Thammasat University students who are interested in European studies, political science, history, sociology, economics, cultural and social anthropology, intellectual history, and related subjects may find a newly available book useful.
The European Experience: A Multi-Perspective History of Modern Europe, 1500–2000 is an Open Access book, available for free download at this link:
https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/61386
The TU Library collection includes many other books about different aspects of European history and culture.
Europe is a continent comprising the westernmost peninsulas of Eurasia, located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa and Asia. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east.
Europe is commonly considered to be separated from Asia by the watershed of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Greater Caucasus, the Black Sea and the waterways of the Turkish Straits.
Europe covers about 2% of Earth’s surface, making it the second-smallest continent. Politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states, of which Russia is the largest and most populous. In 2021, Europe had a population of about 745 million or about 10% of the world population.
European culture is the basis of Western civilization, which is usually traced back to ancient Greece and ancient Rome.
As the publisher’s description of the book notes,
The European Experience brings together the expertise of nearly a hundred historians from eight European universities to internationalise and diversify the study of modern European history, exploring a grand sweep of time from 1500 to 2000. Offering a valuable corrective to the Anglocentric narratives of previous English-language textbooks, scholars from all over Europe have pooled their knowledge on comparative themes such as identities, cultural encounters, power and citizenship, and economic development to reflect the complexity and heterogeneous nature of the European experience.
Rather than another grand narrative, the international author teams offer a multifaceted and rich perspective on the history of the continent of the past 500 years.
Each major theme is dissected through three chronological sub-chapters, revealing how major social, political and historical trends manifested themselves in different European settings during the early modern (1500–1800), modern (1800–1900) and contemporary period (1900–2000).
This resource is of utmost relevance to today’s history students in the light of ongoing internationalisation strategies for higher education curricula, as it delivers one of the first multi-perspective and truly ‘European’ analyses of the continent’s past. Beyond the provision of historical content, this textbook equips students with the intellectual tools to interrogate prevailing accounts of European history, and enables them to seek out additional perspectives in a bid to further enrich the discipline.
The introduction begins:
What is European history? A.J.P. Taylor once quipped that “European history is whatever the historian wants it to be.” This is certainly an appropriate account in that Taylor refers to the constructive nature of historiography, emphasising that it is the historian who ‘creates’ his or her subject matter. However, Taylor’s definition is also problematic because his choice to use the singular “historian” implies that writing history is a solitary endeavour, the imprinting of one mind onto the page.
Nothing could be further from the development process of the present handbook of European history. It is a collaborative effort of nearly a hundred historians from seventeen European universities and research institutions, each individual with their own ideas about European history shaped by their personal backgrounds, national contexts and academic traditions. The resulting muddle is our answer to the question about the nature of European history: it is complicated, polyvocal (sometimes in harmony, often not), multi-layered and complex.
The pedagogical term for this approach is ‘multi-perspectivity’, in which different perspectives are used to evaluate historical events and processes. In the words of a group of Dutch researchers led by Bjorn Wansink, in the context of history education the notion of multiperspectivity refers to “the idea that history is interpretational and subjective, with multiple coexisting narratives about particular historical events.”
The core of what European history means to us is expressed in this quote. The subject of European history has recently been the topic of a vigorous debate among historians. One group has argued that European history should be “about what could be called ‘doing European History’: empirical research that transcends the nation-state in various ways—e.g. projects which are conceived in a transnational, comparative, trans-local way and which at the same time are located in Europe in one way or another.”
We broadly align ourselves with this self-reflexive approach. We argue that the subject matter of a handbook on European history does not in itself constitute a contribution to European history. Whether a work makes a contribution to European history depends not only on the topics and historical events it addresses, but above all on its questions, its perspectives, and the way it analyses and narrates.
Despite all the differences in detail, European history as a perspective, approach or method is characterised by at least four features: first, it is driven by an effort to narrate historical processes from multiple or comparative perspectives, be they national or regional, global or local, macro or micro.
Second, it emphasises processes of mutual interaction, exchange, and transnational contact (also with non-European or colonial spaces) without overlooking local specificities.
Third, the European history approach emphasises the contingency of the historical process and avoids narratives of progress toward ever-increasing civility.
The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine that started in 2022 is a painful reminder of how fragile peace in the twenty-first century still is. Fourth, it uses its insights into the past to reflect on the present. That does not mean that the historian should become a political advisor or even an apologist for the process of European unification, but that she can offer a reflected commentary on the historical roots of the present.
This handbook is not only rooted in conceptual reflections about the nature of European history. It also grew out of very practical considerations about how to teach European history in the twenty-first century: universities in Europe are internationalising rapidly, welcoming students from all over the world. This raises important questions about how and what to teach this increasingly diverse student body.
What kind of European history is appropriate for, say, an Italian undergraduate student enrolled in a BA History programme delivered in English at a Dutch university, or for a Syrian national studying (likewise in English) at a Polish university?
With the continuing process of internationalisation in higher education, Brexit and immigration restrictions all making studying at British universities for students from EU member states and non-EU students ever more difficult, this experience is becoming increasingly common.
Furthermore, European history is not only taught in Europe. What is the right kind of European history for, say, a student in Singapore taking a module on social movements in early modern Europe? If European history is whatever we want it to be, there is a clear mission to create appropriate material with which to teach this increasingly internationalised student population.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)