Showing papers in "European Review of History: Revue europeenne d'histoire in 2015"
100 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the various ways in which the Second World War shaped children's experiences in the post-war period and investigate the childhood policies directed towards them, as well as their childhood experiences and the memories they foster about their childhood.
Abstract: In this Special Issue, the authors explore the various ways in which the Second World War shaped children's experiences in the post-war period. They map the multifaceted interest or non-interest of states all over Europe for children in the years after the war, filter out groups of children who recall that the consequences of the Second World War significantly influenced their childhood, and investigate the childhood policies directed towards them, as well as their childhood experiences and the memories they foster about their childhood. In addition, they have included case studies from Western, Central and Eastern Europe with the aim of sparking a debate as to whether it was only a similar lifecycle that war children in early post-war Europe shared, or if they also had some life experiences in common.
41 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that rethinking historical agency to include nonhuman agents is one way to integrate better animals into historical narratives and explore the diverse types of nonhuman agencies and their deep and multiple entanglements with human agents will extend studies of nonhumans beyond the resistance model.
Abstract: This article argues that rethinking historical agency to include nonhuman agents is one way to integrate better animals into historical narratives. Drawing on posthumanist theories from geography, anthropology and science and technology studies (STS), and forming part of a growing interest in nonhuman, particularly animal, agency, it aims to clear some theoretical and historiographical ground to provide a basis for claims that nature has agency. It then argues that environmental and animal historians have too readily equated nonhuman agency with ‘resistance’, a concept that does not easily map onto animal behaviour and one which also fails to capture the diversity of nonhuman agencies. Using case studies of Police rescue dogs in early twentieth-century France and animals on the Western Front, it argues that exploring the diverse types of nonhuman agencies and their deep and multiple entanglements with human agents will extend studies of nonhumans beyond the resistance model.
40 citations
TL;DR: In the past 200 years Britons have responded to famines in particular ways as mentioned in this paper, focusing not simply on the remarkably unchanging humanitarian representation of the victims of famine but on the changing technologies through which relief was collected and distributed.
Abstract: In the past 200 years Britons have responded to famines in particular ways. This article explores these particularities by focusing not simply on the remarkably unchanging humanitarian representation of the victims of famine but on the changing technologies through which relief was collected and distributed. It shows how technologies of famine relief were created from the need to govern colonial populations rather than from the development of new sentimentality and ethics. The authors seek to demonstrate that, despite the changing nature of these technologies, the forms of expertise that sustained them, a set of routines and practices developed that allowed the performance of a British way with famine that slowly extended from the empire to the world. In the wake of two world wars these forms of expertise were extended to Europe and became internationalised through the work of voluntary organisations. After the formal end of Empire, these technologies were retooled and used to assist places in postcolonia...
25 citations
TL;DR: This paper argued that turning to the past is not the solution for the problem of the supposed public irrelevance of professional historical studies, but the problem its its relevance for the shaping of our public life.
Abstract: An essential element usually passes unnoticed in recent discussion about how history as an academic discipline is supposed to be relevant for the shaping of our public life. It is the concept of history itself (history as both the course of events and historical writing) that underlies the whole discussion, which also configures the two currently most influential and fashionable efforts to reinstate the public relevance of history: The History Manifesto, co-authored by Jo Guldi and David Armitage, and Hayden White's The Practical Past. In advising to turn to the past in order to shape the present and the future, both books rely on the familiar developmental view that characterised nineteenth-century thinking in general, and on which the discipline of history became institutionalised in particular. The author's main contention in this essay is that turning to this notion of history is not the solution for the problem of the supposed public irrelevance of professional historical studies, but the problem its...
24 citations
TL;DR: The authors discusses how gender and (homo)sexual relations were disciplined in Hungary during the 1970s, part of the Kadar era, named after Janos Kadar, the top political leader of the People's Republic of Hungary between 1956 and 1988.
