As a new US President took office in 2021, US–Russian relations veered between cooperation and confrontation. In February, Washington and Moscow agreed to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (which had been signed in 2010) for another five years. But in March, Joseph R. Biden called Vladimir Putin “a killer,” souring relations between Russia and the United States and leading to a reduction in the number of staff members in both diplomatic missions. Just a month later, however, Biden proposed holding a bilateral summit, which finally took place in Geneva on June 16, 2021. This event planted the seeds of hope for an improvement in bilateral relations – albeit more among Russian observers than among their American counterparts. Biden’s critics in the United States in fact saw this meeting as “appeasing” Putin, whom many American politicians, experts, and journalists had by that time represented as the epitome of evil.

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 short essay provides a concise top-down picture of the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War, 1941–1945. It looks at not only its leadership and command (including the State Defence Committee, Stavka, and General Staff) but also size and structure, political supervision, mobilisation and training, and military equipment. When looking at mobilisation and training, it briefly considers not only wider issues but also the mobilisation of specific national groups and women. When considering equipment it identifies some key pieces of equipment that the Soviet Union was able to produce in large numbers, and that proved to be not only relatively easy to manufacture but also rugged and effective.

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 compares the processes and outcomes of labor politics in post-uprising Tunisia and Morocco. It explores how institutional legacies from authoritarian rule created distinct opportunities for unions to exert influence over transitional governments and shaped their ability to secure meaningful political and economic reforms. The analysis underscores how historical legacies influence unions’ capacity to engage effectively in political transitions. It concludes by considering how institutional legacies might change.

The Conclusion considers the implications of the revisionist framework that seeks to hold the histories of Eastern Amazon together, even if there is much tension and conflict between its constituent parts. Specifically, the study forces a reconsideration of three aspects: the making of Indigenous territories in the sertão; how the concept of the sertão can be reworked in Brazilian historiography; and a reconsideration of the ways in which historical periods are conventionally broken up. Regardless of the changing meanings and varying human interactions with the Amazon environment, the enduring character that shapes human societies and the spaces they inhabit lies in its flowing waters. Understanding the Amazon through the aforementioned spatial history involves seeing it as a geographical place shaped by the interactions between the peoples who have lived there. To understand the Amazon today, these histories must be woven together, as the region was shaped by conflict and dispossession – legacies that persist to this day.

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.

On the eve of the independence movements in the early nineteenth century, the promulgation of the 1812 Cádiz Constitution transformed economic justice for small-scale debtors and creditors by placing magistrates in Mexico City by election instead of appointment. This change directly affected the mediation of the juicios verbales (small claims hearings for cases under 100 pesos), where tens of thousands of debtors and creditors now pressed their claims before elected local magistrates. Chapter 1 analyses this system of economic justice based on nearly 1,000 small claims records, showing that economic justice was relatively effective for ordinary people from the 1810s to the 1860s. These small claims conflicts might seem a petty world of negligible amounts and narrow-minded disputes, but, analysed together, they revise a long-standing historiographical assumption among scholars that Mexico did not have strong property rights in the early nineteenth century. Instead, this chapter shows that Cádiz liberalism established a judicial institution to protect property rights, especially for creditors, that enjoyed a broad legitimacy well into Mexican independence.

The German army invaded the Soviet Union in hopes of destroying it in a blitz campaign in 1941. Its professional and experienced officer corps utilized Auftragstaktik to achieve early victories on the battlefield. The men they led were well-motivated, generally well-trained, loyal to the Nazi regime, and confident in victory. The emphasis on tactical flexibility and independence helped balance out the army’s numerical inferiority in weapons and equipment. The enormous casualties suffered in 1941 and early 1942, however, ensured that the army’s qualitative edge soon dulled, leading to complete defeat.