The friction between the episcopal and monastic systems enhanced papal authority.

Volume I offers a broad perspective on urban culture in the ancient European world. It begins with chronological overviews which paint in broad brushstrokes a picture that serves as a frame for the thematic chapters in the rest of the volume. Positioning ancient Europe within its wider context, it touches on Asia and Africa as regions that informed and were later influenced by urban development in Europe, with particular emphasis on the Mediterranean basin. Topics range from formal characteristics (including public space), water provision, waste disposal, urban maintenance, spaces for the dead, and border spaces; to ways of thinking about, visualising, and remembering cities in antiquity; to conflict within and between cities, economics, mobility and globalisation, intersectional urban experiences, slavery, political participation, and religion.

This chapter addresses the contentious relationship between trauma theory and African fiction, arguing that the latter has always been concerned with historical memory and the attendant traumas of not only colonialism, but also dislocation. The chapter offers an overview of existing scholarship on trauma theory’s origins, discusses emerging debates on its efficacy in dealing with African texts, and, ultimately, argues that African fiction has been engaged in this discourse, even prior to the institutionalization of trauma theory.

Chapter 1 explores the riverine environment and Indigenous societies using four Spanish accounts. Here, there is ample evidence of the complex, large-scale societies mentioned earlier in the Introduction, characterized by exchange, alliances, and intergroup hostilities into which Europeans integrated themselves. Taken as a whole, these accounts demonstrate that Amerindians were not passive; rather, they dominated and directed interactions with Europeans. These interactions included the cross-fertilization of ideas, skills, and material culture, as well as invitations to form alliances and kinship ties, which became significant in shaping a new riverine society.

Periyar's writings on women were at the heart of his commitment to a radical concept of freedom. Periyar is known most not only for his atheism and radical critique of religion (Manoharan, 2022a) but also for his commitment and contribution to anti-caste thought and politics (Manoharan, 2020; 2022b). However, crucial, perhaps even central, to Periyar's politics of Self-Respect was his approach to the women's question. In this chapter, we discuss how Periyar's approach to the women's question was grounded not only in a rights-based discourse, but also in a freedom-based discourse; not just freedom from patriarchy, but also sexual freedom in a radically libertarian sense. More importantly, Periyar argued that freedom for women took priority over freedom from colonialism, and challenged patriarchal tendencies within Indian nationalism.

Scholars engaged with feminist politics have looked at the critical importance given to the women's question and gender in the Self-Respect Movement (SRM). In their readings on gender politics in India, Anandhi and Velayuthan (2010) highlight the ‘limitations in theory itself in dealing with diversities and subalternity’ and argue that in a scenario where gender intersects with caste and class, the theory and methods used ‘should generate knowledge from the margins’. While feminist scholars such as Uma Chakravarti (2018) and Sharmila Rege (2013) have discussed the intersections of caste and patriarchy, others who have studied the Periyarist politics of gender—Anandhi (1991), Geetha (1998), and Hodges (2005)—have meticulously captured what we very broadly call Self-Respect perspectives and made important contributions to the study of women’s politics of and from the margins of Tamil Nadu.

Iosif Stalin, along with Adolf Hitler and Mao Zedong, constituted the Big Three dictators of the twentieth century who decisively swayed the course of world history. As is the case with all tyrants, hubris was the underlining feature of Stalin’s rule. As a Marxist, he firmly believed in the inevitability of the demise of capitalism and the ultimate triumph of socialism. As a Bolshevik, he emphatically advanced his mission of spreading war and revolution abroad and defeating world imperialism once and for all. By means of disinformation, subversion, and camouflage, Stalin covertly and openly challenged the liberal world order dominated by Britain, France, and the United States. His defiance found common political ground with his nemesis Adolf Hitler, as seen in the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (Nazi-Soviet Pact of Non-Aggression) in August 1939. Ultimately, however, Stalin’s hubris blinded him to Hitler’s cunning, resulting in the humiliating and devastating betrayal of June 1941 (Operation Barbarossa). It was also Stalin’s hubris, however, that drove the country to victory over Nazi German, at unimaginable human and material costs.

