Turning points in Modern European History

1. Turning point 476: The fall of Rome

a. For: De-urbanization and declining literacy, The Islamic conquest, Start
European history with the Germanic tribes
b. Against: The East transformed into the Byzantine Empire and renovatio
imperii Justinian, The survival of Roman culture - the Roman legacy
2. Turning point 1517: ‘Rebirths’
a. For: Printing press late 15th c., Military revolution, Population growth,
economic shift from the Mediterranean -> North Sea, Voyages of discovery,
Reformations and division of Europe
b. Against: Experience of change: valued negatively! Catholic church remained,
no secularization yet.
Return to the early Church (Lutheranism): suppression peasant war 1525 and
princely Reformation Northern Europe: re-affirmation state authority
3. Turning Point 1648: Start modern international system
a. For: Peace of Westphalia (1648): birth of the modern state system
b. Against: more continuity (warfare Louis XIV), Religion continued to play a role
in warfare and diplomacy, Restoration of the Empire: not end of
imperialism/universalism
4. Turning point 1792: The French Revolution
a. For: De-sacralisation of the monarchy, the politics of Enlightenment and the
cult of the nation, revisionism is the new revolutionary political culture
b. Against: continuity= democratization and state centralization
5. Turning point 1815: Restoration
a. For: (Re)construction of the international order, Eternal peace and ‘Unity in
Diversity’, Decolonizing South America (pragmatism); Restoration in Europe,
revolution in South America
b. Continuation of Napoleonic state elites and institutions, Louis XVIII:
‘Forgetting’ of the Revolution and Empire
6. Turning point 1848: The age of (Counter) Revolution
a. For: Radical change and written constitution, National sovereignty, Natural
(human) universal rights, Equality (to an extent), Individualism and
nationalism, conservative nationalism, apprenticeship mass politics, end
feudalism absolutist monarchies
b. Against: ‘Failure’ and disillusion with revolutionary idealism
7. Turning point 1871: Reinventing the congress system
a. For: Partial Breakdown and reconfiguration, Wars German Unification (1871
as end of history resurrection German Nation, completion of ‘1813’
anti-Napoleonic wars), Balkan Wars, ‘Double crisis 1871’: Military Defeat
Franco-Prussian war and Paris Commune, Foundation Third Republic
b. Against: 1871 as a Turning Point is a perspective of critical historiography
after 1945.
8. Turning point 1885: The age of Empire
a. For: The Global Transformation of the Nineteenth century: awareness,
efficiency, mobility, transfer of ideas, equality & emancipation and its
reactions, New Imperialism, technological and communication Revolution
 b. Against: A period of peace, with Europe involved in only a few minor conflicts.
This led to an era of widespread optimism.
9. Turning point 1914: World War I
a. For: New positional practice battlefield: massive casualties, new technologies,
fall Empires: Germany, Austria, Russia, Ottoman Empire
b. Remaining sentiments of Nationalism, German Federal State largely survived
intact and remained large power
10. Turning point 1933: The Crisis of Democracy
a. For: Rise of alternatives democracy: communism, authoritarianism, national
socialism, totalitarianism, fascism. Internal Weaknesses liberal order,
parliamentary system established from above, failure of liberal policies to end
Great Depression (1929)
b. Against: Continuing view of Germany as a Weltmacht (world power)
11. Turning point 1942: The Fall of Singapore
a. For: The capture of Singapore (by Japan) resulted in the largest British
surrender in its history, it had been of great importance to British interwar
defense strategy. The battle contributed to the end of British colonial rule in
the region after the war. Promise of independence for India.
b. Against: Not so much a ‘European’ turning point
12. Turning point 1956: The Suez crisis
a. For: Imperialism and decolonization affected as much Europe as the rest of
the world, fall British and French empires
b. Against: Imperialism did not end in the 1960s: persisting legacies and
memories
13. Turning point 1968: Contesting the post-war consensus
a. For: Media-revolution, return ideology/ politics: radicalisation minority left,
return activism, rise of the ‘New Right’ & populism
b. Against: 1968 as a non-event; no revolution, continuity consensus &
adaptation: begin ‘conservative revolution’
14. Turning Point 1973: Oil crisis
a. For: From optimism to pessimism, stagflation, ripple effect on all economies,
but also led to positive developments and innovations. Britain finally joined
the Common Market.
b. Against: In retrospect, the 70’s and 80’s have come to appear less
economically beleaguered than European contemporaries tended to think.
There was no absolute decline in economic growth, even less decline than in
the 1880’s. Europe remained a relatively prosperous, economically dynamic
area.
15. Turning point 1979: Neoliberal revolution
a. For: Margaret Thatcher, British PM, started a neoliberal revolution. Attack on
post war consensus of state intervention. Economic renewal and dynamism in
GB. Beginning Russian military occupation of Afghanistan. Liberalization of
the Chinese economy, Iranian revolution.
b. Against: Persistence of intricate class hierarchies + inequality,
deindustrialization. Continuity of moderate conservatism.
 16. Turning point 1989: End of the Cold War
a. For: Generation change and gradual transformation, Gorbachev factor
(Glasnost, perestrojka), economic collapse (oil crises), collapse of socialist
federations, reunification of Germany
b. Against: No triumph of liberal democracy, Eastern Europe’s Ostalgie
17. Turning Point 2008-2014: Economic crisis
a. For: Worldwide economic crisis, no clear mainstream alternative to
Washington consensus (1989): begin re-assessment role of the national state
/ economic inequality & rise populism. (In)security & antiliberalism, return
geopolitics.
b. Against: Unclear whether it is a real turning point, continued welfare and more
economic crises.

Notes

Lecture 1

For lectures: Handbook texts

For seminars: Texts on Canvas & assignments
Weekly assignments (one graded 30%) - written exam in week 8 (essay questions) (70%)

- Week 2: Fall Rome, Periodization and Religious Wars

- Week 3: Revolution, Restoration, Napoleon
- Week 4: International 19th century & Age of Empire
- Week 5: First World War & Interbellum, Crisis of Democracy
- Week 6: WWII, Reconstruction, Contestation, Decolonisation
- Week 7: Neoliberalism, Third Way, New World Order

Periodization (Jordanova):
criteria for dividing time in periods
1. Rulers and dynasties (Napoleonic, Elizabethan)
2. Key events (WWI)
3. Descriptions (‘modern era’)
4. Type of Government (Communist, Liberal)
5. Cultural style (Baroque)

Standard periodization in European history:

- Antiquity
- Middle-Ages
- (Early) Modern Age (from the Age of Enlightenment)

European narratives = A way of telling stories about (what) Europe (is)

