Books like Contention and Democracy in Europe, 1650-2000

This is a classic book dealing with the Terror during the 1789 French Revolution.

I like the way it shows how the French revolutionaries quickly resorted to violence. They talked about democracy, equality, and liberty but were quick to deny them to their “enemies,” chief among them other revolutionaries who were too “moderate” or too “extreme.”

In so doing, I like how the book shows how the French revolutionaries established a regime with what a modern observer would recognize as features of a totalitarian dictatorship. 

Acemoglu and Robinson's book is (one of) the best theoretical monograph(s) in political economy.

I like how the book starts from a simple framework and then develops a series of models that emphasize how conflict and the potential for violent confrontation are essential factors for democratization.

Moreover, those models are always presented in perspective with an historical narrative that emphasizes why democracy is able to persist or not.

This book provided me with a fresh perspective on the 1789 Revolution in France.

I like its convincing analysis that the French Revolution was not a movement that directly caused or resulted from the Industrial Revolution.

Instead, it argues that it was a political revolution with “anti-capitalist” consequences: it solidified the agricultural pattern of small landowners, thereby explaining why France had remained relatively more agricultural than England or Germany by the turn of the twentieth century.

I like how this book brings 17th-century England alive.

It emphasizes how different England was from the country which we know today, notably by showing how religious outlooks shaped all aspects of life, from holiday celebrations to politics. At the same time, it also dwells on the economic and political factors which triggered the English Civil War in the 1640s.

Indeed, by ending its narrative with the 1688 Glorious Revolution and William of Orange's coming to power, it also provides the background for England’s international dominance in the 18th century.

This masterful analysis of European foreign policy encompasses a period slightly larger than the life of Napoleon, but the core of the book is the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. On first reading this I was struck not only by the depth and breadth of Schroeder’s knowledge, but also by his uncanny ability to question standard interpretations and to present an original and oftentimes provocative evaluation. This book made me think about how best to write history. Elegantly written, this is an accomplished tome that will be read by students of foreign policy for many years to come. 

It takes real historic breadth to write a comprehensive history of the nineteenth century and only a historian of the quality of Evans could pull it off so convincingly. Like his mentor Eric Hobsbawm—but unencumbered by the Marxian straight-jacket—Evans masterfully draws the links not only between decades and between countries and continents but also between the social, the economic, and the political. His book is no demographic history, but it takes demography seriously. This really matters in a century in which the Malthusian bonds were broken for some of humanity, not all of it, making it a period of European global supremacy underpinned by demographic takeoff, the effects of which we are still feeling.

Surely the rise of Hitler and the impact of global depression gave an air of inevitability about the holocaust to follow? In this successor volume, Steiner makes clear many other factors were in play that might have altered Europe’s fate. She details the West’s overriding fear of Soviet communism, the crucial role Mussolini played as termite to the tentative international order built in the 1920s, and the deep internal divisions that French leaders ultimately were unable to overcome, divisions that played their own role in strengthening British Prime Minister Chamberlain’s decision to deal with Hitler at the Munich conference. 

Again, this may be a bit dense reading but Wolff tackles the very notion of “Eastern Europe.”

The Enlightenment was a philosophical movement that began in the mid-17th century and lasted until about 1800, and it focused on remaking politics. Enlightenment thinkers believed in change and progress, that Europeans were not doomed to suffer under the tyranny of feudal kings.

Wolff explores how these Enlightenment thinkers celebrated an Age of Progress in Western Europe – but were less impressed with the Eastern half. For thinkers like Voltaire, “Eastern Europe” came to mean backward, under-developed, superstitious, and violent Europe.

These thinkers began using this term, “Eastern Europe” in the 1770s to mean “the Other Europe,” like an embarrassing, unwanted sibling. Wolff describes how these attitudes shaped Western policies towards Eastern Europe. 

Fascism and Communism purported to explain all social and political phenomena and, on that basis, justified their authoritarian or totalitarian rule. The term ‘fascist’ tends to be loosely applied to intolerant and autocratic political behaviour, but the outstandingly lucid, and highly readable, book by Robert Paxton not only surveys fascism in practice – in Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany and in fascist movements and parties in many different countries – it also shows what its distinctive components are. What he calls the ‘mobilizing passions’ of fascism include the glorification of war and violence, expansionism, racism, a fixation on national solidarity, rejection of the legitimacy of diverse interests and values within a society, and, not least, a cult of the heroic leader, with the leader’s instincts counting for more than reasoned, evidence-based argument.

One of the most popular explanations for the outbreak of war between 1918 and 1939 was that it had been caused by the ‘Merchants of Death,’ i.e. the large armaments firms and their financiers who profited from international animosity. Although the conspiracy theory tendency in this belief gradually dissipated, the idea that the arms race was a significant contributory factor leading to war has long featured on any list of ‘causes’.

David Stevenson’s exhaustive research in the archives of most of the combatant states has provided us with massive and fascinating detail on the thinking of those involved and the relationship between geopolitical ambitions, strategic calculations, and financial realities. His treatment makes for fascinating reading, enhanced by crisply argued interpretations of the role of military and naval preparedness in the crises that plagued prewar Europe.