War and Social Change in Modern Europe
The Great Transformation Revisited

This book focuses on the interrelationship of social forces, industrial expansion, and conflict in Europe between 1789 and 1945.

Sandra Halperin (Author)

9780521540155, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 17 November 2003

540 pages, 19 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 3.1 cm, 0.7 kg

Halperin traces the persistence of traditional class structures during the development of industrial capitalism in Europe, and the way in which these structures shaped states and state behavior and generated conflict. She documents European conflicts between 1789 and 1914, including small and medium scale conflicts often ignored by researchers and links these conflicts to structures characteristic of industrial capitalist development in Europe before 1945. This book revisits the historical terrain of Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation (1944), however, it argues that Polanyi's analysis is, in important ways, inaccurate and misleading. Ultimately, the book shows how and why the conflicts both culminated in the world wars and brought about a 'great transformation' in Europe. Its account of this period challenges not only Polanyi's analysis, but a variety of influential perspectives on nationalism, development, conflict, international systems change, and globalization.

1. Conflict and change in world politics
Industrial expansion in nineteenth-century Europe: a critique of the Polanyian view
Conflict and change: a class approach
The Great Transformation, revisited
Part I. Social Forces, Industrial Expansion, and Conflict in Europe's Nineteenth-Century Market System: 2. The first transformation: social forces in the rise of Europe's nineteenth-century market system
The aristocratic - 'absolutist' conflict
National political revolutions and the struggle for the state
The new balance of social power and the new European order
Class conflict, revolution, and war
3. Europe's nineteenth-century industrial expansion: a 'bottom up' perspective
The dual economy
Domestic markets
The circuit of capital
4. Europe's century of war, 1815–1914
Conflict and dualistic industrial expansion
Labor, enfranchisement, and ethnic struggles
Imperialist conflicts
5. World War I and the post-war retrenchment
Imperialism and war in Europe
The post-war retrenchment
Labor, democracy, and minorities between the wars
Imperialism in the interwar years
Part II. The Interregnum: 6. The polarization of European society, 1918–39
Prelude: challenge and response, threat and compromise before World War I
Post-war revolutionary currents and the Fascist reaction
The polarization of European society
7. The politics of appeasement and counter-revolution: international relations in Europe between the wars
British appeasement policies
The 'appeasers'
alternative interpretations
Part III. The Great Transformation: 8. The post-World War II order
Europe's post-World War II social peace and prosperity
Social structure and development in post-war Europe
Peace in Europe
9. The great transformation and the eternal return: 'globalization' reconsidered
Europe's nineteenth-century industrial expansion: the 'great transformation' revisited
Globalization: the 'great transformation' reversed?

Subject Areas: International relations [JPS], Political science & theory [JPA], European history [HBJD]