This short essay provides a concise top-down picture of the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War, 1941–1945. It looks at not only its leadership and command (including the State Defence Committee, Stavka, and General Staff) but also size and structure, political supervision, mobilisation and training, and military equipment. When looking at mobilisation and training, it briefly considers not only wider issues but also the mobilisation of specific national groups and women. When considering equipment it identifies some key pieces of equipment that the Soviet Union was able to produce in large numbers, and that proved to be not only relatively easy to manufacture but also rugged and effective.

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.

The relationship between the crown and the gentry was multifaceted. It encompassed both military needs and civilian offices. It could be both direct and indirect, involving personal service – in the royal household for example – on the one hand or indirect in helping to maintain royal rule across the realm. It involved central organs of government – attendance at parliament most particularly – and, crucially, power and influence in the provinces. The relationship was by no means a static one. It evolved and shifted focus over time.

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.

The German army invaded the Soviet Union in hopes of destroying it in a blitz campaign in 1941. Its professional and experienced officer corps utilized Auftragstaktik to achieve early victories on the battlefield. The men they led were well-motivated, generally well-trained, loyal to the Nazi regime, and confident in victory. The emphasis on tactical flexibility and independence helped balance out the army’s numerical inferiority in weapons and equipment. The enormous casualties suffered in 1941 and early 1942, however, ensured that the army’s qualitative edge soon dulled, leading to complete defeat.

Despite enormous variations across medieval and early medieval Europe, the second wave of European urbanisation that started around 1000CE had major repercussions everywhere. The increase in the number and size of European towns coincided with a period of relatively weak state power. This had a variety of consequences: from the diverse ways of organising urban life and space across the continent to the large degree of self-government that many towns enjoyed. It may also be one of the reasons why Europe remained, as it had become during the Roman era, a continent of medium-sized towns, rather than mega-cities – a development that arguably still affects the continent’s patterns of urbanisation today. This Introduction surveys aspects of European urbanisation as they played out across a millennium and their interpretation by urban historians.

In a political system based on monarchy it is misleading to equate governance (the active and legitimate exercise of social control) with politics (the public debate surrounding that practice), for the basis of power and authority in late medieval England lay overwhelmingly in the personal rule of the king, and ‘public debate’ over how he did so was very rarely conducted in the open, though, as we shall see, it certainly could – and did – occur. For most of the time, however, there was very little ‘politics’ but an awful lot of ‘governance’. The basis of a king’s right to exercise governance over his subjects lay in the theoretically unimpeachable notion that he had been appointed by God to protect and advance the common interest of the kingdom.

Chronicles and other forms of medieval historical writing have persistently shaped how English kings and their legacies are represented and remembered. Ever since insular monks like Gildas and Bede began recording royal deeds in the fifth to eighth centuries, medieval historiography has been an invaluable repository of information, anecdotes and observations, illuminating the triumphs and tribulations of individual reigns. From glowing endorsements to virulent attacks on sovereign power, how historiographers captured or elided the most impactful events of a reign affected how a king’s legacy was transmitted and preserved. In some cases, kings directly influenced what was written about their reign; in others, their reputation was determined by other men of authority, including their successors.

The development of urbanism in Europe, beginning in the high Middle Ages, gave rise to many and diverse ways of representing cities. In the beginning these representations show cities as compact units, and as places characterised by a particular social order grounded in the history of salvation. New ways of conceiving cities were explored along with the humanist interest in urbanism, perspective, and historical knowledge. From around 1500, representations experimented with how cities could be displayed as differentiated architectural spaces with an individual sense of self. At the same time the technology of printing helped a market for images of towns and cities to develop. Measuring, but also aesthetic models and the needs of the administration became increasingly important. Scholars, artists and later engineers and photographers contributed to a broad range of images and maps that display cities from manifold angles.

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 reading of social injustice was rooted in a set of conceptual insights on how power shapes economic relations in caste society. A proponent of socialism (samadharmam), he was however critical of the political priorities of mainstream left parties. To him, they failed to recognize the scope of caste-based power in shaping the economy. His insights on the nature of this power continue to unsettle and challenge more popular narratives of justice. Through a close reading of his own work and secondary sources, this chapter maps how Periyar's original conceptualization of power in India fed into his interpretation of the economic domain. Periyar held that status-based stratification and ideological hegemony exercised by caste elites fundamentally shape economic outcomes. The ritually sanctified division between mental and manual labour and their hierarchizing were particularly important to him. Periyar believed that economic justice can therefore be secured only through waging a counter-hegemonic struggle against caste-sanctioned hierarchies and the ideological apparatus that upholds such status-based stratification. The primary contention that the chapter makes is that in Periyar's political imaginary, the ‘economic’ was a sub-set of the ‘social’. Redistribution of economic power could not be sustained without addressing the social institutions that help reproduce economic hierarchies and concentrate economic power.

This chapter documents the development of the wartime Grand Alliance between Britian, the Soviet Union, and the United States, with particular reference to the personal roles, outlooks, and interactions of Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt. Without the deep personal bonds of the ‘Big Three’, the Grand Alliance may have been stillborn or collapsed under the pressures, contradictions, and challenges of war.

Chivalry, the martial ethos of knighthood, with its emphasis on honour and prowess, shaped contemporary perceptions of the proper conduct of war; and war – properly conducted – was a key component of medieval kingship. Writing during Edward II’s reign, the author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi quoted a letter sent to the king’s confessor: ‘a king is so styled from the fact of ruling, as one who should rule his people with laws and defend them with his sword from their enemies’. This summed up a commonplace view of kingship, a duality reflected in the iconography of the kings of England: since the reign of William the Conqueror, the Great Seal had depicted the king enthroned in majesty on the front; and on the reverse, armed, mounted on a charging warhorse, wielding a sword – the very image of chivalric knighthood.

During the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, polycentric political structures based on fragmented forms of sovereignty, the importance of multinuclear urban systems and respect for constitutional, legal and cultural diversity were predominant in the most densely populated European regions, and even within consolidated monarchical systems, such as the Spanish Monarchy. The strong jurisdictional component of these power structures – the result of the existence of numerous corporations, communities, guilds, estates and militias capable of political action and exclusive rights – explains the need to challenge monolithic and homogeneous visions of the state. In this chapter, this vision is replaced by an urban, bottom-up perspective that follows the experience of early modern legal and political theorists as well as citizens. Cities were the primary stage for political action, where assemblies, councils and guilds competed with one another or joined forces to form common spaces of negotiation with sovereigns or other institutions.