This article argues that Gerd-Rainer Horn's model of a ‘Mediterranean New Left’ encompassing both the French Parti socialiste unifié (PSU, 1960–1990) and the Italian Partito socialista italiano di unità proletaria (PSIUP, 1964–1972) needs to be significantly revised. It agrees that, half a century on from the events which gave rise to their foundation, this much misunderstood part of the political spectrum, midway between social democracy and the far left, is worthy of rescue from the ‘enormous condescension of posterity’, but questions how similar the two parties actually were. Major differences emerge, especially in the nature of each party's relationship with communism, with the philosovietism of the PSIUP contrasting with the PSU's evolution towards an anti-Leninist decentralist socialism of self-management. Yet, at the same time, important new evidence is uncovered about the concrete political and personal links that developed between leading intellectuals of the PSIUP and PSU, an example being the friendship of the Italian parliamentarian and theorist Lelio Basso with the journalist Gilles Martinet, later French ambassador to Italy. Other transnational links, both across the Mediterranean and to eastern Europe, are explored. Furthermore, the location of the roots of both parties in the 1940s generation of anti-fascist resistance calls into question prevailing assumptions equating the New Left with the youth of the 1960s, with wider implications for our understanding of the development of the European left across the twentieth century.

In the 1950s the Christian Democratic party turned its attention to agrarian reform projects and development funding for southern Italy. Its social and economic objectives were the destruction of latifundia, the creation of a class of small landowners, industrial and commercial development and the reduction of territorial inequalities. The ultimate goal, however, was political: to gain loyalty, allegiance and electoral consensus. To manage the economy and direct change, the party had to strengthen the organisation, form a ruling class, lay down territorial roots and widen the scope of its propaganda beyond anti-communism. Elections became the testing ground for the party's new reform strategies.

This article examines an important, but little-known, event in the history of post-war Czechoslovakia: the Plzeň uprising of June 1953. After outlining the context, processes and outcomes of the revolt, I argue that the disorders were less an expression of ubiquitous political and ideological resistance to the communist regime than a reflection of the disastrous socio-economic conditions and the breakdown in relations between party and workers at the point of production. I also maintain that the conventional wisdom of the ‘Stalinised’ Communist Party of Czechoslovakia as a fully fledged ‘totalitarian’ party is in many ways wide of the mark. Finally, the uprising prompted the party's tentative turn towards a ‘New Course’ and eventually a strategy of ‘socialist consumerism’.

Although the Turkish mafia is increasingly recognised as a powerful force in the ongoing trade in weapons, narcotics and people in Europe and beyond, there are few critical histories of organised crime's origins in Turkey. Rather than present some pedantic general survey of the history of organized crime in modern Turkey, this essay attempts to address two broader critical points of departure. First, how did Anatolia's journey from imperial to republican rule impact, and how was it impacted by, criminal gangs? Second, how do we situate the experience of modern gangs in Turkey in a global context? In attempting to answer these questions, this paper looks at the development of criminal syndicates among Laz migrants in the greater Istanbul area during the first half of the twentieth century. The case of the Laz shows particularly how war, migration, imperial politics, urbanisation and the rise of the international drug trade shaped the parallel development of organised crime and the nascent Turkish Republic.

This article analyses excesses carried out against civilians in Ireland and Poland after the First World War. It shows how the absence of a centralised state authority with a monopoly on violence allowed for new, less inhibited paramilitary groups to operate in parts of Ireland and Poland. The article argues that certain forms of violence committed had a symbolic meaning and served as messages, further alienating the different ethnic and religious communities. By comparing the Irish and Polish case, the article also raises questions about the obvious differences in the excesses in Poland and Ireland, namely in terms of scale of the excesses and the number of victims and, central to the Polish case, the question of antisemitism.