Pluralist narrative: political, economic, religious fragmentation in Europe (Rise of the West)
Historical narratives: identity construction

Eurocentrism & European history

- 18th c. – 1960s: ‘European history as universal history’: / history of Modernity/
European history as EU history: Historical Europe versus non-historical rest (Hegel)
 - Criticism: J. Goody: ‘The Theft of History’: Eurocentrism
- European history (between global, national and local history): transfer of people,
ideas: but: not homogeneous or self-contained

Turning point 476: The fall of Rome

Barbarism versus civilisation - In modern times: Immigrants

Critical narrative: invented antiquity (Goody)
Other turning points seen by contemporaries
- 410: First sack of Rome by the Visigoths
- 439: Conquest of Africa by the Vandals (cut off grain supply to Rome)
Continuity after the fall:
- The East transformed into the Byzantine Empire and renovatio imperii Justinian
- The survival of Roman culture - the Roman legacy:
- The ideal of Empire
- Roman law; legal unity of Europe
- The catholic church
- Cities in South Europe
Discontinuities:
- The Islamic conquest
- De-urbanization and declining literacy
- Start European history with the Germanic tribes (freedom and independence as well
as barbarism)

Example exam question

‘The Fall of the Roman Empire in 476 was a turning point in European history’. Give two
arguments to support this statement and two arguments that criticize it.

Lecture 2

Turning point 1517: ‘Rebirths’ (1200-1550)

1000-1300: Making Europe

- Growth population and agricultural production
- Commercial capitalism and growth cities
- Growing literacy (universities, Roman law)
- Ambitions Catholic Church and clerical reforms; churches and monasteries
- Feudal revolution and early state formation
- Internal and external colonization

The sixteenth century as rupture

1. Printing press late 15th c., mass communication - unintended consequences, church
lost the monopoly of censoring
2. Military revolution (gunpowder, infantry)
3. Population growth, economic shift from the Mediterranean towards the North Sea
4. Voyages of discovery
5. Reformations and division of Europe
Renaissance and Humanism
- Classical interpretation; invention modern individual
- Revisions and critiques on humanism (Peter Burke)
- New definition humanism: ‘educational and cultural program based on the study of
the classics and human dignity (humanitas)’
- Secular south humanism (Machiavelli) vs. Christian north humanism (Erasmus)
- Historical distance

Religious Reformations
1. First Reformation: Luther and the German princes and cities; Augsburg peace 1555.
- Outcome: suppression peasant war in 1525 and princely Reformation in
Northern Europe, re-affirmation state authority
2. Second Reformation: Calvinism (1550s)
- Radicalism: completing unfinished reformation
3. The Catholic Reformation (after 1545)
- Until 1540: attempts at reconciliation
- Council of Trent (1545): redefinition of doctrine
- Reformation of Church organization (discipline)
- New political alliances and catholic ‘rollback’: from defensive to offensive
4. Dissenter Reformations (anabaptists)
Münster rebellion (1534-1535)

Luther (1483-1546): Return to the early Church

- Nationalist, medieval monk or humanist?
- Sola fide: salvation through faith
- Bible in the vernacular (volkstong)
- No intermediary role of the church
- Religious and political struggle: cities and princes against the Empire
- Outcome: suppression peasant war 1525 and princely Reformation Northern Europe:
re-affirmation state authority

Calvin (1509-1564): a second Reformation

- Mid 1550’s
- Radicalism: completing unfinished reformation
- Calvinist international: (FR, NL, GB, CE)
- ‘Geneva as new Jerusalem’: building new Godly communities
- Discipline and not top-down

Catholic Reformation
- Until 1540: Attempts at reconciliation
- Council of Trent (1545): redefinition of doctrine (Council of Trent)
- Reformation of Church organization (discipline)
- Jesuit order: ‘missionary stormtroopers’
- New political alliances and catholic ‘rollback’: from defensive to offensive

Renaissance and Reformation

Similarity: undermining the authority of tradition
Difference: optimism (humanitas) versus pessimism (Sin)
Religious wars ca. 1550-1650
- From fluid reformation to rigid boundaries of the confessional age (if you were born
christian, you could not become a protestant etc.)
- Seventeenth century crisis: global cooling, economic contraction, consciousness
- France: St. Bartholomew’s massacre
- Peace of Westphalia (1648): birth of the modern state system

Myth of Westphalia
- Pragmatic tolerance & pluralism
- Turning Point 1648: start modern international system: balance of sovereign &
secular national states’:
- However: more continuity (warfare Louis XIV)
- Religion continued to play a role in warfare and diplomacy (Europe in peace treaties)
- Restoration of the Empire (as well as Hanse): not end of imperialism/universalism
- Myth of the ‘power balance’ (older and newer)

Outcomes of the religious wars

1. Pragmatic toleration
Peace churches (for the sake of stability)
2. International system
- War race (larger armies, finances, less civilian casualties)
- Grand coalition against universal monarchy (‘balance of power’)
3. Rise of the monarchical state
- Ideology: absolutism
- Image and representation (Versailles)
- Practice: new bureaucratic elites
- Warfare (mercenaries), escalation and taxes
- Alternative: republicanism
4. The search for Truth & (Early) Enlightenment
- Doubt and skepticism, stoicism/rise of atheism? (Spinoza)
- Search for new foundation of truth; nature (science, experiments) and reason

Test exam questions

• To what extent can the early sixteenth century era be seen in a Turning Point in European
history (give two arguments for and against)
• What is the relation between the Renaissance/ Humanism and the Reformation?
• To what extent did the Peace of Westphalia present a turning point?
• What were the outcomes of the Religious Wars?

Lecture 3

Turning point 1792: The French Revolution

18th century: Monarchical progress

- Dominance of monarchy
- From ‘droit divin’ absolutism to enlightened absolutism
- Rationalism and modernity ‘from above’ (from the monarchs, not from the people)
 - Dark side: famines and underdevelopment

Origins of the Revolution

- Seven Years War (1756-1763) (lost to Britain for land in America) and the military
decline of France
- Finances France (tax farming - lost a lot of money to the farmers) versus Britain
(public debt - government lent the money from banks, could use way more money)
- De-sacralisation of the monarchy (no more ‘droit divin’)
- Public opinion and sociability
- Ideological origins; the politics of Enlightenment and the cult of the nation

Revolution I: moderate phase (1789-1792)

- 4 May 1789: meeting of the Estates General because of money shortages
- 17 June: origin of the National Assembly, representing the nation and not the king
- Peasant revolts: the storming of the Bastille (14 July 1789)
- 26 August: Declaration of the Rights of man and the end of feudalism
- 1791: First Constitution
- New General Assembly culture: transparency, emotions, rhetorics

