Europe's Expansions and Contractions
Edited by Evan Smith

Proceedings of the XVIIth Biennial Conference of the Australasian Association of European Historians (Adelaide, July 2009)

Year of publication: 2010
ISBN: 9780975831342

RRP: AUD 40.00

This collection presents essays by emerging and established historians from Australia, New Zealand and Europe, arising from the XVIIth Biennial Conference of the Australasian Association of European Historians, organised by Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia, in July 2009.

The collection centres around the theme of Europe’s expansions and contractions that have occurred over the last five centuries and the profound way in which the idea of ‘Europe’ has shaped the globe. The collection spans a wide range of topics within this overall theme, with essays focusing on militarism in inter-war Germany, the Jewish diaspora, Australia’s migrant communities, Eastern European national identities, the shifting and lingering concept of European ‘civilisation’ and history, anthropology, post-colonialism and Marxism, and comparative empires.

The collection demonstrates that detailed case studies, often categorised by periodisation, regionalism and theme, can be weaved together to present a challenging and thought-provoking idea of what European history can look like in the twenty-first century.