This article argues that syndicalist trade union organizations, viewed internationally, were unique in First World War Europe in not supporting the war efforts or defensive efforts of their respective governments. The support for the war of the important French organisation has obscured the fact that the remaining five national syndicalist organisations – in belligerent Germany and Italy, and in neutral Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands – remained faithful to their professed workers' internationalism. The article argues that forces tending to integrate the labour movement in pre-1914 Europe had less effect on syndicalists than on other trade unions, and that syndicalist resistance to both integration and war in the non-Gallic countries was also influenced by their rivalry with social-democratic organisations.

In the decade after 1952 France faced sustained United Nations criticism of its colonial policies in north Africa. As membership of the UN General Assembly expanded, support for the non-aligned states of the Afro-Asian bloc increased. North African nationalist parties established their permanent offices in New York to press their case for independence. Tracing UN consideration of French North Africa from the first major General Assembly discussion of Tunisia in 1952 to the end of the Algerian war in 1962, this article considers the tactics employed on both sides of the colonial/anti-colonial divide to manipulate the UN Charter's ambiguities over the rights of colonial powers and the jurisdiction of the General Assembly in colonial disputes.

At the end of the Weimar Republic, German business people, socialists, and communists used images of unemployed workers to define the boundaries of what they each considered acceptable and unacceptable in German Society. While concerns over Jews, homosexuals, and so on stayed within narrow discursive boundaries in the Weimar Republic, the public discourse on the unemployed ranged across a number of discursive boundaries and became a nodal point of social critique and commentary. Despite the marginal social status of unemployed workers, discussions about them became central to the self-understanding of different social groups in Weimar's political economy. In defining the unemployed, these communities also defined themselves and laid bare their existential concerns.

This article examines and analyses the discussion over ‘the Spanish Problem’ taking place between the leaders of the three great Allied powers during the Postdam Conference of July–August 1945. It argues that the approved condemnation of the Franco regime was a bald rhetorical declaration which contained no effective sanctions, be they diplomatic, economic or military. The reference to Spain was the result of a minimal agreement reached with great difficulty after arduous negotiations which resulted in the imposition of a toothless international ostracism. Consequently, aided by the disintegration of the Grand Alliance and its replacement by the Cold War, the Francoist dictatorship cautiously inched its way to post-war survival.

This essay considers the basic differences between the development of the modern nation-state in west and east European contexts. It suggests that, because the foundations of state formation in the latter in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were ethnonationalist, a long road lies ahead in eastern Europe before the region can free itself from its lengthy captivity between the bad extremes of Empire on the one hand and the ethnonational Nation-State on the other. It disputes the idea that ethnocultural homogeneity within the borders of the nation-state provides a viable solution, even if the way to the creation of such homogeneity may be painful, and claims that policies which aim to create this ethnocultural homogeneity tend to prolong the swing of the region's political organisation between Empire and Nation-State. The only way out of the dilemma would appear to be the inclusion of these states in the processes of voluntary (non-imperial) regional and European supranational integration.

The rise of big business is one of the most important phenomena of the twentieth century. This article reflects on its role in Europe's economy and society. Four aspects are given particular attention. The first concerns the extent to which big business can be considered as a European (as opposed to a US) phenomenon. The second considers the balance between common European characteristics (persistence of family ownership, extent of state involvement) and national specificities (company size, corporate governance, education and training, career patterns). A third part discusses the contribution of big business to economic development, especially the controversies surrounding the ‘Chandlerian’ model, based on the US experience, as well as the discrepancies between business performance and economic performance. Finally, the article warns about the pitfalls of a simplistic ‘cultural’ approach to business history.

The contrast between the European civil wars in the first half of the century and the contribution of a uniting and united Europe to the maintenance of the ‘free’ Western world in the second half is so marked as to suggest that no single explanation of this massive change will suffice. Only an analysis of conjunctures can reveal what divides and unites the countries of Europe and assess Europe's impact on the world. This paper combines an assessment of four lengthy periods (pre-First World War, interwar, divided Europe and post-Cold War) with a secular view of Europe's position and role in world politics and the international economy. It consists of two parts: a brief account of the basic thesis and of the characteristics of the idea of ‘Europe’, and an historical analysis of the four periods.