Revolution II: radical phase (1792-1794)

- Radicalization because of the personality of Louis XVI and his flight to Varennes
(1791)
- Instability of the French Constitution - unclear about who the ‘people’ were
- The ‘aristocratic plot’: to project fear on the normal people
- Revolutionary wars (1792-1815)
- Construction of central bureaucracy and modern state
- ‘The politics of the Terror’: had a positive connotation, a way to defend the
Revolution by tribunals - sometimes had bad consequences (guillotine)

Revolution III: Thermidor (1794-1799)

- July 1794: Thermidor coup (against Robespierre) to return to moderate politics, no
return to 1789 - punishment and forgetting
- Instability and corruption: left and royalist coups
- Calling for the ‘savior’, revolutionary cultural transfer (sister republics in Europe)

Interpreting the Revolution

- Nineteenth century - political interpretation (Conservatism, Liberalism, Radicalism)
- Continuity: democratization and state centralization (A. de Tocqueville)
- Marxism - the revolution as class struggle
- Revisionism = the new revolutionary political culture (F. Furet)
- Critics of revisionism = events and people; the return of a social-economic
interpretation; global approaches

Slavery & Revolution: Toussaint l’Ouverture (Haitian Revolution (1791) & Tula (Curaçao
1795)

Exam questions
1. What are the origins of the French Revolution in the XVIIIth century?
 2. Describe the historiographical debate on the French revolution?
3. What are the most important elements of revolutionary political culture?
4. Why did the revolution become so radical?
5. Explain the term ‘Ancien Regime’

Lecture 4

Turning point 1815: Restoration

1. Napoleonic integration of Europe

2. (Re)construction of the international Order (Vienna Conference 1814-15)
3. Restoration: reaction and renewal
4. Global perspective: Decolonising (Latin) America

Napoleon I (1769-1821): ‘Soldier of destiny’

- Outsider: Born as lower Corsican noble (‘ demi-african’ )
- Revolutionary general: PR machine!
- 1799: Coup Brumaire (context: weakness Thermidor/Directorate 1795-1799):
Consulate
- 1804: Establishment of an Empire (1806: Noblesse d’Empire)
- 1810: Marriage Marie-Louise (Austria)
- 1812: Expedition to Russia
- 1813-1815: Fall and return (‘Les Cent Jours)
- 1821: Death Saint Helens (Memorial)

‘The idea Napoleon’

- Romantic genius or bloody military dictator?
- Savior of the Nation (J. Tulard)
- Consolidation of the Revolution? Civil rights and the suppression of political rights
- Hierarchical organization state (anti-philosophy)
- Emperor as national sovereignty
- ‘The Napoleonic myth’
- Bonapartism: first modern authoritarianism

‘European Integration under Napoleon’ (Stuart Woolf)

- Principle ‘ralliement’ and ‘fusion’
- Model of the army: centralization/hierarchy - soldiers picked based on their loyalty,
not on their background (administration in the service of the armée)
- Co-optation local elites
- Modern bureaucracy: enlightened despotism or repressive police state?
- Model 19th century Colonial Empires
- Legend of Napoleon as European lawgiver, someone who tried to bring enlightened
law and uniformity into Europe

Congress of Vienna (1814-1815): Reinventing the international order

- Eternal peace and ‘Unity in Diversity’
(Europeanism and Nationalism): exclusive pluralism versus inclusive Empire
- Congress system (1814-1822) - Diplomatic balance/ equilibrium (‘anti-Westphalia’ )
 - ‘Repression of liberty’ or ‘European security system’? (Carlsbad decrees 1819 etc.)
- Main problems: Saxony and Poland; slavery, pirates (barbary corsairs), Jewish
question
- Repression versus Stability (Terror and counter-terror)

Restoration regimes and the Napoleonic Legacy: adaptation and transformation

- Continuation of Napoleonic state elites and institutions (The Bed of Napoleon):
monarchy of turncoats
- Louis XVIII: ‘Forgetting’ of the Revolution and Empire (‘Culture of Oubli’)
- ‘Laboratory of ideologies’ and modern political culture

Decolonizing (South) America

- 18th century: Enlightened reform and its discontents (revolts): (Tupac Amaru revolt
1776)
- Turning Point: Napoleonic occupation of Portugal (1807) and Spain (1808): war
against Napoleon
- 1808-1833: Wars of Independence
- 1822: Brazilian Empire
- Liberators and dictators (Bolivar, Martín, Miranda)
- Relation with Restoration Europe: pragmatism

Conclusion
1. Competition European orders: inclusive hierarchical Empire versus monarchical
pluralism
2. 1815 European Regeneration (cf. 1918, 1945): hopes and disappointments)
3. Vienna system: Repression (‘phantom terror’ ) or Stability (until WWI)?
4. Restoration in Europe, revolution in (South) America

Lecture 5

Turning point 1848: the age of (Counter) Revolution

The new concept of ‘revolution’

Pre-revolutionary
- Cyclical
- No fundamental change

(Post-) revolutionary
- Perception of rupture
- Reordering state and society
- New conception of time and change as a positive value (‘old regime/ancien regime
versus new order’)

Revolution versus counter-revolution

Revolution
- Radical change and written constitution
- National sovereignty
- Natural (human) universal rights
 - Equality (to a certain extent)
- Individualism and nationalism

Counter-revolution
- Status quo; restoration, gradual reform
- Monarchical and providential sovereignty
- Rights depending on history and custom
- Social hierarchy
- Collectivity, local/regional community

Transnational networks (1814-1848)

- Restoration states had a European Security Culture: conferences, military
occupations and secret agents and agencies. Conservative Europeanism
- Liberals and Revolutionaries: Revolutionary and Napoleonic refugees (‘proscits’),
(radical) liberal international, transatlantic (Simon Bolivar, Mazzini, Garibaldi)
- Sometimes combination such as Chateaubriand: supported Bourbon monarchy but
also Greek Revolution against the Ottomans

Causes and developments

- Unequal effects modernisation
- Contradictions Restoration: both repression and freedom
- Precondition: Economic Crisis
- Increasing politicization
- Similar dynamics in all European countries: moderation, radicalisation, reaction

Differences between 1789 and 1848

1. French versus European revolution
2. Socio-economic themes more pronounced in 1848
3. More moderate revolutionaries: memory of the Terror and different role of France

Interpreting ‘European’ Revolutions (1848-1851)

- ‘Failure’ (cf 1789/1917) and disillusion with revolutionary idealism
- Marxism (class war) versus revisionism (political revolution)
- ‘Political apprenticeship democracy’

