Europe Contested: From the Kaiser to Brexit

535 Pages·2019·8.031 MB·English

by  Harold James

Europe Contested
Europe Contested analyses the failures and achievements of an astonishing
era of economic advance and political chaos, from the First World War up
to the present day.
Beginning with the Great War, the book goes on to examine connections
between the self-destruction of liberal democracy, market economics, and
the international political and security framework in the interwar period.
It then considers the mass politics that surrounded the glorification of
new-style leaders Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler before moving on to
explore the ways in which the interwar legacy was superseded post-1945.
James examines the deceptive appearance of stability brought by a new
convergence in European politics that focused around the market and the
principle of liberal democracy, and demonstrates how the impact of globali-
zation and openness to migration and to destabilizing financial capital flows
has eroded traditional politics and ended the stable left–right polarization
at the core of the postwar order. This new edition has been thoroughly
updated throughout, demonstrating also how an era of crisis is challenging
Europe and its values.
Supported by boxed case studies, illustrations, chronologies, and an
annotated bibliography, and focusing on Europe as a whole, it is the perfect
introduction for students of Modern European History.
Harold James is the Claude and Lore Kelly Professor in European Studies
at Princeton University, USA. His books include The German Slump (1986),
The End of Globalization (2001), and Making the European Monetary
Union (2012).
Longman History of Modern Europe
In this series:
Europe 1850–1914
Progress, Participation and Apprehension
Jonathan Sperber
Revolutionary Europe 1780–1850
Jonathan Sperber
Europe Contested
From the Kaiser to Brexit
Harold James
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Longman-History-of-Modern-Europe/book-series/PEAMODE.
Europe Contested
From the Kaiser to Brexit
2nd edition
Harold James
Second edition published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
 2020 Harold James
The right of Harold James to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Pearson Education Limited 2003
Second edition published by Routledge 2020
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: James, Harold, 1956- author.
Title: Europe contested : from the kaiser to Brexit / Harold James.
Other titles: Europe reborn
Description: Second edition. | London ; New York, NY : Routledge/
Taylor & Francis Group, 2020. | Revised edition of: Europe reborn :
a history, 1914-2000. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019022922 (print) | LCCN 2019022923 (ebook)
| ISBN 9781138303065 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138303072
(paperback) | ISBN 9780429340680 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Europe—History—20th century. | Europe—
History—21st century.
Classification: LCC D424 .J27 2020 (print) | LCC D424 (ebook) |
DDC 940.5—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019022922
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019022923
ISBN: 978-1-138-30306-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-30307-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-34068-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of illustrations xi
List of boxes xiii
Map xiv
Introduction 1
Chronology 7
1 The twentieth century in an iron cage:
modernization and rationalization 35
Modernization 35
Greater wealth 36
Transformed demographics 38
After and before work 40
Greater equality 41
Mobility 42
Leisure 43
Women, work, and families 43
Individualism 46
Belief 46
The decline of rural life 47
Designing urban life 48
2 War and peace: Lenin and Wilson 54
War and mobilization 54
War and empire 61
Revolution 62
Oil 74
Peace-making 75
The quest for security 86
vi Contents
3 The 1920s: precarious democracy 89
Weimar democracy 90
The United Kingdom 96
France 100
Italy 101
Democracy, community, and hatred 107
4 Europe and the world of the Depression 112
Society and depression 113
Germany’s slide into dictatorship 119
British crisis management 125
French crises 130
Successful corporatism 132
Turkey: the strong man of Europe? 133
Failed solidarity 135
Dictatorship 140
Spain as the European hotspot 143
5 Peace and war: the failure of the international
order in the 1930s 151
The new Germany 155
Soviet civilization? 171
Terrors compared 180
6 The Second World War 183
Blitzkrieg 184
Racial war 187
World war 194
The Nazi New Order in Europe 200
