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 argues that Soviet crimes at times of war were both widespread and complex in their origin, goals, logic, and trajectory. It distinguishes and explains several forms of Soviet criminality during its defensive war against Germany in 1941–1945: crimes against humanity and war crimes, both perpetrated by agents of the state and often in accordance with explicitly formulated state policy; troop crimes, not guided by state policy but often understood to be in its fulfilment by the perpetrators; and a variety of violent and criminal behaviour emanating from small group bonding, both within the military and outside of it. The chapter explains their origins and charts the reasons why there was so much silence about the criminality of the Soviet war effort after victory.

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.

How to foreground Africa and Africans in the processes and logics of European urbanisation and modernisation? Building on recent scholarship on (de)coloniality, the chapter explores how understanding Europe from Africa may transform dominant narratives of urban industrial modernity. The chapter discusses how racial capitalism and colonial dynamics shaped urban modernisation projects, thus seeing European ports from the perspective of the enslaved, Haussmann’s Paris from the perspective of Algiers, and Prussia’s rural planning from the settler colonial politics of Southern Africa. It further explores how the infrastructures of empire, from railways to dams and highways, shaped processes of Europeanisation and rearticulated colonial relations of power in Africa under the rubric of development. Finally, the chapter examines anti-colonial struggles in the imperial metropolises of Paris, London and Berlin since the 1930s and how they shaped changing projects of decolonisation, both in Africa and Europe.

That papal Christianity was primarily reactive rather than proactive is the least controversial conclusion from the case studies as a whole, something of a ‘folk-theorem’ of historians today, though a generation or two ago there was more of a tendency to think in terms of the deliberate if gradual assertion of an ideology. As already noted in the Introduction, most of the case studies are of papal responses to demand. I have tried to give a better idea of the range and contents of the demand and the responses. Exceptions are Case 1, showing how Cyprian of Carthage inadvertently gave popes the idea that the famous ‘Thou art Peter’ passage in the gospel of Matthew legitimated authority over the whole church, the Donation of Constantine (Case 8), probably not a papal document at all and important mainly half a millennium after its production, and (so far as one can tell) Case 14, Sergius IV’s attempt to launch a crusade avant le mot, in 1010. The absence of any outcome reminds us that it was demand that drove the power of the papacy. Case 16, the Roman reform council of 1049, does show a proactive papacy in action, but without the desired effects for want of understanding of facts on the ground. Case 17, the Dictatus papae, looks like a draft and had no impact to speak of. With Case 28, the pope is rewarding major service that historians have found scandalous, a moralizing judgment I have tried to tone down. In the other cases, popes granted requests: Cases 5, 9, 12, 13 (assuming the initiative came from the emperor), 15, 22, 24, 25, and 30; or resolved conflicts between systems: 5 again, 25 again, 26 again, 27, and 31; or attempted to deal with problems they could hardly escape: 4, 18, and 31 again; or responded to questions: Cases 2, 3, 6, 7, 11, 19, 21, 23, and 27. Evidently, there is overlap between the categories of ‘requests’, ‘conflicts’ and inescapable ‘problems’, and ‘questions’.

This chapter provides keys to reading the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and, later, the post-industrial and digital trends in Southern Europe, with some data on urbanisation and industrialisation, focusing on Iberia and Italy. This approach is explained with reference to the first emergence of industrialisation (the context of ‘delay’) and to the recent emergence of the ‘slow cities’. An overview of the development of three urban areas – Barcelona, Porto and Turin – creates a specific analytical framework and promotes a comparative perspective. The chapter proposes to rethink the approach to industrialisation as a generalised turning point in terms of change and all-round urban modernisation, consequently, considering aspects of ‘delay’ with respect to different dynamics. It identifies a ‘southernisation’ of Mediterranean Europe that created cultural as well as economic patterns as a form of marginalisation. The emergence of cultural heritage related to cities and towns redefines the role of Southern Europe in the new networks of European cities. The chapter looks for other rhythms and meanings of development connected to the awareness matured in the post-industrial world and the need for a paradigm shift in urban history. To this end, it offers entry points on breaks and continuities, aspects of change and historiographic interpretations.

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.

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.

This chapter explores how political and economic institutions shaped labor mobilization during the early phase of neoliberal reform (1970–1985). It reviews the impact of these reforms on unions in Tunisia and Morocco and analyzes their divergent responses. The chapter examines how practices of institutional incorporation and/or exclusion affected the alliances that unions forged with authoritarian elites and opposition groups. The analysis reveals that labor exclusion perpetuated union militancy in Tunisia, while partisan alliances and incorporation into formal politics moderated labor opposition in Morocco.

The final chapter examines how a new kind of shamanism developed in the riverbank settlements and attracted peoples across the colonial and Indigenous spaces. Although shamanism was a feature of Amerindian societies, the Portuguese also had a tradition of healing and folk curing. Riverine shamans from Indigenous communities were highly active in the eighteenth century, and modified Indigenous practices and Catholic symbols to meet the needs of their clients from all backgrounds seeking their ‘merciful’ work. Shamanic curing and healing connected the three spaces as shamans moved between each one and provided clients with relief from their suffering.