In the century of nationalism, the House of Habsburg ruled over a vast territory in East Central Europe. Second only to Russia in size on the European continent, the Habsburg lands stretched from the Alps to the foothills of the eastern Carpathians and from the shores of the Adriatic to the Sudetes mountain range on the border with Saxony. The core of this territory in the Alps, corresponding roughly to what is today Austria and Slovenia, had been ruled by the Habsburgs from the High Middle Ages. In 1526, the Habsburgs made a decisive step to become East Central Europe’s leading power by acquiring the Bohemian and the Hungarian crowns. After one and a half centuries of warfare against the Ottoman Empire, the long eighteenth century witnessed the Habsburgs’ decisive eastern expansion. First, at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they reconquered central Hungary and Transylvania from the Ottomans.

“Occupied France,” analyzes the realities and myths about everyday life in France under German occupation. The French did not actively resist the occupation until 1943–1944. The chapter attempts to explain the unique character of the villagers of Graignes and why they refused to countenance the presence of Germans in their region. The villagers dismissively referred to the Germans as the Boches. The chapter concludes by examining the training and organization of the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division, which appeared in south-central France in 1943.

The Mexican–US War ends with the top half of Mexico – and its people – subsumed into the voracious US empire. A new musical genre – the Corrido – emerges from the new borderlands. The California Gold Rush produces a wealth of song from as far east as Scandinavia and as far west as China. US nativists sing against the arriving Germans and Irish Catholics, but they reserve their greatest musical venom for the Chinese in the form of the “John Chinaman” minstrel stereotype. Against such vicious representations, we have the Songs of Gold Mountain to reflect the true humanity of Chinese immigrants. In the wake of the Seneca Falls Convention, songs of women’s suffrage resound across the landscape, including those of Sojourner Truth. The Hutchinson Family Singers become the first US “supergroup” with their abolition songs, and Black challenges to the minstrelsy of E. P. Christy, Stephen Foster, and others continue, not only through the oratory of Frederick Douglass and songs of the Underground Railroad, but also through the operatic accomplishments of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield.As the country careens toward the irrepressible schism of civil war, song becomes a highly supercharged, sectional arena.

World War I reversed America’s foundational movement of westward settlement. Indeed, some commentators including President Wilson viewed America’s involvement, notwithstanding its eastward orientation, as an extension of Manifest Destiny. Given the Midwest’s democratic associations with pioneers and the Jeffersonian farmer, the notion of the war as a replacement for the frontier was inescapably linked to the region’s unique cultural iconography. This essay considers prose narratives that explore wartime reciprocities running between the Midwest and Europe. The Midwest not only sent hundreds of thousands of men but also increased agricultural production and exportation. Moreover, the region’s democratic heritage was drawn on to bolster support for the war. Conversely, German immigrants experienced xenophobic attacks, bringing the tensions of the war to the home front. Meanwhile, Midwestern soldiers in France were repeatedly struck by the similarity the countryside bore to their native topographies. By registering the topographical familiarity of the New World – and frequently comparing the war with the activities of pioneers – Midwestern writers variously explore, critique, and reject the idea of the war as a replacement for the frontier, or as a fulfillment of the democratic values enshrined in the region’s pioneer and agrarian culture.

Roman historians often claimed that their ancestors did not have images of the gods, but a closer look at both the archaeological and textual evidence suggests that images of the gods were venerated at Rome at a very early date. Similarly, both ancient and modern writers have claimed that Iron Age European religion was entirely aniconic. This chapter surveys Iron Age statues in stone, metal, and wood to provide evidence that the gods were worshipped in the form of images prior to the Roman conquest. The stone images include important and recent finds from the Glauberg and Vix, a large series of buste-socles from Paule, Nîmes, and elsewhere, while metal representations include statues from Bouray and St. Maur. Surviving wooden images, including those known as Holzidole from northern Europe, finds from Pforzheim, Villeneuve, and Yverdon-les-Bains, all suggest that wood was a common medium for depicting the gods in the Iron Age. These early images possessed a degree of iconographic variety that allowed the divinity represented to be identified. More importantly, the context of these artworks confirms that they were the focus of ritual, the recipients of offerings and sacrifices, and not just funerary markers or representations of local aristocrats.

When idols lost their sense of agency, they effectively died. While this could happen at any time, this chapter focuses on the end of idols in the late third century AD through to the early medieval period. It examines three main agents of cult image destruction: Germanic barbarians, Christian iconoclasts, and ‘rituals of closure’ conducted by pagans themselves. For the Germanic tribes who raided Roman territory for plunder starting in the third century AD, the destruction of cult images could intimidate prisoners intended to become slaves. Numerous Christian hagiographies describe the destruction of idols from the fourth to seventh centuries AD. At some sites, destructive attention was focused on specific images and parts of images, affirming a distinction between idols and other cult images. The careful burial of certain monuments, statues, and statue fragments suggest that some cult images were intentionally disposed of by those who venerated them. Similar rituals of closure in other world cultures prevent ritually charged material from being occupied by dangerous spirits, as well as being a fitting way of disposing of holy objects. In each instance, these actions only makes sense if idols are perceived of as possessing real power.

Bagamoyo holds a central place in the history of the 1888 Coastal Rebellion as the site of the most violent and prolonged struggle of the entire episode. Examining events there, I consider two approaches which support spatial identity as an influential force: the organization of the uprising, in which the spatial attachments of the hinterland (Zaramo, Doe, and Kwere) and upcountry (Nyamwezi) peoples to the town play a role in influencing their solidarity with the townspeople; and how a framework that emphasizes the spatial origins of each group of rebels involved in the Bagamoyo uprising distinguishes between the different communities obfuscated by the broader category of Swahili society. Despite the far reaching presence of Swahili culture along the coastline, the Swahili were not simply interchangeable from one town to the next. I also investigate the level of violence used by the Germans along the coast to show how this was contingent on the local particularities of each place. Together these points highlight the need for considering the importance of place for explaining local behavior in the context of a widespread rebellion.