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.

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.

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 focuses on Periyar and Tamil cinema, particularly early Tamil cinema of the 1930s and the cinema of the Dravidian ideologues whom he mentored. The purpose is to engage with what has generally remained a contested terrain because of the common perception of Periyar's aversion to mainstream cinema vis-á-vis the penchant of his chief lieutenants like C. N. Annadurai (Anna) and M. Karunanidhi for it. One of the main reasons for the split of his protegees from the party he founded, the Dravidar Kazhagam (Federation of Dravidians; DK), to form the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (Federation for the Progress of Dravidians; DMK) was their investment in electoral politics. Periyar, being a social reformer, who was preoccupied with the upliftment of the people on the fringes, oppressed by the systemic entrenchment of caste, religion, and gender, had his priority on questioning the status quo and challenging reactionary and regressive forces. Therefore, electoral ambitions predicated on consensual or concessional politics and opportunistic coalitions were anathema to him (Venkatachalapathy, 2021). Conversely, the Dravidian ideologues of the split faction veered towards electoral politics and believed in the potential of popular cinema for disseminating Dravidian ideology as filtered through the lens of mass appeal to mobilize people with the resultant electoral gains in terms of votes. Thus, the fascination of commercial cinema was, one could argue, at the root of the contention between the leader and his close and trusted disciples.

The chapter discusses approaches and findings in the field of urban governance, which emerged in urban history research from the 1990s onwards. The concept is based on the observation that traditional historiography of local administrations systematically underestimated or simplified the interrelation and inferences between the management of local public affairs, the central state and civil society. Studies in this field analyse such interferences and interactions between central and local government, civic associations, and popular culture, as well as political rituals and symbolic practices. The chapter builds on the pioneering work of Morris and Trainor (2000) and Gunn and Hulme (2020), who presented two complementary and overlapping approaches with a more structure-oriented and primarily cultural-historical perspective. The chapter first reflects on the major periods and shifts in urban governance in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and then examines the relations between central states and local governments. Key processes such as the rise of the urban bourgeoisie and the modern networked city in the late nineteenth century, forms of governance in twentieth-century suburban areas, and urban governance in authoritarian states, including socialist cities, are discussed. Special attention is given to variations of urban governance in different European regions.

If Edward I had died in the course of his conquest of Wales in the early 1280s, his successor would not have been the notorious Edward II, but King Alfonso I, born at Bayonne in 1273, and named after his godfather, the queen’s brother and king of Castile. In fact, Alfonso was to die a child in 1284, just as Edward’s first two sons had done, but the details of his life are a reminder that English kingship was not just – or even, at times, very – English. The kings of England, descended from Normans and Angevins in the male line, wished to be leading figures on the European stage, and they jealously defended lands, rights and connections across the continent, as well as in these islands.

Periyar, to many in Tamil Nadu, was an atheist and iconoclast who called out belief in gods, superstitions, and rituals. He, of course, was all of that. But despite his rejection, he had a close engagement with religion and his critique was rooted in a close reading of religious texts, practices, and the values they espoused. He also creatively drew upon extant critiques of religion, Vedic and Abrahamic, and scholarly debates of his times to propound an alternative humanist ethic rooted in justice and fraternity. This chapter maps the multiple sources of his critique of religion and outlines the contours of his call for an ethical life.

There was much overlap between Periyar's thoughts and the critiques of scripturally sanctioned hierarchies of caste by spiritual and secular thinkers, both those who preceded him and those who lived in his times. Even though he was influenced by modernist critiques of religion emerging from the West, it is important to note that his views were in line with a long lineage of materialist philosophical traditions in the subcontinent.

Periyar became a militant atheist only in his forties. It was his vehement criticism of Brahminical Hinduism that led to his position of atheism. Periyar, on several occasions, observed that he was least interested in talking about God and religion.

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.

The current chapter investigates the relationship dynamics between Germany and the Axis bloc countries. The chapter concludes that the Axis coalition-building efforts were poorly organized, haphazardly coordinated, and dreadfully led, suffering from German racism, mutual mistrust, and systematic lack of resources. Finnish participation in Operation Barbarossa was motivated by two things: the country’s exposed geographical position next to Russia and the unfinished Soviet attempt to occupy it during the Winter War in 1939–1940. Finland was not occupied by the Red Army and thus maintained its liberal democracy.

While most histories describe the Romanian Army as a reluctant ally of the German Army on the Easten Front, this chapter argues that Romania had embraced a far-right ideology that made the country Nazi Germany’s most important partner in the campaign against the Soviet Union. The Italian Royal Army fought an unplanned campaign, under German command, against the Red Army between August 1941 and January 1943. Despite severe limitations, the combatants of the CSIR and the ARMIR fought bravely until German defeat at Stalingrad led to the deadly disaster on the Don River.

In the 1000 or so years after c. 700, Britain and Ireland’s urban sector developed from a hybrid European urbanism on the edge of the continent to an imperial urbanism forming the scaffolding of a complicated colonial and commercial empire. This contributed to the long-term shift in European economic power from its traditional epicentres in the Mediterranean and North Sea and Baltic worlds, with the Atlantic Archipelago on its margins, to the new riches of the Atlantic and Asians world, with the Archipelago at its heart. British and Irish urbanization involved conquest, colonisation, and social reordering as well as material improvement; and the cities, boroughs, and towns and ‘villages’ were more than a little implicated in the human and environmental trauma of Atlantic slavery and the Anthropocene.