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Europe
Half a millennium of European warfare brilliantly retold by masterly historian Brendan Simms At the heart of Europe's history lies a puzzle. In most of the world humankind has created enormous political frameworks, whether ancient (such as China) or modern (such as the United States). Sprawling empires, kingdoms or republics appear to be the norm. By contrast Europe has remained stubbornly chaotic and fractured into often amazingly tiny pieces, with each serious attempt to unify the continent (by Charles V, Napoleon and Hitler) thwarted. In this marvelously ambitious and exciting new book, Brendan Simms tells the story of Europe's constantly shifting geopolitics and the peculiar circumstance...
Intervention and State Sovereignty in Central Europe, 1500-1780
Interventions in other states on behalf of their subject populations is often portrayed as a novel phenomenon in state practice, one which breaches the old principle of sovereignty. But is this practice really so new? Patrick Milton argues that such interventions for the protection of other rulers' subjects occurred frequently as far back as the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. It is the first detailed study of interventions in the early modern period and focusses on central Europe, in particular the Holy Roman Empire. It therefore challenges the common view that in the period after the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the legal scope for, and occurrence of, intervention, were reduced. The book sheds new light on the geopolitical and legal interconnections between the old German Reich and Europe, while also providing comparative insights. It investigates the norms inherent in central European interventions and thereby contributes to a better understanding of the political and legal culture of the Empire, while also assessing the relative importance of geopolitical considerations in such undertakings.
Affairs of Humanity
A new look at the origins of humanitarian intervention We are encouraged to empathize with the suffering of distant strangers every day, from ads for UNICEF to the outcry over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But where did this type of politics come from? Historian and practicing barrister Catherine Arnold locates the religious origins of humanitarian politics in early eighteenth‑century Britain and Europe. In the late seventeenth century, British politicians argued for “confessional intervention”—in other words, for interventions to protect Britain’s fellow Protestants in continental Europe. By the 1740s, however, a cadre of high‑ranking British officials was advocating instead f...
Europe and the British Geographical Imagination, 1760-1830
Europe and the British Geographical Imagination, 1760-1830 explores what literate British people understood by the word 'Europe' in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Was Europe unified by shared religious heritage? Where were the edges of Europe? Was Europe primarily a commercial network or were there common political practices too? Was Britain itself a European country? While intellectual history is concerned predominantly with prominent thinkers, Paul Stock traces the history of ideas in non-elite contexts, offering a detailed analysis of nearly 350 geographical reference works, textbooks, dictionaries, and encyclopaedias, which were widely read by literate Britons of all...
Three Victories and a Defeat
'Studded with brilliant vignettes and arresting insights, Simms's marvellous narrative presents an original and provocative account not only of the rise and decline of British eighteenth-cetury imperial power, but also of the processes that formed the modern global system' Christopher Clark This highly original, extremely enjoyable book tells the story of Britain’s extraordinary scramble to world power in the 18th century and how, through hubris and incompetence, it lost almost everything it had gained. Whilst Britain was an important European power, few would have expected her global preeminence by 1760, but as Brendan Simms shows with great flair and originality, Britain had a crucial card to play. It was the joining of the British crown to Hanover that gave Britain two empires: one scattered around the world and another – the more important of the two - firmly locked into Germany. Having created a new empire Britain then spectacularly lost it, this time because of its chaotic failure to maintain its European alliances. This is an epic and often unexpected story, and Simms tells it brilliantly.
Domesticating Human Rights
This book develops a philosophical conception of human rights that responds satisfactorily to the challenges raised by cultural and political critics of human rights, who contend that the contemporary human rights movement is promoting an imperialist ideology, and that the humanitarian intervention for protecting human rights is a neo-colonialism. These claims affect the normativity and effectiveness of human rights; that is why they have to be taken seriously. At the same time, the same philosophical account dismisses the imperialist crusaders who support the imperialistic use of human rights by the West to advance liberal culture. Thus, after elaborating and exposing these criticisms, the ...
Hitler
From a prize-winning historian, the definitive biography of Adolph Hitler Hitler offers a deeply learned and radically revisionist biography, arguing that the dictator's main strategic enemy, from the start of his political career in the 1920s, was not communism or the Soviet Union, but capitalism and the United States. Whereas most historians have argued that Hitler underestimated the American threat, Simms shows that Hitler embarked on a preemptive war with the United States precisely because he considered it such a potent adversary. The war against the Jews was driven both by his anxiety about combatting the supposed forces of international plutocracy and by a broader desire to maintain the domestic cohesion he thought necessary for survival on the international scene. A powerfully argued and utterly definitive account of a murderous tyrant we thought we understood, Hitler is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the origins and outcomes of the Second World War.
Island Stories
This history of Britain set in a global context for our times offers a new perspective on how the rise and fall of an empire shaped modern European politics. When the British voted to leave the European Union in 2016, the country's future was thrown into doubt. So, too, was its past. The story of British history is no longer a triumphalist narrative of expanding global empire, nor one of ever-closer integration with Europe. What is it now? In Island Stories, historian David Reynolds offers a multi-faceted new account of the last millennium to make sense of Britain's turbulent present. With sharp analysis and vivid human detail, he examines how fears of decline have shaped national identity, probes Britain's changing relations with Europe, considers the creation and erosion of the "United Kingdom," and reassesses the rise and fall of the British Empire. Island Stories is essential reading for anyone interested in global history and politics in the era of Brexit.
