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Agenda Short Histories are incisive and provocative introductions to topics, ideas and events for students wanting to know more about how we got where we are today.

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8 results in Short Histories

Liberalism
  • Jonathan Parry
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    23 May 2026
  • Jonathan Parry presents a history of Liberalism that is organized around themes in British Liberal politics since the early nineteenth century. In the first half of the book, he shows how the Liberal Party shaped national politics between 1830 and 1914 by conducting a series of campaigns against what it saw as over-dominant interest groups in British and Irish political, economic and religious life. Some of these campaigns succeeded, some failed, but they gave the party a strong identity as a political movement hostile to concentrations of power. The last two chapters chart its response to its political marginalization by Labour and Conservatives since the 1920s. They show how Liberals have continued to organize against over-centralized institutional power. They have defended civil liberties, urged devolution, criticized the rigidity of the electoral system, and attacked exaggerations of Britain’s capacity to act independently in the world. British Liberalism’s focus has never been the defence of laissez-faire economic principles, as many claim; it has always been political.

Heterodox Economics
  • Andrew Trigg
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    23 May 2026
  • Heterodox economics differs from orthodox or mainstream economics. It draws on a multiplicity of ideas, disciplines, methods and voices to present a more radical alternative to the dominant paradigm of neoclassical economics, which is viewed as overly narrow and blind-sided to how economies actually work. Andrew Trigg traces the heterodox tradition from its origins in the anti-capitalism ideas of the first half of the nineteeth century, through to Keynes and the present day. He shows the plurality of ideas which inform its history – including social theory, feminism and environmental thought – and the methodological challenge they present to mainstream economics. The book also considers the prospects for heterodox economics and whether it will continue to remain outside the citadel.

The War on Terror
  • Andrew Thomson, Rubrick Biegon
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2025
    Print publication:
    06 March 2025
  • The War on Terror has remained an enduring feature of American foreign policy for over two decades. This short history positions the War on Terror within the broader context of Cold War interventionism and the rise of various transnational threats to American (and global) security during the late twentieth century. It introduces readers to the main concepts, debates and theories which have been used to understand and make sense of the War on Terror. These include approaches that frame it as a disparate set of policies aimed at reducing the risk of terrorist attacks against American citizens at both home and aboard; as part of a project aimed at helping maintain the United States' dominant position within international politics; and as an idea intimately bound up with perceptions of American national identity and America's place in the world. In this way, the book aims to show how the War on Terror has changed global politics, as well as why it has been fought and proven so difficult to end despite multiple failed attempts at course correction. The book is ideally suited for courses on international security, American foreign policy and contemporary world politics.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
  • Martin Shaw
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2025
    Print publication:
    14 November 2024
  • The launch of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958 signalled the first modern protest movement in Britain. Martin Shaw details CND's rise, the activists involved, the tensions with the Committee of 100 around direct action, and the culture, radicalism and social groups that were mobilized to 'ban the bomb'.

    The book discusses how a new movement in the 1980s, led by European Nuclear Disarmament and the Greenham women's peace camp, helped remove cruise missiles from Europe and end the Cold War. It examines how the campaign influenced - and was influenced by - antiwar movements from Vietnam to Iraq and Gaza, as well as the environmental and women's movements.

    As the nuclear threat returns in the 2020s, this study shows that the antinuclear movement's ideas and the non-violent direct action it pioneered still reverberate in the campaign against the UK's 'nuclear deterrent' - and in protest movements from Stop the War to Extinction Rebellion.

Deglobalization
  • Edward Ashbee
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    04 June 2025
    Print publication:
    05 September 2024
  • Edward Ashbee examines the globalizing processes of the past thirty years and considers the extent to which there has been 'deglobalization' or 'slowbalization' and the reasons for these apparent shifts.

    The analysis disaggregates the different trends that collectively constitute 'globalization' and surveys competing perspectives on globalization and reviews the arguments of those who argue that the concept is either myth or hyperbole. The book reveals how globalization is being reconfigured in ways that weaken its former associations with neoliberalism and Americanization thereby laying the basis for a new economic and social settlement.

    The book looks at the original promise held out by globalizing trends which became fully evident at the same time as the dot.com economy became part of everyday life. The book then charts the backlash against 'globalism' and the ways in which it became pronounced across much of Europe, North America and Asia. And it asks how far has that backlash, together with the 2008 financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the rise of 'techno-nationalism' led to a stalling or even reversal in globalizing processes.

Social Democracy
  • Eunice Goes
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    19 December 2024
    Print publication:
    13 March 2024
  • Social democracy emerged in the late nineteenth century and has become a leading political ideology in Europe. This short history approaches the evolution of this ideology as a body of political thought and political practices. It expounds the development, transformation and practice of European social democracy through the analysis of four key moments in its history: its origins and rise as a key political force in European politics, the second revisionist phase with the embrace of capitalism in the postwar period, the Third Way of the 1990s and the contemporary crisis of social democracy in an era of fragmented politics. The book offers a fresh and engaging discussion of one of the most enduring ideologies of the European political sphere and its manifestations in different countries of the region.

Thatcherism
  • Peter Dorey
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    23 January 2024
    Print publication:
    30 March 2023
  • Margaret Thatcher, prime minister between 1979 and 1990, was and continues to be a hugely divisive figure in Britain. Her influence on British politics has long outlived her, with the Conservative Party becoming steadily more Thatcherite than it was under her leadership, especially on economic issues. Policies that support privatization, curbs on trade unions and employment rights (to promote further labour market flexibility), reduction in welfare provision, the replacement of collectivism with individualism, and the marketization of public services, including the NHS and education, are all Thatcherism in practice, and still continue today.

    Peter Dorey offers a lively analysis of how Thatcherism became an ideology for politics to conjure with, its relationship with its eponymous leader and with the Conservative Party, as well as the long-term implications for the British people. He argues that the radical modernization of Britain that started under Thatcher's leadership in the 1980s has created the conditions that have led to the polarization of British society today; a process that was profoundly unconservative in its values and approach, destabilizing institutions which Conservatives once deemed sacrosanct, and replacing continuity and solidity with constant change and competition.

Conservatism
  • Mark Garnett
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    20 January 2024
    Print publication:
    30 March 2023
  • The nature of conservative ideology is and will continue to be warmly contested. In this short history, Mark Garnett contends that the disagreements have been particularly strong in the instance of British conservatism because the ideological label continues to be used by a prominent political party. Whether hostile or friendly in intent, commentators on conservatism have found it difficult to avoid the assumption that British 'conservatism' must, at all times, be reflected at least to some degree in the policy platforms of the Conservative Party.

    This book presents an account of British conservatism which avoids the usual confusion between the ideology and the stated principles of a party which prides itself on an ability to change its views according to circumstances. It shows, since the Tory Party adopted the name 'Conservative' in the 1830s it has become increasingly difficult to associate its varying positions with a coherent 'conservative' position, so that it is more profitable to discuss its ideological history from the perspective of liberalism and nationalism. This argument is presented by tracing the histories of the party and the ideology in separate chapters, whose themes and cast of characters rarely coincide.