1848 Turning Point?

- Contemporary perceptions (disillusion with liberal utopias: ‘realism’),
- But also renewal: conservative nationalism, apprenticeship mass politics, end
feudalism absolutist monarchies
- German and Italian unification foundations; pragmatism instead of idealism
- Global effect: emancipation Slaves/Serfs (Russia, USA, Latin-America)

1850’s Counter-Revolution: two faces

- Re-imposition monarchical authority and curbing of political rights
- Transnational security systems and counter terrorism
- Modernisation and thus greater prosperity (Prussia, Piemonte, Habsburg)
- Technocratic rule and rise of the modern state
- Social policies (Napoleon III, Bismarck)
 - Embrace nationalism by the right-wing

France (1852-1870): the Second Empire

- Differences with first empire: welfare regulation and economic modernization
- Authoritarian state
- Liberalization of the 1860’s
- Napoleon III: a businessman instead of a military leader

The Industrial Revolutions

Idea of the nineteenth century ‘Industrial revolution’

- Cultural image: Bolts of lightning; ‘satanic mills’; steam engine and railway as
symbol
- Classic theory: economist Rostow: ‘take off’ (doubling percentage income devoted to
investment within thirty years)
- Based on model political revolution

Criticism of the concept ‘Industrial revolution’

1. Evolution instead of revolution
2. Regional instead of National development
3. Persistence of older (cottage) industries
4. Initiative from agricultural elites and nobles (not bourgeois capitalists versus noble
feudalism: treason bourgeoisie)

Common features in industrial revolution

1. New sources of power (steam, electricity)
2. Manufacturing in large scale units
3. Shift from agriculture to Trade and industry
Additional factors: technology and institutions (Banks, state, education) also politics and
culture

Technology as the driver of the industrial revolution? Yes and No: Importance context
(political, social, cultural factors count as well!)

First Wave: 1780-1820

- Countries: Britain and Belgium
- Technologies: ‘spinning jennies’ for textiles
- Transports: Canals
- Products: Cotton textiles, iron making
- No large institutions: private initiative
- Why not in France? Political factors: French revolution leads to British economic
dominance

Second Wave: mid 1840-1870

- Countries: German Lands, France, USA
- Industries: steel mills, railways engineering
- Role of new Institutions: Investment banks
- Education institutions and science (Germany versus France 1850s)
Global economic depression: 1873-1896
- Cause globalization world economy: cheap imports from the Americas and Russia
- From free trade to protectionism (Bismarck)
- Change: advantage Germany versus Britain
- Increased competition between industrial producers

Third Wave: 1890’s-1914

- Countries: Italy, Japan, Sweden, Austria, Russia (Hungary and Spain)
- Technologies and products: chemicals, electrical engineering, bicycles, automobiles,
oil
- ‘Great spurt’ (Gerschenkron) industrial latecomers (Russia, Sweden: 8% growth)?
Industrialisation led by the state (economic defeat motor industrialization and
innovation)
- Criticism:
- Prehistory development Russia 1850s and 1860s
- Counterexamples of Italy

Conclusion
- Evolution instead of revolution
- Not one but several revolutions
- Regional development as well as globalization
- Technological inventions
- Big role of the state
- Investment Banks
- Social, Cultural and Political Consequences

Lecture 6

Turning point 1871: Reinventing the congress system

1. 1815-1848/1854: Classic congress system

2. 1854-1878: Partial Breakdown and reconfiguration
a. 1854-1856: Crimea War (‘Last crusade’) : Winners: Britain, France
Losers: Russia, Austria
b. 1859: Piemonte versus Austria
c. 1864-1871: Wars German Unification (1864, 1866, 1870)
d. 1877-1878: Balkan Wars (Russia-Ottoman Empire)
3. 1878-1914: Congress Berlin: partial reconstruction congress system in a new
configuration

Making the Reich in Germany (1871-1914)

- 1834: Zollverein (trade, industry) as nucleus, 1848 revolution
- 1871-1880: ‘Innere Reichsgründung’ and ‘Kulturkampf’: Catholic church as enemy
- 1880-1890: Conservative Revolution: antiliberalism, socialism and antisemitism
- 1890-1914: ‘Platz an der Sonne’ (imperial power): Reich under Wilhelm II
(contradictions): alliance system
1871 as a Turning Point is a perspective of critical historiography after 1945.

Contemporary views:
- Germany: 1871 as end of history resurrection German Nation, completion of ‘1813’
anti-Napoleonic wars
- Britain: sympathy for German Unification (Dissenting voice: Disraeli: ‘1871’ more
important than ‘1789’)
- Russia: construction Empire Central Asia (Great Game)
- Netherlands: part of the German Nation?
- France: catastrophe and reconstruction after 1871

Interpreting Bismarck’s Reich

- Interpretation after 1945: ‘military monarchy’, ‘Sonderweg’ (Wehler), myth Bismarck:
critics
- Currently: balance of elements: Bundesrat: Federal element - Reichstag
(Democratic element: male suffrage, rise social democracy) - Prussian Junkers and
Army (Kaiser): why not liberal development?
- Aggression or fear (siege mentality)?
- Lasting legacies?

France: Revolution & Crisis 1870s

- ‘Double crisis 1871’: Military Defeat (External) and Paris Commune (Internal)
- Foundation Third Republic (‘least divisive regime’ – Adolphe Thiers): unexpected
outcome? State building (E. Weber)
- Mechanism: construction nation state as part of modernisation drive after military
defeat (Cf. Russia 1856, Spain 1898, Ottoman Empire, Japan)

Turning point 1885: The age of Empire

Globalization in the 19th century

- 1780-1840’s: Global Crisis of political authority (Armitage & Subrahmanyam)
- Migration, inter-connectedness and global capitalism before WWI (H. James)
- ‘The Great Acceleration, 1890-1914’: simultaneous trends towards homogeneity,
identity boundaries, complexity (Bayly)
- ‘The (Global) Transformation of the Nineteenth century: awareness, efficiency,
mobility, transfer of ideas (European model), equality & emancipation and its
reactions’ (J. Osterhammel)

The Age of Empire

- Hobsbawm: ‘Age of Empire’ (1870-1914[-1945-1989-present]?)
- Definition Empire (‘Center versus periphery’)
- Empire versus Nation state?
- Dynamic Empires? Empire and Modernization (military defeats)
- Continuation of European and Colonial Empires

Examples:
- German Empire (Bismarck)
- Russian Empire
 - Habsburg/Austrian/Austro-Hungarian Empire
- France’s Second Empire (Louis Napoleon) until 1871 (Paris commune)
- New Imperialism (British, French)

‘New Imperialism’ (1870-1914)