The article looks at how the collapse of the tsarist regime in Russia and the civil war which followed created the conditions wherein a class of violent paramilitary entrepreneurs, usually veterans of the Great War, were able to operate almost entirely without restraint. The author terms this phenomenon ‘warlordism’, and shows how the rise and eventual fall of warlords was connected to the absence and restoration of state control during 1917–23. The article calls for an interpretation of violence during this period which eschews the reductive dualism of ‘red’ and ‘white’ terror in favour of an analysis which emphasises the role played by individual and largely autonomous warlords.

In this comparative conclusion, the authors consider some of the most influential trends in the historiography of political and paramilitary violence, with particular reference to the relationship between wartime and post-war violence. The heuristic value of the ‘aftershocks’ metaphor is considered, as are the advantages (and potential pitfalls) of the contributors’ transnational approach. Finally, the authors suggest an agenda for future research on paramilitary violence, which looks at the phenomenon in a global perspective.

This article looks at the transition of the Habsburg South Slav lands, in particular Croatia, from empire into (Yugoslav) nation-state from 1917 to 1923, and the violence which attended it. While this transition was less cataclysmic in the South Slav lands than in other parts of the former Habsburg Empire, patterns of paramilitary violence and counter-revolution similar to those elsewhere in Europe were also present here. The article looks at these patterns from a transnational perspective and shows that although state control was effectively restored in Croatia by 1923, paramilitary networks forged during 1917–23 would return as Yugoslavia faced greater external threats and internal disequilibrium in the 1930s.

Why did de Gaulle veto the United Kingdom's accession to the European Economic Community in 1963? This article addresses the interlinked struggles over British accession and European political union in the early 1960s. The focus is on the crucially conflicting relations between de Gaulle and the Netherlands, his main opponent on both issues. Who won the Franco-Dutch battle and why? This article assesses these questions on the basis of new multi-archival material and highlights a hitherto largely unnoticed rhetorical battle, which explains the course of events and reveals a previously largely unnoticed logic behind de Gaulle's manoeuvring in the intertwined negotiations over European political union, the Common Agricultural Policy and the UK membership bid.

Charles de Gaulle has cast a long shadow over French political history and history writing. In exploring the French response to the United States' 1973 ‘Year of Europe’ initiative, this article challenges the dominant scholarly paradigm, which emphasises continuity between the 1960s and the 1970s. Drawing on a wide range of French and US archives, it demonstrates that renewed concerns about US power spurred the French elites both to reappraise the value of collective European action in foreign policy and to foster a pioneering concept: a politically anchored – as opposed to a geographically circumscribed – ‘European identity’.

The Hitler/Franco encounter at Hendaye in October 1940 was a central myth of Francoist propaganda. Allegedly, faced with threats and blandishments to force Spain into war on the Axis side, Franco coolly stood his ground and thereby secured Spanish neutrality. However, there is little evidence that Hitler did threaten Franco. His purpose in travelling to Hendaye, and to Montoire where he met Laval and Pétain, was to compare the relative cost of closer relationships with Spain and Vichy France. Far from cleverly holding off Hitler, Franco was disappointed that the meeting foundered. Germany's need to maintain good relations with Vichy ensured that Hitler could not meet Franco's price for belligerence, the dismemberment of the French North African empire.

A review of Italian journals dealing with contemporary European history suggests that there have been notable improvements in the standards of Italian historiography in the last decade. This reflects the continued success of Quaderni Storici, the challenge of new periodicals established since the late 1970s, and the response of more established journals to the changed nature of the Italian political contest.

The social history of élites and the bourgeoisie must be one of the most popular areas of French historical research at the present moment, after a long period of neglect. It may be useful to look first at the reasons for this previous distrust and present enthusiasm so as to trace the main directions of contemporary research.

Though the GDR's Ministry for State Security (Stasi) had enormous powers in 1989, it failed adequately to predict or to suppress the Revolution. It encouraged the Communist Party's opposition to reform by providing a distorted picture of society. The Stasi was restricted in its reporting by the ideological blinkers which it shared with the Party. Even during the Revolution, the Stasi believed that popular discontent could be remedied by a vigorous presentation of Party policies. In order to understand fully the events of 1989, it is necessary to view them also through the eyes of the Stasi.