The neutrals 209
The Pope and the war 212
The Anglo-American vision 216
7 The reconstruction of Europe, Western style:
making the 1950s 221
Ideals and realpolitik 221
Human rights 224
Economic prosperity 227
Security risks 230
Germany: a new kind of state 232
The princess in the fairy stories: France 235
Contents vii
The price of the UK’s goodbye to empire 245
Italy and one-party politics 251
Small (social) democracies 254
Dictatorships 256
The modernization of Turkey 258
The modernization of the Church 259
The dynamics of growth 259
European integration 262
Europe and the United States 265
8 Yalta and communism: the reconstruction of Europe,
Eastern style, from the 1940s to the 1970s 269
Yalta 269
Ideals and violence 271
Coalition rule 272
Stalinism and the Zhdanov line 275
After Stalin 278
Disillusionment 283
Technology 287
Solidarność 288
9 A golden age: the 1960s 295
Chemicals and the youth culture 297
The youth revolt 299
The legacy of 1968 307
Women’s rights 308
Homosexual clashes 311
10 The limits to growthmanship: the 1970s 315
Mediterranean instability 315
The Keynesian boom and its discontents 321
Morality and politics 325
External constraints 327
Can events be controlled after all? 331
11 Right step: the 1980s 337
The Thatcher model 337
France’s two-year experiment with
socialist policies 346
German conservatism 348
The European framework 352
viii Contents
12 Malta and communism: 1989 and the
restoration of Europe 355
Gorbachev 355
Jaruzelski 357
1989 358
The Soviet collapse 365
13 The return to Europe: the new politics and
the end of the Cold War 370
Normalized demographics 371
Normalized politics 375
Non-national business 378
The politics of TINA 380
The new politics 1: property 383
The new politics 2: morality and foreign policy 393
The new politics 3: corruption 401
The new politics 4: the threatened environment 408
The new politics 5: localist nationalisms 410
14 Europe in a new world order 427
Financial crisis and the end of testosterone-driven
American capitalism? 428
The financial crisis and American power 431
The refugee crisis 437
Security 440
Energy 444
Populism 445
An aging, graying Europe 454
The twentieth century is over: long and short centuries 460
Appendix 1: populations of major European countries 464
Appendix 2: short biographies 465
Appendix 3: further reading 478
Index 496
Acknowledgments
I should like to thank the following for helping me with individual points of
information, for reading parts of the manuscript, and for helpful suggestions:
Michael Bordo, Cynthia Hooper, Molly Greene, Stephen Kotkin, and Arno
Mayer. David Childs, Marzenna James, Philip Nord, Hamish Scott, and
Richard Vinen gave insightful comments on the whole manuscript. Heather
McCallum at Longmans was an inspiring and helpful editor. Judy Hanson of
the Princeton History Department helped me enormously by organizing time
and assistance, and Alicia Pittard did a wonderful job in researching individual
questions and organizing biographical and chronological information. The
usual caveat applies: none of my friends is responsible for remaining errors
of fact or for problematical arguments.
The process of thinking about history is accompanied by numerous,
indeed endless, discussions. I should like to record my gratitude to an
exceptional and inspirational group of teachers in the Cambridge of the
1970s, who helped to shape my view of Europe: John Tanfield of the Perse
School, and Christopher Andrew, the Rev. Owen Chadwick, the Rev.
Dermot Fenlon, Neil McKendrick, Edward Shils, Jonathan Steinberg, and
Norman Stone of Cambridge University. When I came to Princeton in
the 1980s, Cyril Black and Arno Mayer were giving lucid and innovative
accounts of Europe’s twentieth century.
I would also like to thank friends and colleagues with whom I have
discussed European affairs in a number of institutions at which I have
stayed as a guest or worked over the past fifteen years: Claudio Borio, Piet
Clement, and Hyun Song Shin, at the Bank for International Settlements;
Hans Werner Sinn and Clemens Fuest at CES-ifo Munich and at the
European Economic Advisory Group; Melanie Aspey, Hugo Bänziger,
Catherine Schenk, Niels Viggo Haueter, at the European Association of
Banking and Financial History; Sebastian Conrad, Giancarlo Corsetti,
Giovanni Federico, Tony Molho, Emanuel Mourlon-Druol, Kiran Klaus
Patel, and Bartolomé Yun Casalilla, at the European University Institute,
Fiesole; Tam Bayoumi, Rex Ghosh, Martin Muhleisen, and Siddharth
Tiwari, at the International Monetary Fund; Knut Sogner at the Oslo
Business School (BI); Bridget Kendall and Brendan Simms at Peterhouse,