From its inception the Editorial Board of Contemporary European History has met annually to discuss matters of journal business and policy. Members have travelled from the United States and Australia, as well as several European countries, to be present at these meetings and have never just made up a list of distinguished but inactive names. At the annual meeting of 1997 it was suggested that, for a change, we should use the opportunity of the 1999 meeting to allow board members to reflect on their own fields of historical research at the turn of the century. As a result the April 1999 board meeting, which took place in New York thanks to the good offices of the Remarque Institute of New York University and its Director, Professor Tony Judt, transformed itself into a small conference, ‘Reflections on the Twentieth Century’. It is some of the (revised) ‘think-pieces’ of that conference that form this issue of the journal. Not all papers given at the conference appear here. Those that do have been seen by external referees.

This article begins by examining recent work on labour history by some French and British historians, who have been influenced by postmodernism and the ‘linguistic turn’ but often find themselves locked into what are primarily ‘cultural’ explanations of labour's identity and development. It disputes the culturalist methodology and stresses that an alternative model of discourse analysis insists on contextualisation, which in turn re-instates the significance of realms of explanation outside language, text and culture. It also sees the comparative method as a means of identifying historical structures, and concludes with a schematic account of European labour in the twentieth century.

In response to the atrocities committed during and after the First World War and the need to create a stable east European settlement, the diplomats in Paris constructed the world's first system of international protection for minorities. The League of Nations, charged with the enforcement of the Minority Treaties, set up a cautious ‘political’ system, which failed either to shield minorities or pacify their governments. No international system was revived after the Second World War, but since the fall of communism, Europe – looking forward to the future as well as back to the past – has organised new supranational institutions to protect endangered religious and national groups.

This article aims to offer a first overview of family politics in twentieth-century Europe. The term ‘family politics’ is here taken to imply not just family policies – what states do for, or to, families – but, more broadly, the relations between individuals, families, civil society and the state. Four different visions of family politics, at different moments of the century, are analysed in detail: that of the Bolsheviks in the early years of the Russian Revolution; that of the great dictators (Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco) from the 1920s to the 1940s; that of Catholicism in the central decades of the century; and finally that of democracy, from 1945 onwards. It is argued that in each of these instances there emerges a strikingly different configuration of the relations in question (individual–family–civil society–state). For many of the Bolsheviks the family itself was the target of attack, while the individual was to be subsumed into a collectivised society. For the great dictators civil society was swiftly eliminated and the family was formally exalted, but the crucial relationships became those between the authoritarian state and regimented individuals. For the Catholic Church of Pius XII the principal menace to the Christian family was seen to come from the state on the one hand and individualism on the other; the family and an integrist society were to be the principal links of his chain. Democracy alone, albeit imperfectly, has held fast to all four elements, trying in different ways in different countries to strike a balance between them.

This study attempts to explain how in the twentieth century the concept of a European order which had evolved from the European balance of the nineteenth century, but with an added democratic dimension after 1919 and 1945, played a role in international relations, despite the two world wars which almost put an end to it; how it helped to sustain the concept of a minimum of European solidarity, despite numerous national and ideological conflicts; and how, at the start of a new century, this concept may again be significant for a continent that has not had a similar opportunity to establish a lasting peace since the Congress of Vienna. The concept of a European order may in particular serve as a way of accommodating Russia, which has no real prospect of becoming a member of the European Union.

The construction of Europe is often teleologically addressed as a result of an unstoppable trend towards federalism. Another angle on this history gives access to another logic: that of a European kind of nation-state which considers European integration not as an element in its decline, but as a tool to reorganise its power. This new youth for the old nation-state was linked as much to the historical context of the 1950s–1970s as to the specific rules of policy-making and to the economic regulation focus of the European Community.

This article is a reassessment of F. G. Stambrook's well-known claim that Lord D'Abernon was the architect of German Locarno diplomacy. It suggests that Stambrook did not fully understand D'Abernon's relationship with the Luther–Stresemann government, and in particular it seeks to place German Locarno diplomacy within the wider context of German foreign policy in the period. It throws new light not only on the D'Abernon–von Schubert relationship but on the dynamic forces at work within the German Foreign Ministry. The article also contains a brief assessment of German relations with the United States.

This paper considers why political leaders and central bankers continued to adhere to the gold standard as the Great Depression intensified. We do not focus on the effects of the gold standard on the Depression, which have been documented elsewhere, but on the reasons why policy makers chose the policies they did. We argue that the mentality of the gold standard was pervasive and compelling to the leaders of the interwar economy. It was expressed and reinforced by the discourse among these leaders. It was opposed and finally defeated by mass politics, but only after the interaction of national policies had drawn the world into the Great Depression.