Volume II charts European urbanism between 700 and 1850, the millennium during which Europe became the world’s most urbanised region. Featuring thirty-six chapters from leading scholars working on all the major linguistic areas of Europe, the volume offers a state-of-the-art survey that explores and explains this transformation, how similar or different such processes were across Europe, and how far it is possible to discern traits that characterise European urbanism in this period. The first half of the volume offers overviews on the urban history of Mediterranean Europe, Atlantic and North Sea Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, and European urbanisms around the world. The second half explores major themes, from the conceptualisation of cities and their material fabric to continuities and changes in the social, political, economic, religious and cultural histories of cities and towns.

After a year of advance following the failed summer 1943 German offensive at Kursk, the Soviet High Command decided on a renewed assault against Germany’s Army Group Centre in Belarus. After successful deception operations, in June 1944 the massive Soviet operation Bagration overwhelmed the outmanned and outgunned troops of Army Group Centre by combining masses of men and material with partisan activity to prevent German evacuation or reinforcement. Within weeks, the German position had collapsed and Soviet forces raced west into Poland. Combined with the Western allies’ landings in Normandy, Bagration convinced many in the German High Command that the war was lost, and Hitler’s assassination was the only hope to salvage acceptable peace terms. The headlong Soviet advance reached the Vistula River, triggering an attempt by the Polish Home Army resistance to seize power in Warsaw ahead of Soviet occupation. The Soviet advance ground to a halt on the east bank of the Vistula, and Hitler’s forces systematically crushed Polish resistance.

‘Periyar had hatred towards the Brahmins and preached violence against them.’ ‘Periyar favoured the powerful among the non-Brahmin castes.’ ‘Periyar sidelined the Dalits.’ These are the three main accusations against Periyar by his critics on the issue of caste. In an earlier paper (Manoharan, 2020), I have questioned the last two criticisms. In this chapter, I will address the first. Periyar was opposed to casteism in all its forms. In India, he identified the dominant form of casteism to be Brahminism, a ritual birth-based social hierarchy that derived legitimacy from scriptures, practices, traditions, and values associated with Hinduism and had material consequences. This led Periyar to be vehement in his criticism of the castes that were scripturally considered the highest, the Brahmins, and most sympathetic to the castes that were considered to be the lowest, the ‘untouchables’. He understood that caste had a secular–material dimension as well, which was interconnected to the ideological–ritual dimension.

Working in the historical context that he did in Tamil Nadu, Periyar's approach to caste identified three broad social categories—the Brahmins, the Dalits,1 and the ‘Shudras’. His primary target of criticism was the first, the Brahmins. This led to counter-accusations that he was unfairly targeting only one community for casteism. But as I have discussed earlier (Manoharan, 2022), he often challenged the non-Brahmins for internalizing casteism, for subscribing to notions of hierarchy over others, and for the lack of an egalitarian spirit.

Volume I offers a broad perspective on urban culture in the ancient European world. It begins with chronological overviews which paint in broad brushstrokes a picture that serves as a frame for the thematic chapters in the rest of the volume. Positioning ancient Europe within its wider context, it touches on Asia and Africa as regions that informed and were later influenced by urban development in Europe, with particular emphasis on the Mediterranean basin. Topics range from formal characteristics (including public space), water provision, waste disposal, urban maintenance, spaces for the dead, and border spaces; to ways of thinking about, visualising, and remembering cities in antiquity; to conflict within and between cities, economics, mobility and globalisation, intersectional urban experiences, slavery, political participation, and religion.