- Political-Social and Geopolitical expansion European Empires
- Interpretations:
1. Latest stadium Capitalism (Lenin)
2. Unintended Imperialism: ‘Crises’ in the periphery (Robinson & Gallagher)
3. Dynamics European State system
4. Bayly: extra European nationalism and imperialism
5. Technological and communication Revolution (telegraphs, Arms)

French Imperialism: case study

- From Napoleonic Empire to overseas Empire (Algiers 1830)
- ‘Science & exploration and imperialism (Said: ‘Orientalism’)
- Commercial and industrial motives
- Right: from criticism (‘Spilling of French blood’) towards colonial living space
- Left: from criticism to ‘Civilizing mission’ and ethical imperialism (liberal imperialism
from 1800 onwards: Tocqueville)
- 1900: Imperial consensus

Lecture 7

Turning points in the 20th century

‘EU- triumphalism’ versus ‘Dark Continent’

New interpretations: decolonization, migration, empire and integration

Origins Turning Point WWI:

- Structural and incidental
- Dynamics July crisis: not self-evident outcome 19th century, alternative options

Europe around 1900: ‘proud tower’ (scared of the fall)

- Persistance Ancien Régime elites
- Dynamism and progress
- Europe’s Colonial Zenith
- Social inequality and (perception of) class struggle

Cultural factors: crisis of reason

- Nietschze, Freud, Bergson and the attack on liberal rationality (subconscious)
- Social Darwinism: ‘survival of the fittest’: perish or flourish..
- Fear of decline (France) and the Cult of sport (e.g. Tour de France)
- Decadence and the danger of cities
- Fear of degeneration and the yearning for regeneration: expectations of future war

Beginnings WWI: Sleepwalkers

 - Prologues: Morocco crisis 1911 & Balkan wars (1912-1914): strengthening
alliances
- Assassination Crown Prince Sarajevo 28 june 1914: July Crisis, outcome not
pre-ordained
- Alliance system: Germany/Austria versus Russia/ France/ Britain (not homogenous)
- German aggression: ‘Von Schlieffenplan’, offensive against France
- Fear of encirclement (Germany) and loss of reputation, tunnel vision, incomplete
information and wrong assumptions, panic

A new war in a machine age

- Discrepancy between traditional offensive strategy infantry versus new positional
practice battlefield: massive casualties
- New technologies: mortals, shrapnel, barbed wire, zeppelins, air warfare, chemical
weapons (later tanks, submarines and airplanes): clothes (camouflage)
- Railway war: logistics (& cables)
- ‘Total war’: war and society: military state
- Global war: colonial soldiers and theaters

Ideological Justifications
- From internationalism to national defense (artists, intellectuals and scientists)
- Germany: defending German Kultur against liberal superficial ‘civilization’ & ‘1789’
- France: defending the legacy of the French Revolution against dark barbarism
(Leuven)
- Russia: defending Russian values
- The image of the ‘enemy’

Ending the War (1918)

Alternative outcomes? Why no negotiations?
- Eastern Front: Russian Revolution (1917) and Peace Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918)
- Western front: Spring offensive: lack of success due to logistics, tanks and American
Resources
- South-Eastern Europe: defeat Habsburg and Bulgarian armies, Ottoman Empire
- September-October crisis: revolution in Germany (9-11 Republic) and Austria
- 11 November armistice but not end to violence: perception of open-endedness

Watershed ‘The Great War’

1. Human costs eight – ten million casualties (and many more maimed): ‘anonymous
killing’ and missing bodies
2. New experience of mass violence
3. Fall Empires: Germany, Austria, Russia, Ottoman Empire (new empire: USSR)
4. Even elites in GB and FR discredited: call for more democracy/participation
population, colonial subjects, polarization
5. Crisis of European and modern civilization and longing for renewal: USA

Peace and Reconstruction (1919)

‘Peacemakers’ of Paris (Spring 1919): unequal participants:

- USA (Wilson): ‘Fourteen points’: new liberal international order
 - Great-Britain: protecting the Empire, balance
- France: security vis-à-vis Germany: 1919 as inverted 1871 (Hall of Mirrors)
- Defeated nations (Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Ottoman Empire)
- Italy, Japan: Disillusion; New international actors from colonies, Pan African congress
etc.

Principles Postwar Order

1919 versus 1815 Vienna Peace
1. National self-determination: creation Foundation new Parliamentary
2. Democracies (‘1919 as new 1789 with welfare’)
3. Humiliation and Punishment Germany/Austria
4. New International Order League of Nations: defending Versailles system

I. Principle National sovereignty

- End of imperial age? USSR
- Principle national self-determination (Wilson): new string of nation states from Baltic
to Mediterranean
- Only applied to European continent: not colonies (long term effect decolonization)
- Also not to defeated nations (Austria)
- New problem ‘national minorities’ (e.g. Germans and Jews): source instability

II. Parliamentary democracy

- 1919 as completion of ‘1789’
- Social dimension and social-democratic revolutions
- Weaknesses and instability: see lecture 8: Crisis of democracy: rise of antidemocratic
illiberalism against Versailles.
- ‘Stab in the back legend’: new democracies and republics discredited by peace
negotiations: associated with defeat

II. Punishing Central Powers

- Expectations moderate treatment defeated
- War reparations (criticized by J.M. Keynes and others as counter-productive)
- Loss of territories (Alsace, Danzig, Klaipeda) and colonies Occupation Saarland
- Military restrictions but not disarmament (new danger Bolshevism)
- Also: German Federal State largely survived intact and remained large power

IV. New international Order

- League of Nations Geneva (1919)
- Failure or lasting legacies internationalism and foundation UN?
- Two faces: great power politics (Council of Four) and new internationalism,
bureaucrats
- USSR excluded; USA left; Germany entered in 1926
- Ambivalent legacy imperialism (Mandate system) but also resistance and criticism
- Criticism (C. Schmitt): order of the victors imposed on the defeated: humanitarianism

European peace and reconciliation 1925-29

- Not a straight line from WWI to WWII! Alternative outcomes possible...
- Locarno treaty 1925: reconciliation and Germany member League of Nations
 - Briand- Kellogg pact (1928): War laws
- 1929: plan for a ‘European Union’ through economic cooperation

(Divided) Memories of the ‘Great War’

- Different national memories (Belgium versus Netherlands)
- Victor versus defeated memories (Germany related to WWII, not in France)
- Heroism versus suffering
- Problematic memory service armies of countries that disappeared.
- Anonymous versus personal memories
- Local and European memories

Lecture 8

The Crisis of Democracy 1930’s

Part I: Challenges
1. Internal weaknesses postwar liberal order
2. Precondition: the economic depression
3. Alternatives: Communism
4. Alternatives: National Socialism
5. Alternatives: The lure of Fascism
6. Alternatives: authoritarianism

