The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was the first and most notable post-war supranational community advancing the process of European integration. It is also the only such community which ceased to exist after 50 years, as laid down in its founding treaty. Based on archival research, this article reviews the discussion on the future of the ECSC Treaty within the European institutions held

In this article, we revisit the story of the League of Nations’ (1919–1946) death. Throughout its existence, the League served as an instrument for a series of important experiments in organising European politics and negotiating Europe's place in the wider global order. To understand the League's demise and legacy, we need to study these different conceptions of Europe, their shortcomings, failures

It has long been a matter of contention what role the Nuremberg Trials accorded to the murder of the European Jews. While especially early historiography considered the Allied war crimes proceedings the beginning of «Holocaust trials», a later generation of scholars would argue that the extermination of Europe’s Jews was both under- and misrepresented in the course of the 1945–1949 trials. The present

History still looms large in the politics of East Asia. Rather than settling into a modicum of consensus, debates on how to understand and commemorate the Second World War even seem to gain in intensity and emotionality with the passage of time. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the debates on landmark cases of (post-) transitional justice, particularly the Tokyo Trial of 1946–1948 and later, more

The Tokyo and Nuremberg tribunals led to the disappearance of the Axis alliance. In this process, a domestication of the past commenced in both Germany and Japan as the memory of the war became regionalised and, above all, nationalised. This has had paradoxical consequences to this day: we have been left with a history of the Second World War in which the world has been left out. This article argues

The era of the Troubles in Belfast brought both challenges to free movement and grassroots responses to such challenges. The conflict itself inspired divisions and barriers to mobility within the city, notably including the establishment of British Army checkpoints and the construction of various “peace walls” under the direction of the British Government. While the geospatial significance of the Troubles

The progressive elevation of ideologies and discourses of free movement constitutes a vital narrative of modern European history. This introduction offers a brief genealogy of free movement in European thought and politics in modern liberalism since the late eighteenth century and outlines the actors, spaces and conflicts of free movement in postwar Europe. Furthermore, it offers a discussion of the

This article illustrates how Catholicism contributed to the rebuilding of local and transnational mobility in early Cold War Europe. After World War II came to an end, Christian hopes for a post-war spiritual renewal led to a significant resurgence of religion in the West. The trauma of division and oppression, as well as the fear of a devastating international nuclear war, resulted in a particular

This article seeks to tshed light on the history of twentieth-century sedentarization policies in metropolitan France. It analyses the implementation of the so called ‘Tsigane Hamlet’, completed in the town of Plan-de-Grasse in the Alpes-Maritimes in 1966. This Hamlet concerned Roma and Sinti families that, even in the 1960s, were continuing to experience the harsh after-effects of the War and had

How to organize domestic care for relatives living with a disability and elderly family members is a major challenge for individual households, as it is for all European societies. Taking up current debates on the future of family care work, this special issue offers historical perspectives on family care for people with disabilities. It investigates the relationship between disability welfare and

This article examines the contrast between the interwar British state's emphasis on motherhood and the justification for the institutional care of a relatively small group of blind babies. After the First World War, concerns about the state of the nation were addressed in part by legislation and an increase in the number of organisations which purported to help mothers to bring up healthy babies. The

Who is responsible for health care? Neoliberal policies since the 1970s seem to place this responsibility increasingly on the individual, in a process that is called responsibilization. The recent literature on neoliberalism, however, has questioned the preference of free-market liberalism for individual responsibility and shows how neoliberals often made common cause with communitarian conservatives

The Industrial Revolution traditionally has been seen in Disability Studies as marking a decisive shift in the lives of disabled people. It is argued that the rise of mechanisation, time discipline and standardisation made the industrial workplace a hostile environment for people with non-standard bodies. According to this view, increasing demands to work outside the home also meant that families were

During World War II, tens of thousands of Latvians served in German-led military formations, primarily in the Waffen-SS Latvian Legion. After the war, around 25,000 former Legionnaires transitioned from prisoner of war camps run by the Western Allies to civilian life in a variety of Western countries. They created veterans’ organisations — such as Daugavas Vanagi (‘Hawks of the Daugava’) — which also

Parents and their disabled children in both German states faced discrimination and severe challenges in the organisation of family life. In the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), from the 1960s onwards, parents achieved more far-reaching influence over the schooling and overall treatment of their children. The reasons for and avenues of parental empowerment

