Suchergebnisse

Preserved Smith (1880–1941), a professor in the history department of Cornell University, owed his unusual first name to Puritan ancestors who could be traced back to the seventeenth century. His great interest was in the Protestant reformation, and its wide-ranging political and cultural effects in Europe and America. An obituary remarks that his writings 'reveal a remarkable breadth of knowledge and interest and a consistent devotion to high standards of scholarly integrity'. This two-volume work of 1930–4, discussing 'modern culture' from 1543 to 1776, displays these qualities in abundance. Volume 1, after an introductory chapter, considers the state of the sciences in the sixteenth century, then the humanities and the social and political context of law, morality and art. The emphasis on the importance of science as a driver of change makes this a remarkable and readable overview of the emergence of modern society

A review essay on books by: Michael Sturmer, Die Grenzen der Macht. Begegnungen der Deutschen mit der Geschichte([The Boundaries of Power. German Encounters with History] Berlin: Siedler, 1992); Gregor Schollgen, Die Macht in der Mitte Europas. Stationen deutscher Aussenpolitik von Friedrich dem Grossen bis zur Gegenwart ([The Power in Central Europe. The Stations of International Politics from Frederick the Great to the Present] Munich: C. H. Beck, 1992); & Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Grossmachtstellung und Weltpolitik, 1870-1914 ([Position as a Great Power and World Politics, 1870-1914] Frankfurt: Ullstein [see listings in IRPS No. 87]). Sturmer begins by linking national identity & history, arguing that those who determine what should be remembered, develop concepts, & interpret the past will control the future. He explores the Federal Republic of Germany's historical evolution since the seventeenth century, focusing on foreign relations & integrating internal & external developments. Schollgen presents his perception of two central problems of German foreign policy, ie, Central Europe's need to obtain external security, & Germany's need for an equal position. Mommsen includes little on domestic politics, but presents an account of who was primarily responsible for WWI. C. Whitcraft

In the mid-nineteenth century, thousands of children in Europe and beyond were organized into battalions of fundraisers for overseas missions. By the end of the century these juvenile missionary organizations had become a global movement, generating millions of pounds in revenue each year. While the transnational nature of the children's missions and publications has been well documented by historians, the focus has tended to be on the connections that were established by encounters between the young western donors, missionaries overseas and the non-western 'other' constructed by their work. A full exploration of the European political, social and cultural concerns that produced the juvenile missionaries movement and the trans-European networks that sustained it are currently missing from historical accounts of the phenomenon. This article looks at the largest of these organizations, the Catholic mission for children, the French Holy Childhood Association ( L'Œuvre de la sainte enfance), to understand how the principles this mission sought to impose abroad were above all an expression of anxieties at home about the role of religion in the family, childhood and in civil society as western polities were modernizing and secularizing in the nineteenth century.

"This major reinterpretation of the Holocaust surveys the destruction of the European Jews within the broader context of Nazi violence against other victim groups. Christian Gerlach offers a unique social history of mass violence which reveals why particular groups were persecuted and what it was that connected the fate of these groups and the policies against them. He explores the diverse ideological, political and economic motivations which lay behind the murder of the Jews and charts the changing dynamics of persecution during the course of the war. The book brings together both German actions and those of non-German states and societies, shedding new light on the different groups and vested interests involved and their role in the persecution of non-Jews as well. Ranging across continental Europe, it reveals that popular notions of race were often more important in shaping persecution than scientific racism or Nazi dogma"--

After World War II, bilateral agreements within the Eastern bloc brought youth from the newly established satellite states of Eastern Europe to study in higher education establishments in the USSR. Designed to impart Soviet knowledge and practices in the countries of people's democracy as well as to create a sense of solidarity within the bloc, the training of East Europeans in the center of world communism proved a tension-filled affair. Spurred by the xenophobia and chauvinism of the Soviet home front during the early Cold War, Soviet administrators, faculty members and students related to the foreign students, despite their socialist credentials, as outsiders and sometimes as carriers of unwanted influences. For this reason, the educational agreements deepened the sense that fundamental differences existed between the Soviet Union and its client states in Europe.