This article reviews interpretations of the history of British society during the Second World War. Traditionally the Second World War has been viewed as a period of outstanding national unity and social solidarity, and the social arrangements of wartime have been seen as a unique catalyst of administrative ‘collectivism’ and the growth of the ‘welfare state’. More recent historiography has presented a more diffuse picture, emphasising the elements of continuing diversity and conflict in British society during the war period, and the importance of more long-term social trends that were shared by all western European countries.

This is the transcript of an oral history seminar in which those involved in the early years of the market during the late 1960s described and analysed their experiences. The session began with a short historical overview.

From 1939 to 1945, Georg Werthmann worked tirelessly to preserve the Catholic military chaplaincy of the German armed forces from Nazi Party interference. He and the men who worked under him valued their service as integral to the Catholic German soldiers in need of spiritual help; they also viewed the war in which they were engaged as a crusade against Bolshevism, an enemy to be beaten at any cost. The article focuses on the reactions of Werthmann and select chaplains and seminarians to two military regulations concerning the chaplaincy, and on their understanding of Bolshevism, revealing that Nazi and Catholic ideologies shared significant commonalities that encouraged their wartime service.

This article, which is part of a wider project, ‘Experiences of Communist Modernisation in a Bulgarian Muslim Village, 1945–2005’, examines the assimilation of Bulgarian-speaking Muslims in the Rhodope Mountains in the 1970s. By analysing communist efforts to ‘modernise’ Bulgarian Muslims, it sheds light on the relationship between modernity and the views of the communist state on such cultural categories as ‘nation’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘gender’ and ‘religion’. It argues that this particular campaign was not simply the latest chapter in an ongoing effort by the Bulgarian authorities to assimilate such populations, but should rather be seen as a specific response by the communist regime to ideas of modernity. Despite national and patriotic elements, the aim of the communist assimilation campaign was to introduce ‘modernity’ and ‘civilisation’ to the whole of Bulgarian society, especially those living at the social, cultural and political peripheries. In Bulgaria, as elsewhere in communist eastern Europe, gender and ethnic policy merged. Gender equality was one of the essential aims of the modernisation programme, but for the communist modernisers introducing gender equality among ethnically marginal groups, such as the rural Muslim group of Pomaks, was even more important. ‘Emancipating’ Muslim women was more significant than the ‘struggle against religion’ or the ‘fight for national homogeneity’.

This article questions Norway's role as peace promoter during the Manchurian crisis in the early 1930s. It appears that Norway's attitude towards Japan was more ambiguous and less consonant with the anti-war, anti-Japanese stand hitherto assumed on the basis of Norway's performance in the League of Nations. Norway's foreign ministry was mainly interested in Norway's practical and security needs, and fairly indifferent to events unfolding in the Far East, unless these affected Norwegian economic and political interests. For Norwegian diplomats and senior officials Japan was a civilised state and an important commercial partner. Favourable disposition towards Japan led the foreign ministry in 1934 to appear to acknowledge the ascendance of Emperor Pu Yi in the puppet state Manchukuo. This created considerable embarrassment in diplomatic and political circles.

This article evaluates the interplay between international sport and international politics during the cold war through an examination of the two Germanys and the Olympics from a British perspective. Germany was at the centre of Olympic and cold war politics between 1945 and the early 1970s, and the two German states competed fiercely over questions of national legitimacy. West Germany was initially successful in denying international recognition to the ‘other’ German state. East Germany countered this by developing a strategy that utilised international sport, particularly the Olympic Games, to further its claims for statehood. While recognising the flaws in the West German case against East Germany, British policy was constrained by the need to accommodate Bonn's sensibilities, given that the Federal Republic was a major ally. An examination of this ‘Olympian’ struggle from a British perspective tells us much about the West's cold war strategy and casts new light on this arena of East–West competition.