Abstract: This article discusses how gender and (homo)sexual relations were disciplined in Hungary during the 1970s, part of the Kadar era, named after Janos Kadar, the top political leader of the People's Republic of Hungary between 1956 and 1988. The first part of the article examines the widespread effects of the New Economic Mechanism of 1968 (which could not be rounded off by political reform) on critical thoughts on family formation, as well as some largely absent aspects of gender equality. The second part of the article presents pieces of empirical evidence on the social existence of sexuality in the context of a system of ‘tolerant repression’ celebrating asexual socialist reproduction. The article concludes that most Hungarians seemed to be able to negotiate their lives between the constraints of state socialism and their longing for enjoyable human relationships even in the ‘uniformly pallid’ 1970s.
23 citations
TL;DR: In the 1970s, however, and especially under the influence of the Women's Liberation Movement, attitudes towards the Pill changed. It was no longer seen as an emancipation of female sexuality, but as an instrument of the on-going male domination of sexuality and society in general as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: A method of birth control often called ‘revolutionary’ was implemented in many Western countries in the 1960s. The contraceptive pill allowed women to engage in sexual experiences without the permanent fear of pregnancy. This safe method was especially important for the group of unmarried or newlywed women who were in the middle of their academic or vocational education and wanted to combine career and family life. In the 1970s, however, and especially under the influence of the Women's Liberation Movement, attitudes towards the Pill changed. It was no longer seen as an emancipation of female sexuality, but as an instrument of the on-going male domination of sexuality and society in general. According to this point of view, issues such as sexuality and contraception that had so far been regarded as ‘private’ became political. Women now directly linked their very personal intimate experiences and questions of power and gender relations in society, and this often meant stopping taking the Pill. This article...
22 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that Spanish communities and institutions came to define foreign men as examples of a subordinate and dangerous masculinity, and that the threat that foreign male sexuality posed to Spanish women and thus Spanish patriarchy led institutions to prosecute foreign men.
Abstract: The process of colonial expansion in the sixteenth century fundamentally changed Spanish culture. Along with race, religion, ethnicity, status and honour, definitions of proper gendered and sexual behaviour changed as well. This article argues that Spanish communities and institutions came to define foreign men as examples of a subordinate and dangerous masculinity. The threat that foreign male sexuality posed to Spanish women and thus Spanish patriarchy – not only in the colonies, but within Spain itself – led institutions to prosecute foreign men. This essay draws on the language used in Inquisition and ecclesiastical court cases against foreign men as well as in Spanish literature of the period.
21 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a field study of over 100 biographical interviews in two local communities situated in the borderland regions which were particularly exposed to post-war displacement, resettlement and population exchange: Ukrainian Galicia and Western Poland.
Abstract: This article aims to compare the biographical experiences and individual memories of child deportees and migrants from Eastern Europe. The analysis is based on a field study of over 100 biographical interviews in two local communities situated in the borderland regions which were particularly exposed to post-war displacement, resettlement and population exchange: Ukrainian Galicia and Western Poland. The author claims that although the history of these two distant communities was totally different, contemporary memory of being a refugee/deportee/forced migrant, losing one's home/homeland and watching the deportation of the previous inhabitants of one's new place of residence bear many similarities. While analysing autobiographical narratives, I attempt to find common threads and topics generated by their experiences as children, as well as explain the differences by exploring the social context of individual memory, with a special accent on post-war socialisation and the Polish and Ukrainian memory cultur...
19 citations
TL;DR: In the early 1970s, there was scarcity in the world grain market, soaring prices and famines in several countries of Asia and Africa, and the commercial grain trade was expanded at the expense of food aid.
Abstract: In the early 1970s, there was scarcity in the world grain market, soaring prices and famines in several countries of Asia and Africa. The commercial grain trade was expanded at the expense of food aid. After a brief look at policies addressing the situation in terms of modernised methods of agricultural production for small producers, the article sketches how such policies also affected relief efforts, from the low availability for food aid, the provision of food that was not useful and late deliveries through efforts to tie food aid to local changes in agricultural production and settlement patterns. In part, food aid thus reinforced processes of social differentiation that had contributed to causing the famines in the first place.
19 citations
TL;DR: In the world of the occult, as in other realms, the tools and methods chosen by women and men reflected acceptable ways of ‘doing’ gender as mentioned in this paper, and the magic practices associated with guns and blades were related to early-modern thinking about masculine power and performance, they were less harshly treated than the kind of magic more often associated with women.
Abstract: In the world of the occult, as in other realms, the tools and methods chosen by women and men reflected acceptable ways of ‘doing’ gender. This paper will concentrate on magical spells and blessings intended to give men an advantage in sword fights, make them invulnerable, or turn them into perfect marksmen. Because magical practices associated with guns and blades were related to early-modern thinking about masculine power and performance, they were less harshly treated than the kind of magic more often associated with women. Many of these hypermasculine spells drew on contemporary medical beliefs about natural sympathies, including the idea that sympathies existed between the dead and the living. For this reason, invulnerability and weapon spells usually included materials from male corpses (for example, body parts, moss growing on dead men's skulls, and so on). As learned belief in natural magic waned during the Enlightenment, stories of magic blades and bullets retreated from courts and battlefields i...
TL;DR: The authors argue that manhood, as a relational value between men, helped structure the form and character of politics in the metropole, the kingdom of Ireland and the American colonies, and that the definition of acceptable male behaviour was different, the effect being that political action and theory in each place took on unique features.
Abstract: Historians have recently turned their attention to the place of masculinity in the politics of early-modern England. This essay widens that exploration to include the imperial settings of Ireland and North America. Drawing upon a range of English- and Irish-language sources – including political treatises, maps, state papers and court poetry – it contends that manhood, as a relational value between men, helped structure the form and character of politics in the metropole, the kingdom of Ireland and the American colonies. In all of those settings, the definition of acceptable male behaviour was different, the effect being that political action and theory in each place took on unique features. Consequently, the essay cautions against studying England and its colonies as distinct units of historical analysis and calls for further exploration of the particularities of colonial settings and their influence on the imperial centre. Moreover, the essay aims to demonstrate that masculinity, particularly contest ov...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors look at the ways in which gender relations and sexuality became politicised over time and especially during the "long 1960s" in Spain during what is often called "late Francoism" and analyze the gradual change to more liberal mores that coincided with the so-called apertura, or opening-up of the regime, that began in the early 1960s and was intensified by the 1970s.
Abstract: This article sets out to look at the ways in which gender relations and sexuality became politicised over time and especially during the ‘long 1960s’ in Spain during what is often called ‘late Francoism’. It analyses the gradual change to more liberal mores that coincided with the so-called apertura, or opening-up of the regime, that began in the early 1960s and was intensified by the 1970s. The way in which progressive students – the so-called progre – experimented with sexuality and the ways in which their alternative aesthetics were used as codified elements of a rebelling identity marked the limits of the anti-regime community. The article ends with the final period of the Transicion and the emergence of a new kind of sexual explicitness which started being promoted through alternative channels, coinciding, however, with a growing disenchantment from politics.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors compare the approaches of the history of humanitarianism and childhood, as well as of social photography and media analysis, to show that visuals of starving children eventually find their roots at the end of the nineteenth century, at a time when charitable organisations are using photography as a tool to mobilise civil society and governments as well and to internationalise the humanitarian response.
Abstract: Despite the growing interest in the use of child images in humanitarian contexts in the last few years, there has been no transverse study of the iconography of famines in contemporary times. On the contrary, this iconography has been analysed in a scattered way, in disciplinary boundaries that prevent a more global understanding of the birth and use of these images. By comparing the approaches of the history of humanitarianism and childhood, as well as of social photography and media analysis, the purpose of this article is to show that visuals of starving children eventually find their roots at the end of the nineteenth century, at a time when charitable organisations are using photography as a tool to mobilise civil society and governments as well as to internationalise the humanitarian response. This analysis of Western visual strategies and media mobilisations throughout the twentieth century helps to put into perspective the so-called rupture between a first and a second age of humanitarianism. It s...
TL;DR: In this paper, the specific expectations and parameters for men as well as women through which communities acknowledged and validated expressions of youth sexuality while marking and policing boundaries beyond which youthful courtship could become threatening to household and neighbourhood stability.
Abstract: In early-modern working communities, masculinity for young lower-rank men was embedded in particular performances and practices of licit intimacy. This essay analyses the specific expectations and parameters for men as well as women through which communities acknowledged and validated expressions of youth sexuality while marking and policing boundaries beyond which youthful courtship could become threatening to household and neighbourhood stability. Young men and women were the focus of these efforts just as they themselves participated in the assessment of appropriate behaviour. These issues suggest an on-going negotiation and contestation about what was appropriate for single men and women in terms of intimacy, and a clear sense that a violation of the community norms carried consequences for men as well as women.
TL;DR: The authors examines the different understandings of citizenship that were competing for dominance in France during the long eighteenth century: the ancient conception; the Bodinian understanding and the rights-based approach.
Abstract: Francois Furet famously described the French Revolution as ’the first experiment with democracy’, and modern French citizenship is often seen as having emerged during this period. Universal male suffrage was practised for the first time in 1792 and the Revolution also witnessed debate over such issues as: the rights of citizens; the extension of the franchise to poorer inhabitants and black slaves; and even whether women should be given political rights. Yet, the modern idea of citizenship did not emerge from nowhere in 1789. Rather it was the product of more than a century of debate. This article examines the different understandings of citizenship that were competing for dominance in France during the long eighteenth century: the ancient conception; the Bodinian understanding and the rights-based approach. Not only does it demonstrate the contribution of these approaches (and in particular the last) to revolutionary understandings of citizenship, but it also highlights how the tensions of the eighteenth...
TL;DR: In this paper, the Third International Russell Tribunal, held in West Germany in 1978 and 1979 to consider alleged human-rights abuses, has been analysed, revealing underlying tensions in gay liberation, with activists facing competing demands, the need to address contrasting constituencies, and caught between public and counterpublic.
Abstract: The SPD's 1976 election slogan, Modell Deutschland (‘the German model’) became a catch-all term for all that the New Left rejected about the Federal Republic. This article will focus on how gay activists attempted to situate cases of gay oppression as part and parcel of wider political oppression against the New Left, and how the invocation of the National Socialist past was crucial to this aim. Gay activists' efforts culminated in the gay movement's interaction with the Third International Russell Tribunal, held in West Germany in 1978 and 1979 to consider alleged human-rights abuses. Analysing gay activism around the Tribunal reveals underlying tensions in gay liberation, with activists facing competing demands, the need to address contrasting constituencies, and caught between public and counterpublic.
TL;DR: The new book by Omar G. Encarnacion, Professor of Political Studies at Bard College, is his latest contribution to the issue of the legacy of the Spanish Civil War (1936-9) and the Franco regime as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The new book by Omar G. Encarnacion, Professor of Political Studies at Bard College, is his latest contribution to the issue of the legacy of the Spanish Civil War (1936–9) and the Franco regime (1...
TL;DR: To call female comrades "chicks" was unacceptable, a young left-wing Greek cadre proclaimed during a speech at a youth congress of his party in 1978 as discussed by the authors, at a time when Feminist movements had gained momentum.
Abstract: To call female comrades ‘chicks’ was unacceptable, a young left-wing Greek cadre proclaimed during a speech at a youth congress of his party in 1978.1 At a time when Feminist movements had gained m...
TL;DR: In this paper, a collection of ego documents created under Communism in which Polish former child forced labourers articulate their war experiences is presented, which increases our understanding of child forced labour experiences during the Second World War, specifically the ways in which children perceived that experience, and offers insights into the negotiated appropriation of Communist ideology at the individual level.
Abstract: This article centralises a unique collection of ego documents created under Communism in which Polish former child forced labourers articulate their war experiences. A comparative analysis of them with recent testimonies reveals that these ego documents offer a more nuanced depiction of Germans and display richer information on the specific working conditions and daily routine for children than the contemporary ones. A comparative reading of the archival testimonies with their published equivalents shows how the streamlining of a publicly acceptable version of the past under Communism went both ways, that is, at times foregrounding the propaganda content of autobiographical wordings, but also at other moments downplaying this element. The collection increases our understanding of child forced labour experiences during the Second World War, specifically the ways in which children perceived that experience, and offers insights into the negotiated appropriation of Communist ideology at the individual level.
TL;DR: The children of occupation were considered by many to be 'children of the enemy' and encountered various forms of discrimination and stigmatisation as mentioned in this paper, and this situation was exacerbated by the onset of the Cold War.
Abstract: Soviet children of occupation were born between late 1945 and mid-1956 in Austria, some following voluntary sexual relations between local women and Red Army soldiers, others as a result of rape. They were considered by many to be ‘children of the enemy’ and encountered various forms of discrimination and stigmatisation. The children involved were largely a ‘fatherless’ group of war children. By the time of their births even fathers who wanted to stay in touch had generally either been sent home or transferred to another barracks in line with the Kremlin's view that intimate relations between Soviet soldiers and Austrians were politically and ideologically reprehensible. Even after the signing of the Austrian State Treaty and the end of the occupation in 1955, the political situation largely ruled out further contact. This situation was exacerbated by the onset of the Cold War. In many cases, the children of occupation were hemmed in by a wall of silence that in some cases persists to this day. This has l...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the practices and conceptualisations of British dog breeding and the showing of pedigree dogs by the dog fancy, focusing specifically on the story of a single breed: the basset hound.
Abstract: In this article the authors explore the practices and conceptualisations of British dog breeding and the showing of pedigree dogs by the ‘the dog fancy’, focusing specifically on the story of a single breed: the basset hound. This was not simply a story of British dog fanciers appropriating a French dog breed; indeed, this was impossible because the very notion of a dog ‘breed’, defined by conformation and legitimated by pedigree, was in the process of invention. They show how the British dog-show fancy chose one, from many and varied types of French hound, to be the basset hound, and how this choice was legitimated by reference to an imagined history, where the British dog fancy rescued a noble animal from French indifference to breed and blood. The chosen physical form was standardised to arbitrary ideal, but was by means no static. In the spirit of the times, it was ‘improved’, first by the empirical methods of animal breeders, using pedigrees to secure good and pure ‘blood’, and then by the applicatio...
TL;DR: In the sixteenth century, two Italian humanists, Paolo Giovio and Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio, included in their personalised emblems a portrayal of a beaver gnawing off its testicles.
Abstract: In the sixteenth century, two Italian humanists, Paolo Giovio and Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio, included in their imprese (personalised emblems) a portrayal of a beaver gnawing off its testicles. Since the impresa was intended to express something distinctive about its bearer, their choice of the beaver suggests that they conceived of their own masculinity in ways that seem counterintuitive. The present essay traces the story of the beaver's sacrifice to Antiquity, both classical and early Christian, and surveys the diverse interpretations of it up through the early-modern period. It details the wide constellation of meanings attached to the beaver in influential compendia of knowledge written around the time that Giovio and Bonifacio flourished, including Conrad Gesner's History of Quadrupeds and Pierio Valeriano's Hieroglyphica. Finally, it assesses how the appropriation of the beaver may have made particular sense, for different reasons, to Giovio and to Bonifacio. While these cases exemplify how anim...
TL;DR: The authors used the descriptions of the types of men who should be hired for service posts in ecclesiastical households to analyse the construction of gender in the papal capital of Rome, arguing that the clerical ideal of manliness was an emergent but not hegemonic style of masculinity in Baroque Rome.
Abstract: A specific genre of early-modern domestic-management handbook devoted to the running of cardinals' households enjoyed widespread popularity in late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. Such households were staffed by dozens of male servants whose requisites and tasks were minutely described in this literature. This article uses the descriptions of the types of men who should be hired for service posts in ecclesiastical households to analyse the construction of gender in the papal capital. It argues that the clerical ideal of manliness was an emergent but not hegemonic style of masculinity in Baroque Rome.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the processes of social and political integration and assimilation of German children and young adults who, in the aftermath of the Second World War, were either expelled to Germany or remained in their Bohemian homelands.
Abstract: Based on an analysis of musical childhood memories from over 80 Germans from the Bohemian lands and historical evidence, this article investigates processes of social and political integration and assimilation of German children and young adults who, in the aftermath of the Second World War, were either expelled to Germany or remained in their Bohemian homelands. Memories of Germans expelled to West Germany disclose the various ways in which musical repertoire and musical practices are able to mitigate both the loss of the homeland and the distressing overall effects of expulsion, as well as reveal how music facilitates the building of a new sense of belonging in the face of geographic displacement and material dispossession. The study further highlights how the reframing and even silencing of musical practices on the other side of the Iron Curtain in Czechoslovakia affected processes of social-identity reconstruction until and after the 1989 fall of Communism. Results of this study foreground that indivi...
TL;DR: This paper investigated what happened to the children of Dutch Nazi collaborators after the liberation of the Netherlands in May 1945, and found that the framework of the innocent child being punished by a cruel society obscured our view of experiences that did not fit this mould.
Abstract: This article looks into what happened to the children of Dutch Nazi collaborators after the liberation of the Netherlands in May 1945. The author first outlines the historical context in which these children lived and the manner in which they recounted and recorded their memories much later. In combination with new archival research on social-welfare policy and ‘re-education’ of former National Socialist youth, this puts the discourse that dominated the Dutch debate, that is, the discourse of the ‘innocent child’ harshly punished by society, in a different light. The framework of the innocent child being punished by a cruel society obscured our view of experiences that did not fit this mould. Furthermore, it made the values and norms that were current during the reconstruction period disappear from the picture: the bad memories of children of collaborators partly originate in policy that was considered normal in those days. This, however, should not obscure the impact of the vulnerable social position whi...
TL;DR: The authors used rural gazetteer biographies to examine village and household-level famine relief during the great North China Famine of 1876-9 to deepen our understanding of past relief methods and dynamics at the most local level.
Abstract: This article uses rural gazetteer biographies to examine village and household-level famine relief during the great North China Famine of 1876–9 to deepen our understanding of past relief methods and dynamics at the most local level. Despite the appearance of major works recently on famine in modern China, particularly on the Great Leap Forward, knowledge of Chinese famine relief remains thin and scattered considering the enormity of the subject. Nineteenth-century China saw intensifying international relief activity as well as the emergence of a vibrant charity-relief sector based in China's major cities, leading to the rise of prominent relief institutions in the twentieth century, such as the Chinese Red Cross. But the increasingly intense disasters of China's modern period also saw a surprising persistence of local humanitarian traditions still barely covered by historians.
TL;DR: In this paper, the impact of Feminism on one of the most popular left-wing youth groups in Greece, the Eurocommunist Rigas Feraios (RF), in the mid-to-late 1970s is analyzed.
Abstract: This article analyses the impact of Feminism on one of the most popular left-wing youth groups in Greece, the Eurocommunist Rigas Feraios (RF), in the mid-to-late 1970s. It indicates that, rather than a shift to (depoliticised) individualisation, which scholars claim that emerged elsewhere in Western Europe during the 1970s, post-dictatorship Greece witnessed intense politicisation and experimentations in mass-mobilisation models, a facet of which was the reconfiguration of the relationship between Eurocommunist organisations and Feminism. It demonstrates that the spread of Feminist ideas in RF led to the sexualisation of feminine representations in its language. Still, it argues that Feminist activity within RF had broader repercussions: it stirred reflection on masculinities and contributed to the reshaping of the collective memory of left-wing activity in Greece endorsed by this organisation. Finally, the article shows that the Feminist members of RF formed women's committees, which functioned as a tes...
TL;DR: In the post-war period, the notion that the large majority had to be re-re-educated for social reintegration also very soon prevailed in both Belgium and The Netherlands.
Abstract: After the liberation of the Second World War, the governing parties in both Belgium and The Netherlands agreed that it was necessary to punish the collaborators. But the notion that the large majority had to be ‘re-educated’ for social reintegration also very soon prevailed in both countries. Collaborators had to be ‘cured’ to become full democratic national citizens again, and their punishment was designed to achieve this. Although in the last few decades the research scope of transitional justice has developed greatly and has contributed to an ever more nuanced picture of the punishment of collaboration in the post-war period, the question of to what extent prisons were used as places to ‘improve’ enemies of the state during a regime change has largely been overlooked. But precisely by studying the execution of the punishment, underlying ideologies and interests are exposed, and we can see how well defined citizenship was. This paper, with the aid of the Dutch–Belgian comparison, considers how post-war ...