1. Internal Weaknesses liberal order

- Parliamentary system established from above and seen as from Nineteenth century
[Mussolini: ‘Deserted temple’]
- Legacy WWI and Veteran generation
- Instability and too many parties
- Dissatisfaction Right and Division Left
- Lack of Leadership US, Britain and France

2. Precondition: economic crisis

Causes and consequences (1930s)
- ‘Black Thursday October 24 1929’: New York stock market followed by bank crisis
- Multiple causes:
- overproduction
- Dependency world economy on USA
- End growth 1920s, mass inflation and mass unemployment
- Failure of liberal policies to end crisis
- USA ‘New Deal’: state intervention: FDR (model Biden) within liberal democracy

3. The Communist Alternative

- Liberal Revolution (March) 1917
- November 1917: Communist Revolution
- 1917-1921 Civil War and Polish-Russian War
- USSR (1922): Federal Communist Empire
- Alternative model modernisation 1930s: Stalinist Terror and industrial development
4. The National Socialist Alternative
- Mazower: ‘Most European of Ideologies’
- Leadership and National Pride (end of humiliating Versailles ‘Dictate’)
- State-intervention in the economy and harmony model (aimed at war fare)
- Neo-Paganism & eschatology (End time)
- Internal Unity versus External Enemy
- Mass-communication and Festivals
- Eugenics, racial purity and Biopolitics
- Cult of violence and mass mobilization

5. Italian Fascism and German National Socialism

- Benito Mussolini: prime minister 1922-1943 (also: legacy WWI, power transition)
- Similarities: ‘nationalist revolution’, leader principle, cult of violence, imperial
expansion,
- ‘Doctrine of action’ (no systematic ideology)
- Difference: less radical rupture with institutions (Monarchy and Church)
- Antisemitism and Racism

6. Authoritarian alternatives
- 19th century roots: Napoleonic Empire / reaction 1850s (Second Empire,1871)
- 1919 Anti Liberalism and defense of the sovereign state (C. Schmitt)
- Third Way: (Catholic) Economic Corporatism
- Pragmatic traditionalists & monarchists
- Authoritarianism as first stage Fascism? Yes and No (Differences: Hierarchy,
stability, Christian religion and idea of the state)
- Global ideology and system; Latin America

Part II: ‘Responses’ North-West Europe by dr. Kristina Krake

- Why did fascism succeed in especially Germany and Italy, while failing in other
countries?
- Why were only few European democracies resilient towards anti-democratic
movements?

Potential explanations
1. The fascist and communist parties themselves
- Fragmented fascist landscape
- Rivalry within the extreme right (or radical left wing)
- Poor organization and economy
- Imitation of the German Nazi party programme
- Political leaders (charisma, leadership and oratorical skills)
- Ability to exploit the political and socio-economic crisis
2. The response of the political system towards anti-democratic movements
- Dynamics of political party system
- Fascists use of the parliamentary road to power through alliances
- Conservative collaboration in Germany and Italy
- Agrarian areas a potentially fascist growth layer
- The left wing (revolution or reformism? Divided?)
3. The political cultural development prior to the interwar period
 - Treaty of Versailles (unfair to Germany, war debt)
- Militarization of political life and humiliation
- Unification of Italy 1861 and Germany 1871
- Young democracies
- Formative political period and fragile democracies

Conclusion
Failure or success of fascism (or communism)
- The extreme political movements themselves
- Political actors left little space to fascism and communism
- Repressive legislation to safeguard democracy
- Bulwark by progressive crisis and social reform policy
- The political culture prior to the interwar period

EVENTUEEL LECTURE TERUGKIJKEN!

Lecture 9

Stunde Null 1945

1. 1945 Turning point? no! Contemporaries thought so (yes) because of the idea of a
new beginning, remaking the world
2. Continuing warfare 1940’s: ethnic purification, violence, refugees, occupations
3. Judt: 1945 as an invented turning point, more ideology than reality
4. Mazower: victory liberal democracy not self-evident outcome European history,
decided by military force

Third Reich (1938-1945): Hitler’s Empire

- Unique empire? Comparison English colonial empire, USA, USSR, Napoleon
- What was unique was the fact that Hitler and a few men were the only leaders, so
once they died, the whole empire immediately fell apart.
- Western policy: repression and collaboration (1941 Idea renewal and regeneration,
‘New Order’)
- Eastern policy: Lebensraum: racial hierarchy (untermenschen)
- Two conflicting conceptions
- Ideological - radical conception
- Pragmatic technocracy & European market: primacy racial ideology leads
loss popular support

Third Reich: genocide

- Judt: ‘WWII was not about the jews’
- Background: antisemitism and völkisch & radical nationalism around 1900
- Development: Madagascar, Einsatzgruppen, death camps (Wannsee Conference)
- Culture of violence, racial purity and genocide first half 20th century since WWI

National and European memories

- Western Europe: national resistance myth & struggle against totalitarianism
- Eastern Europe: Nazism & fascism as variation capitalism (rise communism)
Internal political reconstruction
1. National resistance myth & forgetting of a difficult past
2. Retribution and purification, from revenge to forgetting and reconciliation
3. East versus West: continuity political elites
4. Renewal and disillusion: (partial) return pre-war parliamentary system

Reinventing Democracy: The Post-war Consensus (1945-1980)

Part I: Building the post-war Consensus

1. Re-inventing (Parliamentary) Democracy [democracy itself no longer contested]

2. Re-inventing ‘managed’ Capitalism with state intervention, and technocracy
(preventing a new ‘1929’
3. Welfare States: variations and parallel developments in various countries:
legitimation capitalism and democracy (Middle classes profit most!)

A managed & ‘moderate’ democracy

- No experiments: lessons from the past
- Depoliticization: ‘Euthanasia of politics’ (Keynes): politics does not provide
meaning: practical solutions
- Strong executive power vis-a-vis parliament
- Negotiations by elites rather than mass mobilization
- Rule by experts (technocracy)
- Legal and constitutional constraints: rule of law (‘Militant democracy’), constitutional
courts, HR
- Germany: role occupying powers (USA/UK)
- Critics of depoliticization (foreshadowing ‘1968’)

Dominance Christian Democracy

- Social-democracy versus Christian democracy
- Rupture with traditional political Protestantism and Catholicism: embracing
modernity
- ‘Catch all parties’ (model national socialists)
- Stability and cult of the family, quiet life
- Christian & conservative (Catholic) Human Rights (J. Maritain)
- 1950s European Integration (De Gaspari, Schumann & Adenauer) as christ dem
project

