The increasing radicalization of political life in most countries in Europe lends special relevance to studies of the antifascist legacies on the continent. This insightful collection of essays is an in-depth review of antifascism in Slovenia, setting it in the context of related movements elsewhere in Europe. The period treated by the 19 essays comprises the interwar period, World War Two, and the post-war decades. The comparative and transnational perspectives advanced by the volume change our understanding of antifascism.

The essays deal with the right-wing but also left-wing instrumentalization of antifascism, with a particular focus on the communist and post-communist periods. The authors point out that antifascism comes in various strains, whether inspired by liberalism, social democracy, communism, monarchism, anarchism, or even Christian conservatism. The contributors bring to light several overlooked antifascist actors, campaigns, and organisations, mostly in Slovenia and the Adriatic area.

Anthropologist Dr Ad Borsboom, chair of Pacific Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen, devoted his academic career from 1972 onwards to the transmission of cultural knowledge. Borsboom handed the insights he acquired during many years of fieldwork among Australian Aborigines on to other academics, students and the general public. This collection of essays by his colleagues, specializing in cultures from across the globe, focuses on knowledge transmission. The contributions deal with local forms of education or pedagogics, the learning experiences of fieldwork and the nexus of status and education. Whereas some essays are reflexive, others are personal in nature. But all of the authors are fascinated by the divergent ways in which people handle ‘knowledge’. The volume provides readers with respectful representations of other cultures and their distinct epistemologies.

Eurocentrism means seeing the world in Europe’s terms and through European eyes. This may not be unreasonable for Europeans, but there are unforeseen consequences. Eurocentric history implies that a scientific modernity has diffused out from Europe to benefit the rest of the world, through colonies and development aid. It involves the imposition of European norms on places and times where they are often quite inappropriate. In Eurocentrism in European History and Memory, well-known scholars explore and critically analyse manifestations of Eurocentrism in representations of the European past from different disciplines — history, literature, art, memory and cultural policy — as well as from different geographical perspectives. The book investigates the role imaginings of the European past since the eighteenth century played in the construction of a Europeanist worldview and the ways in which ‘Europe’ was constructed in literature and art.

Fireworks are synonymous with celebration in the twenty-first century. But pyrotechnics—in the form of rockets, crackers, wheels, and bombs—have exploded in sparks and noise to delight audiences in Europe ever since the Renaissance. Here, Simon Werrett shows that, far from being only a means of entertainment, fireworks helped foster advances in natural philosophy, chemistry, mathematics, and many other branches of the sciences.

 

Fireworks brings to vibrant life the many artful practices of pyrotechnicians, as well as the elegant compositions of the architects, poets, painters, and musicians they inspired. At the same time, it uncovers the dynamic relationships that developed between the many artists and scientists who produced pyrotechnics. In so doing, the book demonstrates the critical role that pyrotechnics played in the development of physics, astronomy, chemistry and physiology, meteorology, and electrical science. Richly illustrated and drawing on a wide range of new sources, Fireworks takes readers back to a world where pyrotechnics were both divine and magical and reveals for the first time their vital contribution to the modernization of European ideas.

An epic account of the House of Orange-Nassau over one hundred and fifty years of European history.
 
Three rulers from the House of Orange-Nassau reigned over the Netherlands from 1813 to 1890: King William I from 1813 to 1840, King William II from 1840 to 1849, and King William III from 1849 to 1890. Theirs is an epic tale of joy and tragedy, progress and catastrophe, disappointment and glory—all set against the backdrop of a Europe plagued by war and revolution.
 
The House of Orange in Revolution and War relates one and a half centuries of House of Orange history in a gripping narrative, leading the reader from the last stadholders of the Dutch Republic to the modern monarchy of the early twentieth century, from the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars to World War I and the European Revolutions that came after it.

This is a collection of soundings into various aspects of the history of maritime labor from the close of the Middle Ages to the present. The spatial emphasis of the essays is north European and Atlantic since they deal with the countries around the North Sea and Baltic with some coverage of North America. The phrase work at sea naturally makes one think of merchant seafaring and its ancillary trades but, again, several authors in this book deal with navies and naval personnel as important constituents of the seagoing workforce. Indeed, from time to time the authors leave the sea behind in order to examine broader issues such as labor markets, the regulation and institutions of seafaring, and industrial relations on the waterfront. But at all points there is a common theme of sea-related labor, and a common objective of better understanding what have often been perceived as difficult and elusive groups of people. Marcus Rediker was surely correct in a recent essay to stress the challenge of producing more inclusive maritime historical research: We need to get back to basics, to careful empirical reconstructions of the lifeways of peoples long rendered silent in the writing of history.

Based on a collaboration between historians of Chinese and European politics, Political Communication in Chinese and European History, 800-1600 offers a first comprehensive overview of current research on political communication in middle-period European and Chinese history. The chapters present new work on the sources and processes of political communication in European and Chinese history partly through juxtaposing and combining formerly separate historiographies and partly through direct comparison. Contrary to earlier comparative work on empires and state formation, which aimed to explain similarities and differences with encompassing models and new theories of divergence, the goal is to further conversations between historians by engaging regional historiographies from the bottom up.

This study describes and analyses a wide array of initiatives leading to the hunt, by Dutch whalemen, of whales and seals in Arctic waters, the temperate zones of the South Pacific and the waters of the Dutch East Indies during the major part of the nineteenth century (1815-1885) an era neglected so far.

Turning Points in Modern Times focuses on events after 1917: the rise of Nazism on the Right and authoritarianism on the Left. Bracher provides an incisive framework for understanding the great ideological confrontation of this century--democracy versus totalitarianism in the forms of fascism, Nazism, and communism. His analysis of the outcomes underscores the significance and power of democratic values and governments.

The doyen of German political history, Karl Dietrich Bracher extends the argument against dictatorship that runs through his life's work, offers a blueprint for dealing with the recent past of the communist East German State (DDR), looks at the true facts of the Stasi collaboration, and challenges misperceptions of Hitler, Stalin, and others. He demonstrates the kinship between fascism and communism, considers Weimar and liberalism, assesses the legacy of Nazism, and outlines the ethos of democracy. In all this Bracher exposes the twentieth-century threats to the democratic state so that they can never again subvert representative government.

A founder of the new history of Germany, which considers the larger context for Hitler and illuminates events through the theories of social science and the values of liberalism and democracy, Bracher writes in the tradition of Acton, Burckhardt, Croce, and Dahrendorf. This is a vital history lesson for our turbulent times, when once more democracy is on the march after a twilight century.