HI 2320: Intro to Modern European History - Prof. Kelly Colvin: Books

During the late nineteenth century, many countries across Europe adopted national legislation that required employers to compensate workers injured or killed in accidents at work. These laws suggested that the risk of accidents was inherent to work and not due to individual negligence. By focusing on Britain, Germany, and Italy during this time, Julia Moses demonstrates how these laws reflected a major transformation in thinking about the nature of individual responsibility and social risk. The First Modern Risk illuminates the implications of this conceptual revolution for the role of the state in managing problems of everyday life, transforming understandings about both the obligations and rights of individuals. Drawing on a wide array of disciplines including law, history, and politics, Moses offers a fascinating transnational view of a pivotal moment in the evolution of the welfare state.

In this volume, Keith Baker, arguably the leading expert writing in English on the ideological origins of the French Revolution, collects together a range of his essays on this subject published in journals in recent years. The essays include historiographical studies of the treatment of the topic by French and other historians as well as important case studies on the political vocabularies characteristic of the ancien régime and the revolutionary periods. The result is a substantial and unified set of studies on one of the central themes in modern European history.

In this new edition of his classic history on revolution and economic development in Europe, David Landes reasserts his original arguments in the light of current debates about globalization and comparative economic growth. Questions about why Europe was the first to industrialize and the viability of the post-war economic boom are as controversial as ever and Landes concludes that only by continuous industrial revolution can Europe and the world sustain itself in the years ahead. First Edition Hb (1969): 0-521-07200-X First Edition Pb (1969): 0-521-09418-6