Part II: Contesting the Consensus

‘Thirty Glorious Years’: economic growth and democratic legitimacy

- From pessimism to optimism
- Growth as an ideology (OEEC 1956): average 4% after 1955
- State intervention (Keynes economics)
- Marshall Plan: Psychological, economic and political effects
- Reconstruction War Damage
- Economic cycles
 - Rising Wages and the shift from Agriculture to services/ Industry: Urbanization

International Context: Cold War

- From World War II to Cold War: 1943-49: transition, not break
- Capitalist democratic ‘West’ against ‘totalitarian’ East: USSR new enemy
- 1948 Prague Com Coup: Turning Point
- 1949 West German Constitution: partition Germany, end Third Way Germany
- Outcome: Stability but as at a high price
- Different paths: Spain/ Portugal/ Greece: authoritarian dictatorships

Eastern Europe: People’s democracies

- The other democracy... Discrediting capitalism and liberal democracy with fascism
and Third Reich
- Beginning: Democratic strategies and alliance with other parties
- After takeover: 1950s Terror and modernization, industrialization, social revolution
and purifications
- 1953 death Stalin: destalinization & reform communism
- 1956 Hungarian revolt: bureaucratic rule and end of democratic façade
- Still: until 1960s people’s democracies serious competitor of the West
(socio-economic development and technology)

Lecture 10

Turning point 1956: The Suez crisis

Decolonisation & The post-war International system

- Ending disciplinary boundaries between study colonies and European metropoles
(‘imperial history essential part of European history’). Global turn
- Imperialism and decolonization affected as much Europe as the rest of the world
(Buettner: ‘decolonization recreated Europe’)
- Close interaction of history of European integration and (de) colonization (people)
- Imperialism did not end in the 1960s: persisting legacies and memories (but also
colonial ‘aphasia’ & forgetting: A. Stohler): critical perspective

Ca. 1900 New Imperialism (cf. lecture 6a)

- New imperialism: from informal to formal empire: expansion in control and
geography, governance
- Ethical imperialism: Civilizing mission / White man’s burden
- Stirring of nationalism in the colonies (students in the metropolis)

World War I & Interbellum: ‘imperial fragility’

- End of German & Ottoman colonies: but also age of high imperialism Britain and
France (Empire exhibition 1924-25)
- Colonial soldiers: metropole dependent on imperial periphery & promises of
national independence
- 1919 peace: principle national self-determination (exclusive for Europe): but also
rising criticism
 - League of Nations: mandate system: both confirmation (French & English) Empires
as well start decolonisation
- Fascism (Germany, Italy, Japan) & communism (USSR): new imperial dreams

World War II as watershed? Yes and No

- Weakness imperial metropolis (occupied France, Belgium and the Netherlands)
- Vichy empire versus the Free French: North Africa as Vichy province (collaboration
with Nazi armies)
- Crisis of legitimacy: Struggle for freedom against foreign oppression
- Colonial soldiers dying for the Empire
- Financial weakening imperial Britain
- 1941 Atlantic charter USA-Britain: ‘sovereign rights and self-determination’ differently
interpreted
- 1942 Fall of Singapore as TP: promise of Indian independence

Imperial reconstruction after 1945 [‘Imperialism of decolonisation’]

- New liberal word order: UN & USA support decolonisation:
- Ambivalent effect Cold war
- Empire vital for reconstruction European countries after WOI (France, Britain & the
Netherlands) (‘Indië verloren, rampspoed geboren’)
- Decolonization Wars & ‘second colonization’
- End of Empire & European integration (1962 Algeria leaves EC....)

Decolonization waves 1945-1975

- Britain: India 1947, Israel/ Palestine 1948, Sudan, 1956, Ghana 1957
- France: Indo-China 1954, Morocco & Tunisia 1956, 1960 French West and
equatorial Africa, 1954-1962 Algerian war of indepence.
- The Netherlands: Indonesia ‘1949’, Surinam 1975
- Belgium: Congo 1960
- Portugal: Guinea-Bissau (1974); Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe
and Angola (1975)

Turning Point: 1956 Suez crisis

- British-French initiated attack by Israeli forces on Nasser’s Egypt
- No support USA (Cold war versus imperial mindset) and world community & internal
opposition
- Turning point imperialism: withdrawal GB & France (vacuum filled by USSR & USA)
- 1960 UN declaration: PM Macmillan: ’Wind of change’- speech.
- Related events:
- Hungary crisis 1956 (USSR):
- Treaty of Rome (1957): European integration instead of Empire?
Decolonisation & European integration

1960s/1970s: ‘New-colonialism’?
- Term ‘neo-colonialism’ (Kwame Nkrumah)
- From formal to informal empire: influence via middle-men, networks, corrupt
dictators and (oil) companies
 - ‘Françafrique’: Development & aid
- 1968-1972 decolonisation revolt against independence elites
- 1973 Oil crisis TP
- After 1980: financial imperialism? [Gildea]

Afterlives of the Empires

- Ann Stohler: ‘colonial aphasia’
- Robert Gildea: ‘Empires of the Mind’
- Migration (‘colonization in reverse’) & discussion
- Radical Islam as response to Imperialism?
- Brexit: revival of imperial memories (‘Global Britain’)
- Discussion slavery & Black Lives Matter, decolonization and memory wars

Contesting the post-war Consensus

Turning Point 1968? Different experiences

- Cultural revolution: Amsterdam, London, San Francisco, NYC
- Political Revolution: Paris,
- Militant revolution: Berlin, Milan, Turin
- Eastern Europe: oppression, Prague & Red army
- Ideas: sham parliamentary democracy, against domination and pro-’autonomy’ &
freedom & ‘participatory (basis) democracy’
- Attack on postwar elites (both from the right & left : conservative (De Gaulle) &
communist!): popularity Maoism

Background & Origins

- Baby-boom and battle of the generations
- Growth universities & mass higher education/Europe as a ‘young continent’
- Affluence and the end of austerity: but also housing and education shortages
- Authority memory WWII & Holocaust
- Dissatisfaction with stability and consumerism
- Comparison 1960 with 1830?
- Older Critiques of the post war consensus
- Media-revolution (television)

Contrasting Historical Interpretations:

- Generational struggle & last of the 19th revolutionary tradition
- Revisionism: 1968 as a non-event (T. Judt: minority, continuation 1950, no concrete
results: ‘interpretation in search of event’)?
- New emphasis on global cultural change
- Role elites: resistance or adaptation (James Kennedy)

Complex legacies ‘1968’

- Short term: no revolution, continuity consensus & adaptation: begin ‘conservative
revolution’
- Long term: Return ideology/ politics: radicalisation minority left (‘progressive
terrorism’, ‘lead years’), (return) activism
 - New progressive politics and parties (e.g. D66) (environment, participation,
sustainability)
- Cultural Revolution: changing cultural & sexual morals (contraception), youth culture
- Individualism & feminism: beginning of the end of the ‘age of the fathers’?
- But also: rise of the ‘New Right’ & populism