For a long time, the cities of northern and central Italy were understood as belonging to a ‘communal’ sphere whose economic, social and political trajectory pointed towards modernity; southern Italian cities were part of a ‘monarchical’ sphere whose backwardness was said to continue to the present day. This chapter, however, approaches the history of the cities of medieval Italy from within the political spaces to which they belonged, especially those of the great monarchies that dominated the peninsula. If we avoid two preconceptions – that communes were a manifestation of statehood and that monarchies necessarily limited the autonomy of cities – the two spheres of the Italian cities appear much closer to urban experiences in the rest of Europe than has often been recognised.

What happened when people did not pay their debts? Debts Unpaid argues that conflicts over small-scale unpaid debts were a stress test for the economic order. To ensure the wheels of petty commerce continued to turn in Mexico, everyday debtors and creditors had to believe that their interests would be protected relatively fairly when agreements soured. A resounding faith in economic justice provided the bedrock of stability necessary for the expansion of capitalism over the longue durée. Introducing the two-hundred-year period of massive economic transformation explored throughout the book, this chapter presents the text’s key historical and theoretical interventions from the late eighteenth century to the first decade of the twenty-first. As the capitalist credit economy grew, especially through modern financial institutions, ordinary people used new financial tools and navigated increasingly opaque and impersonal credit relations. This Introduction outlines the dynamics of change and the challenges and opportunities they posed for the world of small-scale debtors and creditors.

Interpretation of papal provisions should factor in what we know about differences in endowment between parishes, and about the evolution of the function of canonries.

Volume II charts European urbanism between 700 and 1850, the millennium during which Europe became the world’s most urbanised region. Featuring thirty-six chapters from leading scholars working on all the major linguistic areas of Europe, the volume offers a state-of-the-art survey that explores and explains this transformation, how similar or different such processes were across Europe, and how far it is possible to discern traits that characterise European urbanism in this period. The first half of the volume offers overviews on the urban history of Mediterranean Europe, Atlantic and North Sea Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, and European urbanisms around the world. The second half explores major themes, from the conceptualisation of cities and their material fabric to continuities and changes in the social, political, economic, religious and cultural histories of cities and towns.

Volume II charts European urbanism between 700 and 1850, the millennium during which Europe became the world’s most urbanised region. Featuring thirty-six chapters from leading scholars working on all the major linguistic areas of Europe, the volume offers a state-of-the-art survey that explores and explains this transformation, how similar or different such processes were across Europe, and how far it is possible to discern traits that characterise European urbanism in this period. The first half of the volume offers overviews on the urban history of Mediterranean Europe, Atlantic and North Sea Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, and European urbanisms around the world. The second half explores major themes, from the conceptualisation of cities and their material fabric to continuities and changes in the social, political, economic, religious and cultural histories of cities and towns.

This chapter explores the cities of Northern Europe as a plethora of difference and similarity, first by considering the possibility of a Northern European region as it might emerge from climate, politics or urbanisation. It traces, a double process of urban material planning, growth and building and, on the other hand, an overall notion of a (Northern) European urban and regional identity. This plays out over a broad process from the liberal cities of the later 1800s, through the inter-war crisis and post-war changes (very distinct between Nordic and Baltic cities), to the post-Cold War period (where some similarities reappear).The chapter also focuses on the welfare period, where state and municipality enter into new negotiations. The social programmes of Nordic statecraft mean large-scale public housing, regulation and institutions, causing new cleavages between city and country. The new role of the market in urbanisation from the 1970s onwards is also considered, intersecting from 1989 with the end of the Cold War, and a reconnection between Baltic and Nordic cities. The chapter evaluates the influence of globalisation and the role of modernised cities both economically and culturally, and thus the notion and identity of Nordic and Northern European cities are connected with regional urban development.

This book places the troubles of ordinary people at the centre of economic change in Mexico, arguing that conflicts over small-scale unpaid debts were a stress test for the economic and political order. Studying malfunction – what happened when contracts broke or soured – exposes the ways in which debt trouble became a driving force in the history of accumulation and justice in the modern world. This concluding chapter offers final thoughts on the book’s core proposal: that a broad sense of fairness and justice provided a bedrock of stability that allowed for massive economic transformation over a long chronological horizon.