Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables
- Preface
- INTRODUCTION
- I SOCIAL FORCES, INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION, AND CONFLICT IN EUROPE'S NINETEENTH-CENTURY MARKET SYSTEM
- II THE INTERREGNUM
- III THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION
- Appendix 1 Europe Defined
- Appendix 2 A Sample of Europe's Class, Ethnic, and Imperialist Conflicts, 1789–1945
- Appendix 3 European (Regional and Extraregional) Wars, Insurrections, Rebellions, Revolutions, Uprisings, Violent Strikes, Riots, and Demonstrations, 1789–1945
- Works cited
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables
- Preface
- INTRODUCTION
- I SOCIAL FORCES, INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION, AND CONFLICT IN EUROPE'S NINETEENTH-CENTURY MARKET SYSTEM
- II THE INTERREGNUM
- III THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION
- Appendix 1 Europe Defined
- Appendix 2 A Sample of Europe's Class, Ethnic, and Imperialist Conflicts, 1789–1945
- Appendix 3 European (Regional and Extraregional) Wars, Insurrections, Rebellions, Revolutions, Uprisings, Violent Strikes, Riots, and Demonstrations, 1789–1945
- Works cited
- Index
Summary
In recent years, the perception of large-scale change has fueled a resurgence of interest in history and a renewed appreciation of its importance for analyzing processes of change. This interest is founded, in large part, on hope that a better understanding of the past can offer insights into current trends of change. History is, indeed, a source of insight; but because it is also the arena within which we debate questions about the future, the writing and reading of it is a partisan affair. Finding insights in the past depends, therefore, on our ability to evaluate critically the historical accounts on which we rely: how they emerged and why they gained the status of authority; how they were shaped by and how, in turn, they helped to shape the central conflicts of our time and of the recent past.
COLD WAR SOCIAL SCIENCE
Social theory and historiography, both in Europe and in the United States, was importantly influenced by the “social question” – by concerns with counteracting disorder and revolution and maintaining social order and stability. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, the elements that were central to this investigation in Europe had become increasingly peripheral to American social science. The “social question” continued to be the focus of social theory in the United States, but increasingly it was investigated in ways that severed it from issues relating to historical agency and social change, class and power, and the character of fundamental social relations.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- War and Social Change in Modern EuropeThe Great Transformation Revisited, pp. ix - xxviPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003