New Books in Western European Studies

How did the idea of time change during the nineteenth century? In Time and Politics: Parliament and the Culture of Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the British World (Oxford University Press, 2015) Ryan Vieira, a sessional lecturer at McMaster University, explores Parliament in the nineteenth century to understand both the bureaucratic structures and the individual parliamentarians’ experiences of time. The understanding of time was shaped by changes in the ideas of industriousness, efficiency and respectability, as well as new communications and technologies.The book challenges current understandings of constitutional change and parliamentary reform, offering a new story of the Victorian age. Moreover, the book considers the context of the British Empire, thinking through the impact of these changes on parliamentary systems across the globe. The book will be essential reading for historians and students of politics, as well as a fascinating text for the general reader.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Matthew James Crawford’s new book is a fascinating history of an object that was central to the history of science, technology, and medicine in the early modern Spanish Atlantic world. The Andean Wonder Drug: Cinchona Bark and Imperial Science in the Spanish Atlantic, 1630-1800 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016) looks closely at the struggles of the Spanish Empire in the second half of the eighteenth century to control the cinchona tree and its bark, and traces the history of quina as a product of local, imperial, and commercial networks in [the] eighteenth-century Atlantic World. Science and empire were deeply intertwined in the Spanish Atlantic, and Crawford offers a window into the epistemic culture produced by Spanish colonial governance and resulting encounters across and within the Andean and Atlantic contexts. Part One of the book looks carefully at what it meant to know nature in the early modern Atlantic World. It traces the transformations of quina from a local Andean remedy into a botanical commodity and an imperial natural resource from the mid-seventeenth to mid-eighteenth centuries, showing how these transformations resulted from the bark’s integration into Andean, Atlantic, and imperial networks of circulation of people, texts, objects, and images. Part Two of the book explores several key conflicts in the late eighteenth century that emerged as the Spanish Crown tried to assert greater control over the tree and its bark. It’s a story that will be of interest to the histories of science, medicine, natural history, and early modernity! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

In Stolen Words: The Nazi Plunder of Jewish Books (The Jewish Publication Society, 2016), Rabbi Mark Glickman, of Temple Bnai Tikvah in Calgary, examines the massive theft of Jewish books by the Nazis. He offers a compelling account of the history of Jewish books in Europe, the place of Jewish books and culture in Nazi ideology and Jewish efforts to save these books during the Holocaust and rescue and redistribute them after the war. This book is a highly readable contribution, which should bring this little known history to a wide audience. Max Kaiser is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. He can be reached at kaiser@student.unimelb.edu.au. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Part detective story, part travelogue, Noah Lederman decided to write A World Erased: A Grandson’s Search for his Family’s Holocaust Secrets (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) to find answers to the questions he had since childhood about his grandparents experiences during the Holocaust. Through conversations with family members, visiting his ancestral town, and combing available documents, this memoir shares both the stories uncovered and the ways in which survivors and their descendants grapple with and overcome tragedy. Find him on Twitter @SomewhereOrBust.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Stephen Brockmann’s The Writers’ State: Constructing East German Literature, 1945-1959 (Camden House, 2015) introduces readers to a specific atmosphere–political, cultural, and historical–that accompanied the emergence of East German literature from 1945-1959. Covering almost fifteen years, the research presents insightful observations of the literary process that happened to be intricately connected with the political turbulence. As Stephen Brockmann puts it, literature in East Germany was never about “just” literature: “It was always also about collective identity and the path toward a better future–however imaginary and illusive that future may be (7).” In the post-war Germany that happened to go through a division process, literature, culture affairs in general, appeared to be involved in the state making and identity construction. In the GDR in particular, literature was employed as a tool to re-direct national identity and memory. In this process, politicians and functionaries were shaping the cultural affairs through a close collaboration with writers and artists. It would be unfair to say that the officials were particularly eager to encourage artists to participate in the construction of a new state–the GDR-0that was, in fact, based on the historical and cultural past of Germany. In post-Nazi Germany, writers were taking an initiative to come to terms with the Nazi past, offering ways to move forward, putting the tragic past behind, and produce new history. While engaging with the memory of the past, writers were responding to the contemporary political developments, shaping the understanding of the present and outlining routes for the future. Brockmann narrates a detailed account of the cultural and political developments, successfully illustrating the intersections of the political and the cultural. Alongside the analyses of the exemplary works of East German writers (Anna Seghers, Bertolt Brecht, etc.), Brockmann presents a vast collection of historical data confirming the collaboration of the politicians and artists in the matters of state and nation construction. Particular attention is given to the official organizations, which functioned to secure a certain development of the cultural affairs and that were extensively supported and governed by the functionaries. Brockmann’s research also includes an insightful investigation of the cooperation of GDR and the USSR, particular in terms of constructing an ideological foundation for the East Germany sector. While extensively incorporating German literary traditions into their endeavors to construct new literature, East German writers were also engaging with the influences exercised by Soviet propaganda and Soviet literature. The Writers’ State is an attempt to re-evaluate the 1940s and the 1950s in the history of German culture and literature. Brockmann challenges a cliche according to which this time period is rather uneventful in terms of cultural developments and re-discovers intriguing nuances of the East German literary landscape. Stephen Brockmann is Professor of German in the Department of Modern Languages at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA). Dr. Brockmann also has courtesy appointments in the departments of English and History. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

