Hi historians (and others!). I'm refreshing the reading list for my grad history class on A Global History of Modern Europe (i.e., how Europe's engagement with the rest of the world has shaped Europe itself). What are some good things you've read recently along these lines? 🗃️
“Switzerland, Borneo and the Dutch Indies: Towards a New Imperial History of Europe, c.1770–1850” by BC Schär in Past & Present 257:1 2022 On a Swiss mercenary who fought in Borneo and returned with his money and Swiss/Indonesian children and entered Swiss politics. Very good!
If you don’t already know it, I liked Aaron Freundschuh’s 2017 book about a famous 1887 murder trial, which has an argument about ‘imperial insecurity’, eg how French audiences feared that the violence of colonialism threatened the metropolitan order. (‘The Courtesan and the Gigolo’)
You might be interested in this volume I've co-edited, at least if you don't mind waiting around six months for it to actually come out...
Some good news: 'Integration and Collaborative Imperialism in Modern Europe', the volume I have co-edited with Bernhard Schär, will now be appearing in open access! Coming out in the autumn, more on all that soon.
This open access book provides a thought-provoking new perspective on European imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries. It does so by inquiring how smaller E…
If you are looking for Cold War era material, Lauren Stokes and I edited a special issue on the global borders of East Germany www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Guns Germs & Steel?
Don't know what eras / topics you're especially seeking, but there's been terrific recent work in recent years on different forms of Renaissance engagement with cartographic & climatic boundary thinking about Europe -- all of the books below are excellent & could be excerpted for class readings.
Unfabling the East: The Enlightenment's Encounter with Asia by Jurgen Osterhammel definitely reshaped my view of Europeans' encounters with "The Orient".