Europe's Postwar Periods - 1989, 1945, 1918 ― Writing History Backwards

This book brings together world-renowned scholars from all over Europe to analyse how successive Europes have been constructed in the wake of the key conflicts of the period: the Cold War and the two World Wars. By regressively tracing Europe's path back to these pivotal moments as part of a unique methodology, Europe's Postwar Periods - 1989, 1945, 1918 reveals the defining characteristics of these postwar periods and integrates the changes that followed 1989 into a more substantial historical perspective.

The author team address the crucial themes in recent European history on a chapter-by-chapter basis that gives comprehensive coverage to the whole of the European region for topics such as borders, states, empires, democracy, justice, markets and futures.

The volume highlights the fact that Europe was made less by wars than is commonly thought, and more by the nature of the settlements – international, national, political, economic and social – that followed the two World Wars and the Cold War. It is an important, innovative text for all students and scholars of 20th-century European history.

Martin Conway is Professor of Contemporary European History at the University of Oxford, UK. He is the author of The Sorrows of Belgium: Liberation and Political Reconstruction 1944-47 (2012), Catholic Politics in Europe 1918-1945 (1997) and Collaboration in Belgium (1993).

Pieter Lagrou is Professor of contemporary European history at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. He is the author of The Legacy of Nazi Occupation: Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe, 1945-1965 (1999).

Henry Rousso is Senior Researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique at the Institut d'histoire du temps present, Paris, France. He coordinated the European Network on Contemporary History (EURHISTXX). He recently published The Latest Catastrophe: History, the Present, the Contemporary (2016).