You find a lot of strange things on late medieval and “Age of Discovery” era maps. Of course there are weird beasts of every sort: dragons, griffins, sea monsters, and sundry multi-headed predators. But you also find a lot of bizarre, well, people. These include giant people, tiny people, one-footed people, people with two heads, and people with no heads at all (their eyes, mouths and noses are in their chests). What is one to make of all these different kinds of humanity? And, more important from a historical point of view, what did Renaissance mapmakers think they were doing when they adorned their cartographical products with them? In her wonderful new book Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps, and Monsters (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Surekha Davies offer answers aplenty, and good ones. Listen in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

In Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece (Stanford University Press, 2016) Devin Naar delves deep into the archives to produce this intimate and exciting portrait of Salonica’s Jewish community between the late 19th century until World War II, when the overwhelming majority of the population was deported to their deaths at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Naar’s study takes readers into institutional hallways and homes of Jewish elites and ordinary citizens, revealing a community rapidly adjusting to changes in its relationship to political regimes claiming Salonika and its diverse residents as their own. Jewish Salonica offers readers an opportunity to consider Jewish communal agency and vibrancy in a period and place too often missing from modern Jewish historical narratives.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

During the mid- to late 1930s, a small but socially prominent group of right-wing Britons took a public stance in support of the Nazi regime in Germany. While many of them curtailed their activities upon Britain’s declaration of war in 1939, as Richard Griffiths reveals in his book What Did You Do During the War? The Last Throes of the British Pro-Nazi Right, 1940-45 (Routledge, 2016) some of them continued to support their nation’s declared enemy in a variety of ways. Refuting ex post facto justifications of their actions, Griffiths punctures the myth of wartime national unity by demonstrating how Oswald Mosley and others sought to erode Britons’ support for the war effort in the early months of the conflict by joining pacifist organizations and criticizing openly the motivations behind Britain’s participation in the conflict. Though many of these prominent pro-Nazis were locked up by the authorities in May 1940, several far-right advocates for Germany among the upper class were spared arrest, thanks to their connections and government concerns about the impact on public opinion of detaining of so many prominent members of the social elite. With the prewar pro-Nazi movement disrupted by the detentions, however, many of its unrepentant members turned to individual activities designed to advance their beliefs, while others gradually abandoned politics in favor of other activities as their views were marginalized permanently by the course of events both during and after the Second World War. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

What is the future for Arts and Humanities in Europe? The podcast discusses these questions with Paul Benneworth, one of the authors, along with Magnus Gulbrandsen and Ellen Hazelkorn, of The Impact and Future of Arts and Humanities Research (Palgrave, 2016). Dr. Benneworth, from the University of Twente’s Center for Higher Education Policy Studies, was part of a pan-European project to consider the impact of Impact and the way Arts and Humanities narrate their public value, research which was the basis for the book. The book draws on a wealth of empirical and theoretical material, including comparative case studies from Ireland, Norway, and The Netherlands. The comparative approach allows the book to contextualise engagements with science policy, the role and purpose of the university, public value, and innovation, to offer a new vision of Arts and Humanities research that avoids instrumentalisation. The book is important and essential reading for all interested in the future of higher education and research. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Was the War for American Independence really about American independence? It depends on who you ask. In his new book, Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It (Knopf, 2016), Larrie Ferreiro draws on decades of new research in archives and on battlefields across the US and Europe to detail the smuggling, espionage, gun running, and politicking that wrested the United States from British control. A revision of the national myth that the American colonies rose up and threw off imperial oversight solely by the unity found in the strength of their convictions, this globalist return to the 1760s and 70s weaves together military, economic, diplomatic, and social history with fascinating stories of the European soldiers, sailors, merchants, and ministers who conspired and collaborated to give the north American colonies a fighting chance. In Brothers at Arms, and in this interview, Dr. Ferreiro advances the argument that for the governments of France and Spain, defeating the British in the American colonies was as much about achieving their own interests in the sphere of European power as it was about heeding the call to advance the ideals of liberty and justice across the Atlantic, and that the relationships that developed between France, Spain, and the new United States did more to shape American institutions and ways of life that we often acknowledge. Carl Nellis is an academic editor and writing instructor working north of Boston, where he researches contemporary American community formation around appropriations of medieval European culture. You can learn more about Carls work at carlnellis.wordpress.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies