Home  >  History  >  European History

Category: European History

August 18, 2022

Anne Skorecki Levy, Subject of “Troubled Memory,” Receives Honorary Doctorate

Anne Skorecki Levy, whose story of survival and fight against anti-semitism, racism, and religious persecution is told in Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke’s Louisiana by Lawrence N. Powell, is the recipient of an honorary doctorate from Loyola University New Orleans. The doctorate citation reads: “educator, humanitarian and truth-teller.” Praise for the award winning and critically acclaimed… Continue Reading Anne Skorecki Levy, Subject of “Troubled Memory,” Receives Honorary Doctorate

Categories European History/Jewish Studies/Southern
July 20, 2022

Hungary’s Cold War

In Hungary’s Cold War: International Relations from the End of World War II to the Fall of the Soviet Union, Csaba Békés provides the first multi-archive based synthesis concerning the international relations of the Soviet Bloc, covering the entire Cold War period. Based on Békés’s extensive research over the past three decades, he aims at proving that the East-Central European… Continue Reading Hungary’s Cold War

Categories European History/History
April 4, 2022

2022 Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting

It was so good to be back in-person at OAH 2022! If you missed seeing us in Boston, please visit our virtual booth to browse our recent American history titles, learn more about our great book series, or connect with one of our acquisitions editors. Congratulations to all of our award winners from this weekend! Recasting the Vote: How Women… Continue Reading 2022 Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting

Categories African American History/American History/Civil War/European History/History/Latin American/Caribbean Hist./Military History/Southern/UNC Press News
March 15, 2022

Putinomics: Putin’s Economic Inheritance

The following is an excerpt from Chris Miller’s Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia. When Vladimir Putin first took power in 1999, he was a little-known figure ruling a country that was reeling from a decade and a half of crisis. In the years since, he has reestablished Russia as a great power. How did he do it? What… Continue Reading Putinomics: Putin’s Economic Inheritance

Categories Diplomatic History / International Affairs/Economics/European History/Excerpts/History
March 2, 2022

Russia and the former Soviet Union: A Recommended Reading List

If you’ve been following recent events, you may have seen that Russia has invaded Ukraine. Last week, Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, one of its neighbors to the southwest. It marked a major escalation between the countries, which had been in a state of conflict since 2014. Russia and Ukraine were also two of the largest republics responsible… Continue Reading Russia and the former Soviet Union: A Recommended Reading List

Categories Business/Diplomatic History / International Affairs/European History/Jewish Studies/Political Science/Reading Lists
August 20, 2021

Understanding Haiti’s Past: A Reading List

First and foremost, I’d like to say that this post isn’t about painting Haiti as a picture of continued extreme turmoil, trouble and disaster. Haiti has such a beautifully rich and inspiring culture, but has been plagued with fits of corruption, natural disaster and political unrest through the country’s entire existence. Recently, Haiti has been featured in the news more… Continue Reading Understanding Haiti’s Past: A Reading List

Categories Africa & African Diaspora/American History/Diplomatic History / International Affairs/European History/History/Latin American/Caribbean Hist./Military History
July 31, 2020

Amanda Brickell Bellows–Slavery: Past and Present

Today we welcome a guest post from Amanda Brickell Bellows, author of American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Post-Emancipation Imagination, out now from UNC Press. The abolition of Russian serfdom in 1861 and American slavery in 1865 transformed both nations as Russian peasants and African Americans gained new rights as subjects and citizens. During the second half of the… Continue Reading Amanda Brickell Bellows–Slavery: Past and Present

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Art / Architecture/Author blog entry/European History/Guest Bloggers/History/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News
February 10, 2020

Maddalena Marinari: The Fight for Immigration Reform Then and Now

Today we welcome a guest post from Maddalena Marinari, author of Unwanted: Italian and Jewish Mobilization against Restrictive Immigration Laws, 1882-1965, available now from UNC Press. In the late nineteenth century, Italians and Eastern European Jews joined millions of migrants around the globe who left their countries to take advantage of the demand for unskilled labor in rapidly industrializing nations,… Continue Reading Maddalena Marinari: The Fight for Immigration Reform Then and Now

Categories American History/Current Events/European History/Law / Legal History/Political Science/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News
November 22, 2019

Céline Carayon: Legible Signs and Symbolic Violence: Communicating Nonverbally, Then and Now

Today we welcome a guest post from Céline Carayon, author of Eloquence Embodied: Nonverbal Communication among French and Indigenous Peoples in the Americas, out now from UNC Press and the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. Taking a fresh look at the first two centuries of French colonialism in the Americas, this book answers the long-standing question of… Continue Reading Céline Carayon: Legible Signs and Symbolic Violence: Communicating Nonverbally, Then and Now

Categories American History/European History/Native Amer./Indigenous Studies/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News
April 12, 2018

Venus Bivar: Romanticising the French Countryside

Today we welcome a guest post from Venus Bivar, author of Organic Resistance:  The Struggle over Industrial Farming in Postwar France. France is often held up as a bastion of gastronomic refinement and as a model of artisanal agriculture and husbandry. But French farming is not at all what it seems. Countering the standard stories of gastronomy, tourism, and leisure… Continue Reading Venus Bivar: Romanticising the French Countryside

Categories Author blog entry/Environmental Studies/European History/Geography/Global Studies/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News
January 24, 2018

Daniel Livesay: Meghan Markle and the Long History of American Brides of Color in Britain

Today we welcome a guest post from Daniel Livesay, author of Children of Uncertain Fortune:  Mixed-Race Jamaicans in Britain and the Atlantic Family, 1733-1833, published by our friends at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. By tracing the largely forgotten eighteenth-century migration of elite mixed-race individuals from Jamaica to Great Britain, Children of Uncertain Fortune reinterprets the… Continue Reading Daniel Livesay: Meghan Markle and the Long History of American Brides of Color in Britain

Categories African American Studies/Author blog entry/European History/History/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News
June 30, 2016

Robert G. Parkinson: The Last News Story of Colonial America

What was the tipping point that pushed Americans into taking the step of declaring their independence? After all, the colonies had been at war with Britain for more than a year by the end of the spring of 1776. The other factor most attributed to causing independence, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, was five months old by that time. What changed in May 1776 to encourage patriot political leaders in both the Continental Congress and in many of the separate colonial assemblies to support severing ties with Britain? What produced a sudden support for independence?

The Germans were coming. Continue Reading Robert G. Parkinson: The Last News Story of Colonial America

Categories American History/Author blog entry/European History/Guest Bloggers/History
April 19, 2016

Robert G. Parkinson: The Shot Heard Round the World Revisited

Sixty years after the battle, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a triumphant hymn to the “embattled farmers” of Concord, Massachusetts who gathered at the “rude bridge that arched the flood” underneath “their flag to April’s breeze unfurled” and “fired the shot heard round the world.” Emerson solemnized the “spirit that made those heroes dare / to die, or leave their children free.” Emerson’s imagery added to the already thick layers of mythology surrounding the events of April 19, 1775, fusing together nature and nation to craft an American pastoral patriotism. Ever since, when Americans think about the start of the Revolution, it is Emerson’s chorus—of heroic white colonists fighting to preserve their liberty—that plays in the background of this nationalist legend.

But that wasn’t how some people thought about the events of that night. In fact, race played a role in how people reacted to the Lexington Alarm. Continue Reading Robert G. Parkinson: The Shot Heard Round the World Revisited

Categories African American Studies/American History/Author blog entry/European History/Guest Bloggers
July 23, 2015

Excerpt: The Archaeology of Sanitation in Roman Italy, by Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow

Roman toilets, sewers, and drains are important archaeological features that embody ideas relevant to Roman society about cleanliness, physical health, concepts of beauty, and even notions of privacy. If toilets are excavated properly, they can provide valuable data even about the diet and socioeconomic status of users, divisions between households where they are found, construction methods, and maintenance. Continue Reading Excerpt: The Archaeology of Sanitation in Roman Italy, by Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow

Categories Archaeology/European History/Excerpts/History
June 22, 2015

Patryk Babiracki: Showcasing Hard Power, Russia Reveals Her Longstanding Soft Spot

In recent months, Vladimir Putin has been playing hardball with the world. Yet Russia’s bullying and bravado can be seen as signs of a longstanding weakness. Continue Reading Patryk Babiracki: Showcasing Hard Power, Russia Reveals Her Longstanding Soft Spot

Categories Author blog entry/Economics/European History/Global Studies/Guest Bloggers/History/Politics
May 28, 2015

Patryk Babiracki: Post-Soviet Ukraine: Not Unlike Postwar Poland. What Putin’s Russia (and the West) Can Learn from the Cold War

With oil prices falling, the ruble is tumbling down, and Russia’s immediate economic prospects are grim. But the Russian leaders’ political will to retain Ukraine is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. The lands that became modern Ukraine had been part of Russian empire for three and a half centuries. Vladimir Putin has shown inexhaustible energy in obstructing Ukraine’s rapprochement with the West; Ukraine’s prospective successes in integrating with the EU (or, in a more adventurous scenario, with NATO) would be a heavy blow to Russia’s prestige and to Mr. Putin’s ego. Therefore on the long run, it seems unlikely that any person or institution can prevent the Russian president and his cronies from wresting Ukraine back firmly into the Russian orbit. Continue Reading Patryk Babiracki: Post-Soviet Ukraine: Not Unlike Postwar Poland. What Putin’s Russia (and the West) Can Learn from the Cold War

Categories Author blog entry/Current Events/Economics/European History/Global Studies/Guest Bloggers/History/Politics
April 13, 2015

Cian T. McMahon: Immigrant Voices/Immigrant Debate

I knew there were ample primary sources out there on what the Irish thought about race and racial identity. And as I dug into them in the course of my own research, I realized how much these previous scholars had missed by not listening to the immigrants’ voices. I learned, for example, that the differences between whites (along Celt/Saxon lines) were just as important, in the minds of many Irish, as the differences between whites and people of color. Moreover, the Irish talked about identity in transnational terms; they thought of themselves as members of a global community, capable of being Irish whether at home or abroad. These conclusions complicated, I realized, what many scholars have taken for granted regarding immigrant identity in the nineteenth century. Continue Reading Cian T. McMahon: Immigrant Voices/Immigrant Debate

Categories Author blog entry/European History/Guest Bloggers/History
March 16, 2015

Cian T. McMahon: The Global Dimensions of Saint Patrick

But while Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations have often brought people together under the banner of “Irishness,” they have also served as bellwethers for deep-rooted concerns. After achieving political independence from Britain in the early 1920s, for example, the Irish government sought to consolidate their claims to respectability by prohibiting the sale of alcohol on the saint’s feast day. Throughout the twentieth century, Saint Patrick’s Day parades in Ireland were dour, formal affairs, often conducted through driving curtains of spring rain. Continue Reading Cian T. McMahon: The Global Dimensions of Saint Patrick

Categories Author blog entry/European History/Global Studies/Guest Bloggers/History
August 28, 2014

Gregory F. Domber: What Putin Misunderstands about American Power

Putin is pushing a new nationalist conservatism with a strong strain of anti-Americanism, promoting a vision of the United States as the primary conspirator pulling strings to foster international chaos and regime change.

As former Ambassador to Russia Mike McFaul noted recently in the New Yorker, “Putin has a theory of American power that has some empirical basis.” The CIA overthrew governments in Iran and Guatemala, the United States bombed Belgrade to remove a dictator, and there is, of course, Iraq. However, a close examination of American policy toward Poland—the country the United States pushed hardest to break from the Soviet sphere in the 1980s—brings to the fore just how far the Russian president’s views are removed from reality. The United States is not nearly the revolutionary mastermind Putin seems to think it is. Continue Reading Gregory F. Domber: What Putin Misunderstands about American Power

Categories Author blog entry/Current Events/European History/Guest Bloggers/History/Political Science
October 2, 2013

David T. Gleeson: Irish Confederates and the Meaning of American Nationalism

As an immigrant, something I’m familiar with myself, one’s sense of identity is heightened by the immigration experience. In your new country, even when your language is the same as the natives, you suddenly you have an “accent,” your religion and culture are different, and you must adapt to new social and political realities. Immigrants then give us valuable insights, not only into their own changing identity, but also that of the host country. Irish immigrants in the South had to become Americans and Confederates. They had to negotiate the cultural traits they brought from Ireland with the demands of loyalty to their new home. And, it was this Irish cultural baggage which played the key role in binding them to the United States and the Confederacy Continue Reading David T. Gleeson: Irish Confederates and the Meaning of American Nationalism

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Civil War/European History/Guest Bloggers/History