This article explores the quest for legitimacy and popular consent during the British occupation of north-western Germany between 1945 and 1949. It does so through an analysis of two major propaganda campaigns that sought to publicly legitimise the British occupation at home and in Germany: ‘Germany under Control’, a large-scale exhibition put on display in London in 1946; and ‘Operation Stress’, the

This article explores the active participation and, in some cases, resistance of farmers’ associations in Italy and France to European integration from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. The article examines, firstly, how Italian associations became active, due to their faltering relationship with the Christian Democrats, in searching new forms of political influence through more radical methods of mobilisation

European integration has been promoted, shaped and criticised by a variety of actors in different frameworks since 1945. Non-state actors such as employers’ associations became involved in this process very early on and, contrary to the widespread assumption in political science, created or revived transnational business associations in order to debate and shape the development of European integration

The European Parliament influenced policy, and was a forum for the airing and sharing of a wide array of views and approaches to forms of European integration. Often conflicted and divided, members of the British Labour Group, comprising of the elected Labour Party representatives to the European Parliament, viewed the European Economic Community as a key platform and means through which workers’ rights

This article analyses the Europeanization of West German associations of Wehrmacht veterans in the 1950s. Using archival sources concerning the foundation of a European veterans’ umbrella organisation, the article argues that the veterans’ attempts at political reassertion in the post-war decades cannot be understood without accounting for their European dimension. Indeed, the veterans considered their

This article argues that lawyers were important agents in the remaking of British Euroscepticism during the Maastricht treaty period and should be written into its history. It offers new subject matter, exploring how and why lawyers challenged the Maastricht treaty through the English courts. From its initial preparation to its ultimate failure, the legal case fused together a defence of high ideals

With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the Ottoman Empire and Montenegro, which no longer shared a border due to the shifted territories following the Balkan Wars (1912–13), faced each other as belligerents in two different coalitions (the Entente and the Central powers). Throughout this process, Montenegrin citizens, both Muslim and non-Muslim, living in the Ottoman territories and working in various

This article introduces the complex historical and memory landscape of Southeast Europe in connection with the Second World War and its aftermath. In what ways have responses to mass atrocities in the region been shaped, how have they permeated public discourse, and to what extent have they been reflected in the entangled Balkan history? By analysing occupation, genocide, resistance, collaboration

Xhafer Deva is one of the most notorious figures in the history of World War II in Kosovo and ‘Greater Albania’. As Minister of the Interior of the ‘Greater Albanian’ state and a Nazi collaborator, he was responsible for the assassination, deportation and expulsion of countless Serbs. At the same time, he fought for the integration of Kosovo into Albania. As such, notwithstanding the mass atrocities

The aristocracy and their use of commercial credit are seldom explored in the European comparative context despite important studies of the French aristocracy and their credit relations with shopkeepers, tradesmen and fashion merchants. This article studies the aristocracy and commercial credit in England, Germany and Sweden, by drawing on the normative literature and the account books, receipted bills

The prosecution of Max Merten (1911–1971), the only Nazi war criminal accused of Holocaust involvement in Greece, coincided not only with the start of the Greek-German negotiations on victim compensation but also with the Eichmann trial. In 1959, the Merten Case provoked a massive public backlash, both because of the gravity of his crimes and because of his impending extradition to West Germany. We

In May 1944, at the age of 33, the lawyer and writer Ottó Kornis was crammed into a cattle car in his native Transylvanian town, Kolozsvár (in Romanian: Cluj; after 1974: Cluj-Napoca) with 72 of his fellow Jewish citizens, his parents included. They were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. His parents were murdered upon arrival. Out of all the passengers in that cattle car, only he and four other Jews

In the 1830s and the 1840s, Paris was a gathering place for numerous political exiles from different nationalities, including Germans, Italians and Poles. The French capital offered them the opportunity to publish, debate and transnationally exchange ideas with one another in ways that were impossible in their home countries. This article develops a research perspective on these exiles that connects

Opposing the treaties signed after the Paris Peace Conference, the Soviet state and the nascent Turkish Republic saw themselves as potential allies. The Treaties of Moscow and Kars in 1921 were the legal expressions of this. Among other things, both signatory powers agreed that a bilateral commission would demarcate their newly established mutual border in the South Caucasus. This article provides

Even though the crucial importance of World War II has never been called into doubt by historians, it has not featured as a focal point for the interpretation of the 20th century in recent narrativ...

