Review of Gioula Koutsopanagou, The British Press and the Greek Crisis, 1943–1949: Orchestrating the Cold-War “Consensus” in Britain. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. 375 pp.
Although the bourgeoisie (and, to a lesser extent and in smaller numbers, the nobility) played a leading role in key transformations of modernity such as industrialisation, urbanisation, scientific and technological modernisation, bureaucratisation, the consolidation of parliamentarism and the capitalist system, the formation of nation-states and colonialism, the middle and upper classes remained at the periphery of historiography during the rise and development of social history in the first postwar decades (until the 1980s). This article seeks to explain this delay and examines how and under what conditions the history of European elites, primarily the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy, from the French Revolution to the middle of the twentieth century, has constituted in recent decades an internationally recognised direction of an interdisciplinary and methodologically broad social history. The strong dynamic created for the history of the middle classes and the nobility by the collapse of the actually existing socialist regimes between 1989 and 1991 in central and eastern Europe, with special regard to the common imperial past of several countries within the framework of Austria-Hungary up to 1918, has been maintained, making an important contribution to a comparative view of the European elites in a European and even global context.
This article argues that in twentieth-century historiography trends have often placed – and sometimes misplaced – Britain at the centre or the periphery, depending on the historical context and the perspectives of historians themselves, who projected current preoccupations and cultural concerns onto the past. It thus emphasises the role of historiography in shaping perceptions of Britain’s place in the world, highlighting the interplay between centre and periphery and underscoring its prowess and power to still shape the world. Ultimately, it aims to explore the ways in which Britain both constructs and is constructed by the world, with a focus on several key publications that have become pivotal in British historiography.
How do we study a Revolution? How does the study of the Greek Revolution fit into the wider frame of Revolutions? When does the study of the Greek Revolution answer to historiographical requests and when respond to ideological needs of the present? This text attempts to approach these issues, expressing some thoughts on three recent books on the Greek Revolution: Petros Pizanias, Η Ελληνική Επανάσταση, 1821–1830 [The Greek Revolution, 1821–1830]. Athens: Estia, 2021. 272 pp. Mark Mazower, Η Ελληνική επανάσταση [The Greek Revolution]. Athens: Alexandria, 2021. 566 pp. Originally published as The Greek Revolution: 1821 and the Making of Modern Europe. London: Allen Lane, 2021. 574 pp. Aristides Hatzis, Ο ενδοξότερος αγώνας: Η Ελληνική Επανάσταση του 1821 [The most glorious struggle: The Greek Revolution of 1821]. Athens: Papadopoulos, 2021. 640 pp.
This article deals with concrete historiographical developments in central European social, and more specifically rural, history. During the early 1980s in Vienna, a (new) social or rather socio-cultural history of rural Austria, especially for the time period between the late nineteenth century and the outbreak of the Second World War, moved from the periphery to the centre of historiography, where it was met with a positive response by historians and the public. Thanks primarily to the collection of numerous life records, historical subjects came into the fore of research and new issues were explored under the theoretical and methodological auspices of historiographical trends that were partly native to German-speaking academia, such as 1990s historical anthropology. A multifaceted rural world in its own right has defied the primacy of the industrial and the urban world in old as well as in new forms of social history.
Review of Nikos Andriotis, Πρόσφυγες στην Ελλάδα 1821-1940: Άφιξη, περίθαλψη, αποκατάσταση [Refugees in Greece, 1821-1940: Arrival, care, settlement]. Athens: Foundation of the Hellenic Parliament, 2020. 387 pp.
This special issue consists of a collection of six articles by Greek historians of the periphery of Europe that look at the perplexities and challenges of European historiography of the centre. Their analysis aims to interpret pivotal moments that have shaped recent historiographies in tackling the advance of global history, and the successful or unsuccessful ways in which world histories have rearranged notions of nation, empire and interconnectedness through economy and culture. They seek not to write a different history than a native historian would, especially as academic connectedness and informed research is the aim of every historian in any case, but to express how, in their opinion, ruptures in dominant convictions and essentialised ideas function in historiographical terms today. A common thread in these essays is that, despite the expansion of methodologies and globalised historiographical endeavours, the nation persists in many recent historical works as a constant, essential unit in the historical profession. In that sense, even when the peripheries enrich historical research, they rarely produce holistic works or independent theoretical frameworks.
Review of Elli Lemonidou. Ιστορία και μνήμη του Α΄ Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου στην Ευρώπη [History and memory of the First World War in Europe]. Athens: Papazisis, 2019. 148 pp.
