Introduction

In 1935, at a conference of Senguntha Mudaliars in Tiruppur, C. N. Annadurai (Anna, 1909–1969), then a twenty-six-year-old graduate, met E. V. Ramasamy (Periyar, 1879–1973). Impressed by the non-Brahmin youth who wanted to enter public life rather than seek a government job, Periyar was quick to take him under his wing. In less than three years, Anna was playing a major role in the Self-Respect Movement (SRM), becoming one of Periyar's chief lieutenants in the 1938–1939 anti-Hindi agitation which made the Dravidian movement a mass organization and effectively put Tamil assertion at the centre stage of politics. It was in the course of this mass-based agitation that the Justice Party was absorbed by the SRM and, in 1944, rechristened the Dravidar Kazhagam (DK). In 1949, Periyar's most brilliant protégé became his rival, breaking away to form the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). In 1967, the DMK dethroned the Indian National Congress (Congress). The intervening decades were marked by bitter hostility and rivalry between the DK and the DMK.

Immediately after the DMK's 1967 victory, there was a rapprochement. Since then, it has been customary to collapse the two into a unified Dravidian movement. The rivalry between the DK and the DMK has been completely elided by party ideologues, chroniclers, and historians.

This chapter explores fascist urban imaginary – the ways in which European fascists responded to, and sought to reorder, the modern city – and how these visions informed projects in Italy, Germany and Spain. Drawing on Social Darwinist and social hygienic discourses, fascists regarded cities antagonistically, as epicentres of cosmopolitanism, degenerate modernism, racial corruption and sterility. The city, like the nation as whole, was a space to be conquered, purged and regenerated. Yet at the same time, they also embraced the urban environment as a showcase for national greatness, a site of political ritual and a vehicle for the totalitarian transformation of society.

This tension shaped the policies of fascist regimes, especially as directed towards the capitals of Rome, Berlin and Madrid. Through demolition, excavation and construction, they used urban space to invoke past golden ages, attempted to leave an enduring imprint on the built environment, and formulated utopian plans for cities of the future. The chapter also considers the afterlives of fascist urban interventions and their significance for contemporary memory politics.

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 critiques a non-reflexive use of the ‘post-industrial’ among urban historians. It investigates the genealogy of the term, tracing the notion back to period after the Second World War. The concept expressed a belief that the dynamo of science and industry would produce a planned society centred on wealth and leisure. In this utopian vision, the economy was to be transformed by computers and machines, while society was to change through a radical process of tertiarisation. However, during the economic crisis of the 1970s, many of these initial ideas were appropriated against a much gloomier background, retaining the idea that job losses in Western societies caused by industrial relocation could be solved by a growing demand for non-moveable human services. Moreover, investing in ICT, knowledge and creativity were to be the pillars on which future urban societies had to be built. The chapter questions how this post-industrial imaginary became the focus of political-ideological recuperation in Europe from the 1980s onwards. It questions the urban drivers and unequal outcomes of this process of urban transformation.

This chapter recounts the major events from Operation Barbarossa, the codename for the invasion of the Soviet Union beginning on 22 June 1941. It looks briefly at the German operational planning and then the invasion itself. It considers how German operations sought to implement the strategic plan to defeat the Soviet Union in a summer campaign. Much of the discussion focuses on the panzer groups in the battles of Minsk, Smolensk, Kiev, and Moscow. It looks at the problems they encountered as well as the strategic disagreements in the German High Command. Key personalities like Franz Halder, Heinz Guderian, Hermann Hoth, Fedor von Bock, as well as Adolf Hitler are discussed. The final section discusses the Soviet winter offensive, which began in December 1941, and the subsequent German retreat from Moscow.

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.

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.

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.

In January 1945, the German Army in Poland braced itself for an inevitable massive attack. Enjoying overwhelming superiority in numbers and weapons, and with logistics and communications greatly improved by the Lend Lease program, the Red Army had learned how to outperform the Wehrmacht. The Soviets struck across Poland in mid-January. Two weeks later, they were deep inside Germany; East Prussia was cut off from the rest of the country. The top Soviet generals planned to take Berlin by mid-February, but Stalin postponed their march to the Reich’s capital, rerouting their efforts to what he perceived as a flank threat from northern Germany. The elimination of this treat delayed the offensive towards Berlin until mid-April. The Germans exploited this pause to strengthen their fortifications. When the march to the ‘beast’s lair’ finally resumed, bitter fights at the Seelow Heights and then in Berlin’s streets resulted in grave casualties. During the entire war on the Eastern Front, the Red Army lost at least four times as many soldiers as the Wehrmacht. As for Soviet civilians, crimes of both the Nazi and the Soviet regimes made comparable contributions to their death toll.