European History 1900-2011

Professor Jonathan Steinberg

This course follows the history of Europe from the high point of Empire and world domination in 1900 to collapse and ruin in 1945 and on to recovery by 1990. The grand societies and rich states which composed the European state system destroyed themselves in the first forty-five years. As many as eighty million Russians, Germans, Poles, Yugoslavs, Greeks, Italians and other Europeans died through war, disease and famine. Hundreds of thousands died in slave labor camps, and six million Jews were systematically murdered. On the 9th of May 1945, the day Nazi Germany surrendered, the once prosperous continent was a gigantic smoking ruin, covered by rubble, pock-marked by craters and full of miserable starving people. From the ‘zero point’ Europe recovered by 1990 to find a new and much greater prosperity, to witness the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its new identity in a continental federation called the European Union. As we look back on this remarkable rebirth from the twenty-first century, we understand that these ninety years created the world in which we now live.

Required reading

Readings will be assigned for each lecture and seminar session from the core texts. There will be a small number of copies of each of the core texts on reserve in the library; however, it is strongly recommended that students acquire their own copies of the core texts prior to the start of the course.

• John Merriman, ‘A History of Modern Europe’. Vol 2 From the French Revolution to the Present. second ed. (New York:W.W. Norton & Co., 2004). ISBN: 0393924955
• Marvin Perry, Matthew Berg, James Krukones, Sources of Twentieth Century Europe (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 2003). ISBN: 0395925681
• Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century(London: Penguin Books, 1999) ISBN: 978-0-140-24158-4
• J.M. Roberts, Europe 1880-1945. Third ed. (New York: Longman, 2001). ISBN: 05823357454
• Ian Kershaw, The End. The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany (London/New York: The Penguin Press: 2011) ISBN 978-1-59420-314-5
• Tony Judt, Postwar. A History of Europe since 1945 (London: Pimlico Editions, Random House, 2007) ISBN: 97 807 1266 5643

Background reading

• Julian Jackson (ed.), Europe 1900-1945. The Short Oxford History of Europe (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2002) ISBN 0-19-924428-6 (pbk)
• Mary Fulbrook (ed.), Europe since 1945. The Short Oxford History of Europe (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2001) ISBN: 0-19 – 873178 (pbk)
• T.C.W. Blanning (ed.), The Oxford History of Modern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) ISBN 978-0-19-285371-4

Assessment:

• 1 Final Exam: 45%
• 1 Final Essay: 45%
• Participation, progress and attendance: 10%

Lecture Hours: 12 x 1 hour 15 minutes (total 15 hours)

Seminar Hours: 8 x 1 hour 15 minutes (total 10 hours)