1970s: Crisis of the Consensus

- From optimism to pessimism/ disillusion (TP 1973 oil crisis)
- Decade of terrorism & environmental concern
- Economy: oil crisis, end Bretton Woods system, economic cycles, end of growth
factors: return of mass-unemployment, ‘stagflation’
- Migration policy and stagnation European integration: ‘Euro-sclerosis’ replacing
‘Glorious Years’
- Solution 1980s: ‘Thatcherism’: market-ideology & neoliberalism instead of state led
economy & elite consensus [next lecture]

Lecture 11

The neoliberal revolution and the ‘end of history’ (80’s and 90’s)

1970s: Crisis of the Consensus

- From optimism to pessimism/disillusion (TP 1973 Oil crisis)
- Causes: oil crisis, end Bretton Woods system, economic cycles, end of growth
factors: return of mass-unemployment, ‘stagflation’
- Decade of (left wing) terrorism & environmental concern: ‘Me decade’
- Migration policy and stagnation European integration: ‘euro-sclerosis’
- Satire & nostalgia instead of utopias

‘1979’ as a global Turning Point

- Margaret Thatcher British PM (1980 Ronald Reagan): Neoliberal revolution
- USSR: beginning military occupation Afghanistan
- China: Visit Deng Xiaoping to Washington (liberalization Chinese economy)
- Iranian Revolution (Iran-Iraq War 1980)
- Mecca: Grand Mosque Seizure & rise of salafism

The Conservative Revolution of Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990)

- Non-elitist background: lower middle-class, female, study chemistry Oxford
- Attack on post war consensus of state intervention: building neoliberal and
conservative consensus
- Atlantic (and global) movement: USA President Reagan

Policies Thatcher:
- Competition and free market/Privatization
- Decrease Taxation/Trickle down effect: wealth and inequality
- Enemies: Socialism, Unions, old elites
- Individualism instead of collectivism: ‘There is no such thing as society’.
- Conservative values: victorian age, anti-1968
- Uncompromising Style of leadership (‘Iron Lady’)
Ambivalent Effects
1. Economic renewal and dynamism in GB (London city: shift from industry to finance)
2. New elites
3. Larger and more centralized state
4. Social costs: rising inequality, deindustrialisation (in particular in Northern
England)

Thatcherism on the Continent?

- Similarities and differences: adaptation
- European Integration: ‘single market as strategy’ (J. Delors): 1986 Single European
Act, 1992 Maastricht Treaty
- F. Mitterrand: from Socialism (‘Grand Soir’) to liberal europeanism
- ‘Polderliberalisme’ R. Lubbers and W. Kok (consensus: Wassenaar)
- Germany & Italy

1990’s: ‘Third Way’

- ‘Social democracy with liberal means’
- Pragmatism (‘no ideological feathers’ Wim Kok 1995): continuity program
neoliberalism
- Managerial democracy (‘there is no alternative’)
- Governance on model entrepreneurs
- Export to Eastern Europe & Russia and rest world (IMF)

The fall of Communism 1989 (guest lecture)

I. The end of communism in Europe

1. Détente
- Easing of the Cold War confrontation- US-USSR dialogue
- Neue Ostpolitik- Charles de Gaulle, Willy Brandt and the European Economic
Community
- Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (1975)
- Economic entanglement
- European détente vs. superpower détente
2. Economic collapse
- Eastern European indebtedness
- Oil shocks 1973 & 1979
3. Socialist elites/ Gorbachev factor
- Generation change and gradual transformation (détente)
- Gorbachev factor (Glasnost, perestrojka & ‘Sinatra doctrine’)
- Stephen Kotkin, Uncivil Society 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist
Establishment (2009)
4. Peaceful revolutions
- Dissidents
- Solidarność Free Trade Union
- Autumn of nations
II. A New Europe

1. Collapse of socialist federations

- Soviet Union
- Czechoslovakia (Velvet divorce)
- Yugoslavia wars (1991-2001)
2. Reunification of Germany
- Two-plus-Four talks
- 3 October 1990- German Unity
3. European Union - Maastricht 1992
- Treaty on the European Union (European Coal and Steel Community,
Euratom, European Economic Community + new policies and mechanisms of
intergovernmental cooperation)
- Increased power of European Parliament
- Economic and Monetary Union
4. NATO and EU expansions

III. The End of History

1. Triumph of liberal democracy

- Liberal democracy and capitalism
- Social democracy with liberal means
- There is no alternative (TINA)
2. Multilateralism, regionalism and the fading of the nation state
3. Neoliberal reforms and the rise of international finance
- EU’s neoliberal turn
- Reforms and privatization in post-socialist countries
- The rise of international finance
4. Network society
- Technology
- Connectivity

IV. Dark Side of the 1990

1. Yugoslavia wars
- The break-up of Yugoslavia
- Genocide
- The role of international community (EU, UN, NATO)
2. Globalization’s discontents
3. Eastern Europe’s Ostalgie

Lecture 12

TPs general conclusions

1) Usually not predicted, but afterwards seen as inevitable development (1789, 1945,
1989)
2) Contemporaries seen as unique, but nuanced by historians and vice versa
 3) Changing evaluation of turning points: from negative to positive (idea of ‘revolution’)
change is good!
4) Turning Points and power: Who Makes Turning Points in History?
5) ‘Liquid politics’: re-ordering institutions and dominant ideas
6) Construction of European history: shifting turning points: examples from this course

TP Economic crisis: 2008-2014

- 2008 fall Lehmann brothers: world wide economic crisis 2009
- Crisis Washington consensus
- No clear mainstream alternative: begin re-assessment role of the national state /
economic inequality (Piketty) & rise populism
- Eurocrisis: Northern versus Southern Europe? Political Fall out

The Crisis of Western Hegemony and the Position of the European Union in a New
World Order (guest lecture)

PAGES TO READ FROM THE BOOK:

- 1792 - The Global Revolution (1-29)

- 1815 - Reconstructing Europe after Napoleon & Restoration Monarchies (29-42)
- 1848 & 1871 - (Counter) Revolution & War (75-91)
- 1885 - The Age of Empire (106-130)
- 1919 - Origins & Consequences of World War I (176-199)
- 1933 - The Crisis of Democracy (214-236)
- 1945 & 1948 - Retribution & Reconstruction (299-370)
- 1968 - Contesting the (post-war) Consensus (370-397)
- 1980’s - The Neo-liberal revolution & Third Way (398-412)

In total: 239 pages