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Charity is a word that fits well in the history of religion and churches, whereas the concept of social reform seems to belong more to the vocabulary of the modern welfare states. Christian charity found itself, during the long nineteenth century, within the maelstrom of social turmoil. In this context of social unrest, although charity managed to confirm its relevance, it was also subjected to fierce criticism, as well as to substitute state-run forms of social care and insurance. 0The history of the welfare states remained all too blind to religion. This fourth volume in the series 'Dynamics of Religious Reform' unravels how the churches in Britain and Ireland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium shaped and adjusted their understanding of poverty. It reveals how they struggled with the 'social question' and often also with the modern nation states to which they belonged. Either in the periphery of public assistance or in a dynamic interplay with the state, political parties and society at large, the churches reinvented their tradition as providers of social relief

Asceticism, so it is argued in this volume, is a modern category. The ubiquitous cult of the body, of fitness and diet equally evoke the ongoing success of ascetic practices and beliefs. Nostalgic memories of hardship and discipline in the army, youth movements or boarding schools remain as present as the fashionable irritation with the presumed modern-day laziness. In the very texture of contemporary culture, age-old asceticism proves to be remarkably alive. Old ascetic forms were remoulded to serve modern desires for personal authenticity, an authenticity that disconnected asceticism in the

List of tables -- List of figures -- Introduction / Leen Van Molle, Yves Segers, and Paul Brassley -- The international perspective -- Natura non fecit saltus : the 1930s as the discontinuity in the history of European agriculture / Giovanni Federico -- International trade in agricultural products, 1935-1955 / Paul Brassley -- State regulation and agricultural policy -- Paths to productivism : agricultural regulation in the second World War and its aftermath in Great Britain and German-annexed Austria / John Martin and Ernst Langthaler -- Spanish agriculture 1931-1955 : crisis, wars, and new policies in the reshaping of rural society / Juan Pan-Montojo -- Wartime agricultural policy in peacetime : a case study of Hungary, 1940-1956 / Zsuzsanna Varga -- The state : farmer relationship -- From war profits to post-war investments : how the German occupation improved investments in Danish agriculture in the post-war years / Mogens R.Nissen -- Corporatism, agricultural modernisation and war in Ireland and Switzerland, 1935-55 / Peter Moser and Tony Varley -- Farming, favoured in times of fear : swedish agricultural politics 1935-55 / Carin Martiin -- The social impact of state control of agriculture in Britain 1939-55 / Brian Short -- Rural identities -- Change in the European countryside : peasants and democracy in Germany 1935-55 / Gesine Gerhard -- Heroes of the reconstruction : images of British farmers in war and peace / Clare Griffiths -- Food stocks, the black market, and town and country tensions in France during two world wars and beyond / Edouard Lynch -- Conclusions / Paul Brassley, Yves Segers, and Leen Van Molle -- Notes on contributors -- Notes -- Index

This book offers a fresh look at the so-called 'politicisation' of the European countryside, from the late eighteenth century to the 1930s, in the context of waning monarchies, rising and staggering parliamentary nation states, and fascist and communist dictatorships. The concept 'politicisation', however, is misleading. The book argues that Europe's rural societies were far from immobile spaces, set in routines, that had to be politised from outside and against the grain. The thirteen articles in the volume demonstrate that, instead of politicisation from scratch, political thinking and acting of country dwellers – from Scandinavia to Spain, from Moravia to France – evolved in a constant, dialectical relationship with their urban, regional and national surroundings: they reacted to wars, revolutions and shifting borders, their political loyalties changed, so did their political agendas, their repertoires of collective action and their role in the establishment, successes and failures of political parties, separate agrarian parties included.