Italian cities were at the forefront of cultural change during the period 1400-1700, with innovations in architecture and urban design being adopted widely across the rest of the continent. During the early modern period, many Italian cities took on key elements of the built appearance that they retain to this day. Monumental form and the application of increasingly ordered urban planning regulations were achieved thanks also to well-organised administrations that levied taxes that could in part subsidise urban improvements. The wealth of urban elites likewise contributed to this process through widespread participation in the construction of residential palaces and new religious buildings. Cities, and the concentrations of people and wealth that assembled there, were at the very heart of the cultural renewal that is associated with the period; literary, artistic and intellectual culture was defined by its urban nature, whether this was within a courtly or civic setting.

On 23 August 1939, Hitler and Stalin agreed to a treaty of non-aggression, paving the way for the outbreak of war in Europe. Though this Nazi-Soviet Pact stunned contemporary observers, this chapter argues that the decision for partnership – and the military, economic, and intelligence cooperation it portended – had a long prehistory. Here, the Soviet-German relationship is traced from its inception in 1917 through Germany’s invasion of the USSR in 1941. It focuses on four distinct periods: early contacts during and immediately following the First World War, the Rapallo era of extensive cooperation between 1921 to 1933, the collapse of the Soviet-German relationship after 1933, and the resumption of partnership in 1939 with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This chapter concludes that the two periods of Soviet-German cooperation were ultimately decisive factors in the breakdown of the post-war European status quo.

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.

In 1995, Thabo Mbeki’s keynote address at a G7 meeting, lauded by Tim Berners-Lee, underscored the Web’s potential to revolutionize global social and political landscapes, particularly emphasizing its significance for Africa. This chapter looks at the impact of digital technology on African literature. Using Chimamanda Adichie, Binyavanga Wainaina, and Brittle Paper as anchor points, it examines how digital technology and culture are reconstituting literary audiences, making space for the emergence of new knowledge domains and transforming the production infrastructures. It concludes that digital culture is the epistemic context in which twenty-first-century African literature exhibits some of its most defining characteristics.

This chapter demonstrates that the period between the Russo-Japanese War and the outbreak of the First World War displayed in equal measure a trend toward conflict and a trend toward cooperation. The governments of both the Russian Empire and the United States manifested a desire for more harmonious relations. Even in 1911, at the height of a conflict over Russia’s refusal to accept the passports of American Jews, the two states collaborated on the protection of fur seals and the tsarist government gave a most friendly welcome to a squadron of American battleships. This trend was also bolstered by mutual interest in expanding the export of American goods, capital, and technologies to the Russian Empire, as well as by cultural exchanges. Nonetheless, in the Far East, US “dollar diplomacy” clashed with a Russian “sphere of influence.” Within the United States, two large-scale public campaigns – against extraditing Russian revolutionaries who had fled to the United States and in favor of abrogating the 1832 commercial treaty in order to protest Russia’s anti-Semitic policies – testified that many Americans valued ideals more highly than trade and pragmatic cooperation.

The urban development of Britain and Ireland is not usually considered within a single frame of reference, a fact that reflects their conflicted histories. This chapter attempts to provide a comparative account to differences not only between Britain and what became the independent Republic of Ireland in 1921 but also between the ‘four nations’ of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The historical narrative is organised around four phases: 1850–1910, seen as witnessing the consolidation of the modern city in terms of demography and urban form; 1910–70 marked by the emergence of the twin forces of town planning and urban modernism; the 1970s and 1980s viewed as a period of urban crisis; and urban renaissance since 1990 in national and regional capitals, though not in other urban places such as seaside towns and de-industrialising urban regions. This chronological narrative is crosscut by the experience of race, colonialism and violence, which marked British urbanism not only overseas but also at home and on the island of Ireland. The result is an urban history that views urbanism in Britain and Ireland relationally: in connection to the simultaneous urbanisation of continental Europe and North America and to the matrix of colonial and post-colonial relations.

Analysing Northern and Mediterranean Europe together, this chapter challenges old and new grand narratives. There was urban growth during the sixth and seventh centuries in certain regions of northern and Mediterranean Europe, contrary to old notions of total urban decline linked to collapse paradigms of the western Roman Empire, including ideas about social collapse. There had been contractions, redefinitions of urban space and its uses, but in many places, those changes had already largely occurred in the later third and fourth centuries. This chapter traces the force of collaborative and competitive actions in the process of redefining urban spaces and spurring growth. Different social groups acted as drivers of the growth of cities and the creation of new forms of town between the sixth and twelfth centuries. The story of the Early Medieval city is one of diversity.

Gabriel Le Bras’s presentation of Boniface VIII as ‘symphoniste et modérateur’ remains valid.

The ‘special relationship’ between the thirteenth-century French monarchy and the papacy was fragile because it was so intense.