The British Protectorate of the Ionian Islands, and particularly Corfu, was a nodal point in maritime communications. Since its very creation under the Treaty of Paris (November 1815), it gave the ...

This article traces what hindsight shows to be the failure paths of the Ottoman ruling elites in dealing with the Greek revolution of 1821–1832. It considers why Sultan Mahmud II and the Ottoman mi...

Slavery remained a problem for Central Europeans after the defeat of Napoleon. Concerns over White, Christian enslavement animated German-speaking European responses to the Greek Independence movem...

Virtually every publication on the Greek Revolution signals the Battle of Navarino (20 October 1827) as a turning point in international involvement with events in Greece. What the historiography t...

This contribution examines the position of the Habsburg Empire vis-à-vis the Greek Revolution of 1821–1830 with a special focus on policing. It suggests that with its undeniable transnational signi...

The unification of Italian public debts in 1861 has been analysed until now without any detailed investigation into the changes that occurred in pre-existent public finance models, particularly as ...

This article investigates the changing ideas of representation during one of the European upheavals of the 1830s, the Polish November Uprising. Studying the Polish Sejm proceedings, we ask about th...

Histories of the freedom of movement during the Cold War often focus on issues of immigration. Yet, national security frameworks set up after the Second World War also involved restrictions of the ...

This article investigates the first generation of peasant farmers elected to modern representative assemblies in Denmark. I argue that the contributions of the first peasant farmer politicians are ...

The article presents the idea of a third unit in the Habsburg Monarchy prior to World War I as seen through the eyes of Slovenian liberals. The author presents the broader political context in whic...

In the 20th century, Sweden distinguished itself as one of the most organized and participatory democracies in the world. But in the late 19th century the situation was much the opposite – Sweden h...

One route out of continental Europe for Jewish refugees seeking to escape Nazi and Vichy persecution was via Franco’s Spain. Yet hundreds of these refugees were imprisoned soon after arriving in th...

This article investigates the struggle for control over the violence that the Second Polish Republic and the First Czechoslovak Republic fought during their early independence in 1918. As violence ...

This article draws together historical sources and political science insights to test the emergence of civil war at the end of empire. It focuses on civil conflict in two French colonial territorie...

This article examines the process of disintegration and reconstitution of political authority in civil war with reference to the Russian (1918–1921) and Greek (1946–1949) civil wars. These conflict...

This article discusses the background and diplomatic strategies of the Turkish delegation at Lausanne and their selective understanding of self-determination, excluding non-Turkic and non-Muslim pe...

This article assesses the occurrence of civil war in the Balkans during World War II and the Axis occupation. It draws on the wartime experiences in the border areas of Kosovo (‘Greater Albania’)/S...

For most Turks the emergence of the Republic of Turkey out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire involved a four-year period of national struggle/milli mücadele. In the version of events canonised by ...

The aim of this article is to explain why and how two formerly hostile states such as the USSR and West Germany concluded a gas deal in 1970 that lasted not only the 20 years that had been initiall...

Democratic support for measures to combat climate change has been increasing throughout Europe across the political spectrum, among liberals, social democrats and confessional parties alike.1 Acknowledging heightened environmental concerns among voters, most European governments have set up generous subsidies for windmills, solar panels and electric cars in order to stimulate decarbonization.2 Yet

Taking an analysis of relevant statements and campaigns of the right-wing extremist group ‘Identitarian Movement’ in German-speaking countries as a starting point, this article will reconstruct the...

This article demonstrates how anti-gender discourse – originating in the Vatican and spreading through ultra-conservative networks such as the World Congress of Families – draws on traditions of co...

Heightened awareness and alarmism about climate change have prompted politicians, public intellectuals and scholars alike to reconsider the political values, structures and institutions with which to confront it. A number of recurring directions of thought and experiment may be distinguished. For one, ecological authoritarianism – the strand of thought that proposes to abolish or suspend democracy

This article explores gender and the far-right in the United States with specific attention to female actors and gendered ideologies in the realms of culture and media. By focusing on several femal...