By analysing the Anglo-German talks about financial compensation for the cost of British troops in West Germany, this article seeks to clarify the linkages between Britain's security and European and monetary policies. The ideological commitment of British politicians to a reserve currency role for sterling had a deep impact on Britain's relations to Europe, particularly the Federal Republic. By consistently threatening to cut its military commitment on the Continent and by minimising it to a question of financial expediency, London failed to draw any political capital from its troops. This became very visible in the field of European integration. The conflict on currency issues and troop deployment was a crucial element in preventing closer relations between the Federal Republic and the United Kingdom in the 1950s and 1960s.

The 1950s were the heyday of cinema in Europe. Rather than competing with Hollywood studios, European film companies preferred to stick to old, well established recipes. Germany recycled one of its cultural traditions, Heimat. Despite the poverty of their plots and the weakness of their protagonists, the Heimatfilme succeeded by celebrating an unspoilt, soothing wilderness. The Italian counterpart of Heimatfilme was melodrama. If family dramas remained much appreciated in the Peninsula, the filmmakers were clever enough to shift their characters from an ill-defined epoch to the contemporary world. So, while urban Germany was pining for its wild, empty mountains, rural Italy was contemplating its domestic comforts to come. With the Carry On series, Britain was loyal to comedies, which filled the main part of the programmes. The plots – which merely dealt with private affairs – were humorous, harmless, always deprived of authentic social background. The European cinemas of the 1950s were directed towards large, mostly ‘popular’ audiences of people who used to leave their houses and gather in town centres on Saturday evenings. These cinemas did not produce any masterpieces but they were the most characteristic, and the most appreciated, form of entertainment in the middle of the century. It was not art, but it was ‘popular’ culture.

After 1945 the Italian tradition of feminine beauty was redefined in a democratic context in which women, for the first time, became full citizens. Faced with a far-reaching challenge from Hollywood, traditional criteria of beauty were first strenuously defended and then modified and commercialised. Beauty contests proved to be a vital vehicle in this transition, since they acted both as a forum for the reassertion of Italian beauty and as a vehicle for the displacement of old ideas centred on the face with a new concept based on the eroticised body. This transition became bound up with the ongoing political conflict between Catholics and the left for the moral and political leadership of the country. While both, with different emphases, championed ‘natural’ at the expense of American-style ‘manufactured’ beauty, competition led them to engage with, and in some way adopt, the sexualised beauty that was the hallmark of the role of the United States in furnishing new models for the consumer society that would develop rapidly in the later 1950s.

Although the processes of censorship as exercised over the stage and screen in 1950s Britain shared similar characteristics, there were vital differences in the way in which the governing authorities construed the audiences who frequented these entertainment media. Because cinemagoers constituted a mass audience and were considered to be more impressionable, the criteria of ‘quality’ applied by the British Board of Film Censors differed markedly to those put into effect for the theatre by the Lord Chamberlain's Office. The reception afforded both the play and film of I Am a Camera reveals the subtlety of approach adopted by the censors in each instance.

At the end of the Second World War, the countries of Western Europe found themselves in a state of economic and physical ruin and, in the cases of Germany, Italy and France, in a position of, at best, moral and political ambiguity and, at worst, outright bankrupcy. Only Britain emerged from the war with its political regime intact and its moral purpose vindicated, although paradoxically its economy was to prove the most severely wounded. Perhaps because of the very scale of the disaster, however, Western Europe embarked upon a process of reconstruction, aided financially by the Marshall Plan, which embodied grandiose ambitions for a radical rebirth. The Italian Communist Party's weekly magazine, for example, was called Rinascita, whilst the French Communist weekly Les Lettres Françaises celebrated a ‘new French “renaissance”, encompassing political life, urban redevelopment and a whole range of cultural development, which was seen, in the early days of the Liberation, as the legitimate reward and goal of the Resistance’. In Germany, the recognition of 1945 as constituting a Nullpunkt or Stunde Null, made possible the Kahlschlag, or clean sweep which would propel the new Republic towards democracy and prosperity. Even in Britain, there was the sense of the dawning of a new era, and if the Festival of Britain, in 1951, looked back to the Great Exhibition a century earlier and celebrated traditional British qualities, whilst also flexing the nation's industrial and military muscles, with the death of King George VI and the accession of his daughter, the country embarked, quite literally and self-consciously, on a ‘New Elizabethan’ age.