Contemporary European History 

About: Contemporary European History is an academic journal published by Cambridge University Press. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Politics & German. It has an ISSN identifier of 0960-7773. Over the lifetime, 1017 publications have been published receiving 6561 citations.

The Gold Standard and the Great Depression

Abstract: This paper considers why political leaders and central bankers continued to adhere to the gold standard as the Great Depression intensified. We do not focus on the effects of the gold standard on the Depression, which have been documented elsewhere, but on the reasons why policy makers chose the policies they did. We argue that the mentality of the gold standard was pervasive and compelling to the leaders of the interwar economy. It was expressed and reinforced by the discourse among these leaders. It was opposed and finally defeated by mass politics, but only after the interaction of national policies had drawn the world into the Great Depression.

‘Working Towards the Führer.’ Reflections on the Nature of the Hitler Dictatorship

Abstract: The renewed emphasis, already visible in the mid-1980s, on the intertwined fates of the Soviet Union and Germany, especially in the Stalin and Hitler eras, has become greatly intensified in the wake of the upheavals in Eastern Europe. The sharpened focus on the atrocities of Stalinism has prompted attempts to relativise Nazi barbarism – seen as wicked, but on the whole less wicked, than that of Stalinism (and by implication of communism in general).1 The brutal Stalinist modernising experiment is used to remove any normative links with humanising, civilising, emancipatory or democratising development from modernisation concepts and thereby to claim that Hitler's regime, too, was – and intentionally so – a ‘modernising dictatorship’.2 Implicit in all this is a reversion, despite the many refinements and criticisms of the concept since the 1960s, to essentially traditional views on ‘totalitarianism’ and to views of Stalin and Hitler as ‘totalitarian dictators’.

The History of Emotions

Abstract: ‘What exactly is the history of emotions?’ This question, often still encountered by historians working in the field, suggests that the history of emotions is difficult to understand yet hard to ignore. Historians active in other areas may have noticed the recent founding (and funding) of emotions research centres by Queen Mary, University of London, the Max Planck Society and the Australian Research Council. Yet the emergence of a critical mass of emotions researchers has not altogether dispelled concerns that emotions are not really accessible to the historian or worthy of sustained and serious consideration. Even a pioneer of the once dubious field of cultural history such as Peter Burke has wondered about the history of emotions’ viability while recognising its promise. As he sees it, if historians regard emotions as stable across time (and thus pre-cultural, it seems) then all they can do is chart changing attitudes to these constant emotions. This leaves historians writing intellectual history but not the history of emotions. If historians, by contrast, treat emotions as historically variable then they may deliver more innovative work, but they may also end up struggling to find evidence for their conclusions. Taking anxiety as an example, Burke asks pointedly how ‘could a historian possibly find evidence to establish’ whether people were more anxious in a given historical period than another, rather than simply being affected by different anxieties. The books under review here represent the latest generation of historians’ efforts to answer Burke's questions and examine whether and how fundamental changes in the history of emotions can be charted.

Transnationalism and the League of Nations: Understanding the Work of Its Economic and Financial Organisation

Abstract: This article explores the work of the little-studied Economic and Financial Organisation of the League of Nations It offers a sustained investigation into how this international organisation operated that assesses the transnational aspects of its work in relation to its inter-governmental responsibilities, and demonstrates the wide-ranging contribution of the organisation's secretariat The second part of the article establishes the way in which transnationalism enabled the United States, the League's most influential non-member, to play a crucial role in shaping the policy agenda of the League It also shows how a growing sense of frustration in its work prompted EFO to attempt to free itself from inter-governmental oversight and become an independent organisation to promote economic and financial co-operation in 1940 – a full four years before the creation of the Bretton Woods agreements

War and Social History: Britain and the Home Front during the Second World War

Abstract: This article reviews interpretations of the history of British society during the Second World War. Traditionally the Second World War has been viewed as a period of outstanding national unity and social solidarity, and the social arrangements of wartime have been seen as a unique catalyst of administrative ‘collectivism’ and the growth of the ‘welfare state’. More recent historiography has presented a more diffuse picture, emphasising the elements of continuing diversity and conflict in British society during the war period, and the importance of more long-term social trends that were shared by all western European countries.