

Part II From the 1820s to the Great Depression of the 1870s and 1880s 71
____5 Liberal Struggles, Victories, Dilemmas, Defeats 75
________The Revolution of 1830 in France 76
________Unrest in the 1830s 77
________Agitation to Repeal the Corn Laws 80
________The Great Hunger in Ireland 81
________The Darker Vision of Thomas Malthus 83
________Again, Revolution in France 84
________Reform in Britain: The Chartist Movement 85
________Revolutions of 1848 and the End of Metternich’s Europe 85
________The Republican Provisional Government and the “National Workshops” 86
________Rising Class Conflict and the “June Days” 87
________The National Question Outside France 87
________Growing Divisions among the Revolutionaries 88
________Further Reading 90
____6 Nationalism and National Unification 92
________Problems of Definition 92
________Ideas of German Nationality 95
________People, Language, and State: Herder and Hegel 96
________Slavic Identities 97
________Southern Europe: Latin Identities 98
________New Power Relations in Europe: The Wars of Mid-century 99
________The Unification of Italy 101
________The Unification of Germany 103
________Further Reading 105
____7 Mid-century Consolidation, Modernization: Austria, Russia, France 106
________The Habsburg Empire 106
________The Russian Empire 110
________France’s Second Empire 113
________Further Reading 116
________8 Optimism, Progress, Science: From the 1850s to 1871 117
________The Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune 117
________The Classic Age of British Liberalism 121
________Britain’s Social Peace, Political Stability, and Economic Productivity 122
________Liberalism, Population Growth, and Democracy 123
________The Irish Question 124
________Darwin and Darwinism 125
________Further Reading 129

Part III From Depression to World War: The 1870s to 1914 131
____9 The Depressed and Chastened 1870s and 1880s 133
________The Spread of Marxism: Controversies about the Meaning of Marxism 133
________The Development of Social Darwinism and Evolutionary Thinking 137
________Russian Revolutionary Movements in the 1870s and 1880s 138
________The Appearance of Modern Racial-Political Antisemitism 140
________Antisemitism in Germany 143
________The Weakness of Antisemitism in Italy and Britain 144
________Antisemitism in France: Renan and the Scandals of the 1880s 144
________Further Reading 146
____10 Germany and Russia in the Belle Epoque: 1890–1914 147
________A Rising Germany 148
________Liberalism Challenged, Mass Politics, and the Second Industrial Revolution 148
________The Influence of Friedrich Nietzsche 150
________New Aspects of the German Question 151
________The Evolution of German Social Democracy: The Revisionist Controversy 153
________Russia under Nicholas II 155
________The Appeals of Marxism in Russia and the Emergence of Leninism 156
________The Russo-Japanese War, 1904–5 158
________Revolution and Reaction in Russia, 1905–14 159
________Further Reading 161
____11 France and Britain in the Belle Epoque: 1890–1914 162
________France in Turmoil 162
________The Dreyfus Affair 164
________French Socialism 167
________Edwardian Britain 168
________The Boer War 170
________The Woman Question 173
________Further Reading 175
____12 The Origins of World War I 176
________Growing International Anarchy, Hypernationalism, Polarization of Alliances 177
________An Inevitable War? 178
________The Role of Personality and Chance 179
________The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand 180
________From Euphoria to Stalemate Warfare 183
________Further Reading 185

Part IV The European Civil War: 1914 – 43 187
____13 World War I: 1914 –18 189
________Stalemate Warfare in the West and Expansion in the East 189
________1916: The Battles at Verdun and the Somme 192
________1917: A Turning Point 193
________Autumn 1917 to Autumn 1918: The Last Year of War and Germany’s Collapse 196
________November 1918: The Balance Sheet of War 197
________Further Reading 198
____14 Revolution in Russia: 1917–21 199
________A Proletarian Revolution? 199
________The March (February) Revolution: Provisional Government and Soviets 200
________Lenin’s Return: The Paradoxes of Bolshevik Theory and Practice 204
________The Mechanics of the Bolshevik Seizure of Power 206
________The Constituent Assembly 207
________Civil War in Russia: The Red Terror 208
________The Failure of Revolution in the West 210
________What “Really Happened” in Russia between November 1917 and March 1921? 212
________Further Reading 212
____15 The Paris Peace Settlement 214
________The Settlements of 1815 and 1919 Compared; the Issue of German Guilt 214
________Popular Pressures, “New Diplomacy,” Russia’s Isolation 217
________Wilson’s Role: The Fourteen Points 217
________The Successor States and the Issue of Self-Determination 218
________The Creation of New Nation-States: Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia 219
________Dilemmas and Contradictions of Ethnic-Linguistic States 220
________Minority Treaties 221
________League of Nations Mandates 222
________Further Reading 224
____16 The Dilemmas of Liberal Democracy in the 1920s 225
________Containing Germany: The Weakness of the League of Nations, 1919–29 226
________The Dilemmas of American Leadership: Isolationism 227
________Reactionary Trends and the Woman Question 228
________The Negative Impact of the Versailles Treaty: Undermining German Democracy 230
________The Evolution of Liberal Democracy in Germany 231
________Developments in the Third Republic 232
________The Brief Rule of the British Labour Party 234
________The Stock-Market Crash, November 1929: The Beginning of the Great Depression 235
________Further Reading 236
____17 Stalinist Russia and International Communism 237
________Stalin and Stalinism 237
________The 1920s: Lingering Dilemmas and the Industrialization Debate 238
________Stalin’s Victory in the Struggle for Power 240
________Stalin and the Jewish Question in the Bolshevik Party 242
________Collectivization and the Five-Year Plan 244
________The Blood Purges 247
________1939: The Balance Sheet: Paradoxes and Imponderables 249
________Further Reading 250
____18 The Rise of Fascism and Nazism: 1919–39 251
________The Origins of Italian Fascism 252
________Mussolini’s Assumption of Power 252
________The Evolving Definition of Fascism: Initial Relations with Nazism 254
________The Spread of Fascism Outside Italy, 1922–33 256
________Nazism: The Basis of Its Appeal 258
________The Nature of Hitler’s Antisemitism 259
________Hitler in Power 261
________A Moderate Solution to the Jewish Question? 265
________Nazi and Soviet Rule: Comparing Evils 266
________Further Reading 266
____19 The Origins of World War II and the Holocaust: 1929–39 267
________European Diplomacy, 1929–34 267
________Hitler’s Retreats, the Stresa Front 269
________The Great Turning Point, 1934–5: Comintern Policy and the Ethiopian War 270
________The Popular Front in France, 1935–9 273
________The Spanish Civil War, 1936–9 275
________The Era of Appeasement, 1936–8 278
________Evaluating Appeasement 281
________Further Reading 282
____20 World War II and the Holocaust: 1939–43 283
________Appeasement from the East and the Outbreak of World War II 284
________The Opening Stages of World War II 286
________War in the West, 1940 289
________The War against Judeo-Bolshevism 291
________The Turning of the Tide 293
________Victories at Stalingrad and the Kursk Salient 296
________Further Reading 297

Part V Europe in Recovery and the Cold War: 1943–89 and Beyond 299
____21 Victory, Peace, Punishment: 1943–6 303
________The Problems and Paradoxes of Victory 303
________Planning for Victory 306
________Personal Diplomacy and Realpolitik 309
________Winning the War: Myths and Realities 312
________The Ambiguous Peace 313
________The Holocaust’s Final Stages: Vengeance 314
________The Nuremberg Trials 315
________Dilemmas and Paradoxes of Punishment 319
________Further Reading 321
____22 Europe’s Nadir, the German Question, and the Origins of the Cold War: 1945–50 322
________War-time Deaths, Military and Civilian 322
________The Unresolved German Question: Germany’s Borders 323
________Denazification 324
________The Two Germanies, East and West 326
________Schumacher and Adenauer 329
________Social Democrats vs. Christian Democrats 330
________Postwar Austria 331
________The Origins and Nature of the Cold War 331
________Further Reading 336
____23 The Mystique of Revolution: Ideologies and Realities, 1945 to the 1960s 337
________The Revolutionary Mystique in the Immediate Postwar Years 337
________Democratic Socialism in Western Europe: Great Britain 339
________Democratic Socialism in Western Europe: Scandinavia 341
________The Revolutionary Mystique, the Cult of Personality, and “Real” Socialism 343
________Titoism and the New Show Trials 344
________Stalin’s Death and Khrushchev’s “De-Stalinization” 345
________Revolts in Poland and Hungary, 1956 346
________The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 348
________East Germany and the Berlin Wall 349
________Further Reading 350
____24 The End of Imperialism, and European Recovery: 1948–68 352
________European Exhaustion and the End of Empire 352
________India and the Middle East 353
________New Dimensions of the Jewish Question 355
________“French” Algeria 358
________The Vagaries of Historical Memory: The Role of the Cold War 360
________The Establishment of the Fourth Republic in France 361
________Restoring Liberal Democracy in Italy 364
________European Unification: The First Steps 366
________De Gaulle’s Vision: The Fifth Republic 368
________Further Reading 370
____25 Europe in a New Generation 371
________Communism with a Human Face: Czechoslovakia, 1968 372
________Young Rebels in Western Europe 373
________France: The “Events of May” 375
________Feminism in the New Generation 376
________Further Reading 380
________26 Détente, Ostpolitik, Glasnost: A New Europe 381
________Shifting International Relationships: Frictions and Contretemps in the Soviet Union and United States 382
________The Impact of the Oil Embargo of 1973: “Stagflation” 383
________The Restive Soviet Bloc in the 1970s and 1980s 384
________Poland and Solidarity 385
________West Germany’s Ostpolitik: Management of Modern Capitalism 386
________Gorbachev and Glasnost, 1985–9 389
________The Disintegration of Communist Rule 391
________From Mystique (1989–90) to Politique (1991–2012) 391
________From Soviet Union to Russian Federation 392
________The Unification of Germany 393
________The Breakup of Former Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia 394
________Western Europe: From Common Market to European Union 394
________Further Reading 397
____27 Europe in Two Centuries: An Epilogue and General Assessment 398
________Europe’s Evolving Identity 400
________European Liberties and Toleration 401
________The Irish Question 402
________The Woman Question 403
________The Social Question and the Role of the State 403
________The Eastern Question and the End of Empires 404
________The German Question 404
________Americanization, Globalization, and the European Model 406
________The Jewish Question 407
________The New Enemy: Islam 408
________Environmentalism under Capitalism and Communism 409
________The Demographic Question and European Xenophobia 410
________The Sovereign Debt Crisis: The Dilemmas of the European Union 411
Further Reading 411
Index 413