Review of Raphael Greenberg and Yannis Hamilakis. Archaeology, Nation, and Race. Confronting the Past, Decolonizing the Future in Greece and Israel. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
This article has two purposes. Firstly, it examines recent historiographical overviews that mostly discuss “peripheral” or “national”/“regional” historiographical traditions, to detect current aspirations, frustrations and challenges in respect of how academic centres, peripheries and hierarchies are constructed in gender history today. Secondly, it discusses the profile of four international journals dedicated to women’s and gender history to examine how historiographical centres and peripheries have been shaped through their pages in the last decade (2011–2020).
This Afterword examines how the Russo-Ukrainian War and shifting geopolitics have reshaped historiography, particularly regarding Europe’s evolving borders, centres and peripheries. The war accelerated calls to decolonise Slavic, Russian and European studies, emphasising the agency of Ukraine. Ultimately, the war has reinvigorated debates about Europe’s identity, reminding scholars that Europe is not monolithic but a mosaic of shifting, intersecting regional, global and contested stories.
Review of Effi Gazi. Άγνωστη χώρα: Ελλάδα και Δύση στις αρχές του 20ού αιώνα [Unknown country: Greece and the West at the beginning of the 20th century]. Athens: Polis, 2020. 368 pp.
Review of Ada Dialla, Η Ρωσική αυτοκρατορία και ο Ελληνικός κόσμος: Τοπικές, ευρωπαϊκές και παγκόσμιες ιστορίες στην εποχή των επαναστάσεων [The Russian Empire and the Greek world: Local, European and global histories in the Age of Revolutions]. Athens: Alexandria, 2023. 328 pp.
Review of Eleonora Naxidou, Η ευρωπαϊκότητα εντός της βουλγαρικής βαλκανικότητας: Ο Λιούμπεν Καραβέλοφ, ο φεντεραλισμός και οι Έλληνες [Europeanness in the context of Bulgarian Balkanness: Ljuben Karavelov, federalism and the Greeks]. Athens: Alexandria, 2021. 311 pp.
Review of Vangelis Karamanolakis, Ανεπιθύμητο παρελθόν: Οι φάκελοι κοινωνικών φρονημάτων στον 20ό αιώνα και η καταστροφή τους [Unwanted past: The files on social beliefs in the 20th century and their destruction]. Athens: Themelio, 2019. 319 pp.
The late 1970s and the 1980s were a time of political and social change in Greece, following the collapse of the seven-year military dictatorship, as well as a time of rupture in mental healthcare: new approaches were being developed, including those implemented by the Society of Social Psychiatry and Mental Health, a voluntary, nonprofit scientific association, founded in 1981 (officially in 1986). This article places the initiatives undertaken by the society within the international context of postwar mental healthcare, and within the national postdictatorship framework. It uses the analytical concept of the “mixed economy of welfare”, demonstrating that the society’s work was based on the synergy between the private and the public. Furthermore, the article discusses how concepts of gender were embedded in and shaped by the work of the society in the 1980s, arguing that the society reproduced the traditional gender hierarchies of the mental health field while reworking the hierarchies within its personnel – psychiatrists and other professionals, experts and nonexperts, and, by extension, to some degree at least, men and women mental healthcare providers.
Review of Zeta Papandreou, Τραυματική μνήμη και δημόσια ιστορία: Δίστομο 1944–2018 [Traumatic memory and public history: Distomo, 1944–2018]. Athens: Taxideftis, 2018. 488 pp.
In the early 1970s, Cherish, the first support and advocacy group for unmarried mothers run by unmarried mothers, emerged into the mixed economy of welfare in the Irish Republic. The self-help aspect of the organisation was fundamental to its sociopolitical agenda to remove the stigma associated with unmarried motherhood and the legal status of illegitimacy, to secure welfare payments for this group and to reframe Irish understandings of what constituted a legitimate family. This article explores how Cherish reflected and contributed to a particular moment in Irish gender and welfare history, when notions of responsibility, the role of religion and the state were being redefined. It reveals how the organisation engaged with and reshaped the existing mixed economy of welfare by reframing understandings of expertise, challenging inherent moral biases, and broadening the concept of family.
Review of Ioannis K. Hassiotis, Ο Οδυσσέας στις θάλασσες του Νότου: Η ελληνική παρουσία στις υπερπόντιες κτήσεις της Ισπανίας (16ος–17ος αι.). [Odysseus in the southern seas: The Greek presence in the Spanish overseas territories (16th–17th century)]. Thessaloniki: University Studio Press, 2022. 448 pp.
Review of Artemis Yagou, ed., Technology, Novelty, and Luxury (=Deutsches Museum Studies 12). Munich: Deutsches Museum, 2022. 118 pp.
