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.

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.