Although the story of the German Fall Gelb offensive against France, Belgium, and Holland in May 1940 is well known, most accounts tend to stop with the conclusion of the evacuation of the British Exp
In Case Red, Robert Forczyk shows that there was much more to the fall of France than Dunkirk. In fact, even after that legendary evacuation in June 1940 there were still large British formations figh
This book looks at the period 2015-18 in French politics, a turbulent time that witnessed the apparent collapse of the old party system, the taming of populist and left-wing challenges to the Republic
A nation usually overhauls its financial regulations after a stock market crash or the collapse of its banking system. In 1967, France did something rare. Out of pure political expediency, Gaullist le
Craig Taylor's study examines the wide-ranging French debates on the martial ideals of chivalry and knighthood during the period of the Hundred Years War (1337–1453). Faced by stunning military disasters and the collapse of public order, writers and intellectuals carefully scrutinized the martial qualities expected of knights and soldiers. They questioned when knights and men-at-arms could legitimately resort to violence, the true nature of courage, the importance of mercy, and the role of books and scholarly learning in the very practical world of military men. Contributors to these discussions included some of the most famous French medieval writers, led by Jean Froissart, Geoffroi de Charny, Philippe de Mézières, Honorat Bovet, Christine de Pizan, Alain Chartier and Antoine de La Sale. This interdisciplinary study sets their discussions in context, challenging modern, romantic assumptions about chivalry and investigating the historical reality of debates about knighthood and warfare
Craig Taylor's study examines the wide-ranging French debates on the martial ideals of chivalry and knighthood during the period of the Hundred Years War (1337–1453). Faced by stunning military disasters and the collapse of public order, writers and intellectuals carefully scrutinized the martial qualities expected of knights and soldiers. They questioned when knights and men-at-arms could legitimately resort to violence, the true nature of courage, the importance of mercy, and the role of books and scholarly learning in the very practical world of military men. Contributors to these discussions included some of the most famous French medieval writers, led by Jean Froissart, Geoffroi de Charny, Philippe de Mézières, Honorat Bovet, Christine de Pizan, Alain Chartier and Antoine de La Sale. This interdisciplinary study sets their discussions in context, challenging modern, romantic assumptions about chivalry and investigating the historical reality of debates about knighthood and warfare
In this rejoinder to Enlightenment-era embrace of the idea of mankind's innate perfectability, McAlpin (French, U. of Tennessee) argues a cogent case for a counter-narrative that feared the collapse o
Defeat and Division launches a definitive new account of France in the Second World War. In this first volume, Douglas Porch dissects France's 1940 collapse, the dynamics of occupation, and the rise of Charles de Gaulle's Free France crusade, culminating in the November 1942 Allied invasion of French North Africa. He captures the full sweep of France's wartime experience in Europe, Africa, and beyond, from soldiers and POWs to civilians-in-arms, colonial subjects, and foreign refugees. He recounts France's struggles to reconstruct military power within the context of a global conflict, with its armed forces shattered into warring factions and the country under Axis occupation. Disagreements over the causes of the 1940 debacle and the subsequent requirement for the armistice mirrored long-standing fractures in politics, society, and the French military itself, as efforts to reconstitute French military power crumbled into Vichy collaboration, De Gaulle's exile resistance, Alsace-Moselle
This book incorporates the rich literature on the history of the fiscal organization and financial dynamics of the Spanish empire within the broader historical debates on rival European imperial states from 1760 to 1810. The focus is on colonial Mexico because it served as a fiscal and financial submetropolis that ensured the capacity of the imperial state to defend itself in a time of successive international conflicts. Throughout the reign Charles IV, the finances of the Spanish state began to sink. This collapse was caused by the enormous expense of waging successive wars in the Americas and Europe. In each war, colonial Mexico was a most important source of resources for the Crown, but these demands gradually outstripped the tax base of the viceroyalty despite the extraordinary silver boom of the late eighteenth century. The bankruptcy of the Spanish monarchy and its empire was the inevitable consequence.
Much recent writing about international politics understandably highlights the many changes that have followed from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. This book, by contrast
The collapse of the Napoleonic order in 1814 symbolised a victory over revolutionary principles, yet it was impossible to turn the clock back and negate the legacy of the Revolution and the Napoleonic
The End of the Salon examines the cultural forces that contributed to the demise of the most important exhibition centre for art in Europe and America in the late nineteenth century. Tracing the history of the salon from the French Revolution, when it was taken away from the Academy and opened to all artists, to the 1880s, Patricia Mainardi shows that its contradictory purposes, as didactic exhibition venue and art market place, resulted in its collapse. She also situates the salon within the shifting currents of art movements, from modern to traditional, and the evolving politics of the Third Republic, when France definitively chose a republican over a monarchic form of government. The book, which was originally published in 1993, demonstrates how all artists were forced to function within the framework of the social, economic and cultural changes then taking place and how art and social history are inextricably linked.
This book examines how and why the United States, Britain, France, and Germany failed to cope with the collapse of Yugoslavia and its descent into a savage civil war. This failure also shattered long-
Documents the final years of the eighteenth century as a period of tumultuous change marked by Russia's imperial power, the revolution in France, and America's near-collapse, events that the author re
The modern Middle East emerged out of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, when Britain and France partitioned the Ottoman Arab lands into several new colonial states. The following period was a charge
This collection of specially commissioned essays has been assembled as a tribute to Professor F. H. Hinsley, the foremost historian of British wartime intelligence. Strategic topics include the rapid collapse of France in 1940, Britain's response to it, and Russia's demand for a second front in Europe after she entered the war in 1941. Major diplomatic problems are also considered: the management of the British Foreign Office during the period of appeasement, how to prevent Franco's Spain from joining the Axis, how to handle the situation in Yugoslavia following Tito's successes with the Partisans, and Roosevelt's doctrine of 'unconditional surrender'. The book concludes with an assessment of the case against Germany over the invasion of Norway as it came before the Nuremberg Tribunal.
This volume, in Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare series, examines how France, Belgium and the Netherlands emerged from the military collapse and humiliating Nazi occupation they suffered during the Second World War. Rather than traditional armed conflict, the human consequences of Nazi policies were resistance, genocide and labour migration to Germany. Pieter Lagrou offers a genuinely comparative approach to these issues, based on extensive archival research; he underlines the divergence between ambiguous experiences of occupation and the univocal post-war patriotic narratives which followed. His book reveals striking differences in political cultures as well as close convergence in the creation of a common Western European discourse, and uncovers disturbing aspects of the aftermath of the war, including post-war antisemitism and the marginalisation of resistance veterans. Brilliantly researched and fluently written, this book will be of central interest to
Using a vast range of primary sources, this substantial and important volume provides a comprehensive analysis of the division and near-collapse of Habsburg authority during the 1550s. The principal episodes of this period (the death of Charles V, the accession of Philip II, and the latter's marriage to Mary Tudor) are well known in outline, but Dr Rodriguez-Salgado provides much that is new and original, both on the internal history of Spain, and on the highly complex diplomacy of the period. Why did Charles V and Philip I go to war against France, and Papacy and Islam, and how did the multinational empire survive the huge financial demands such wars placed upon it? Spanish relations with England and France are examined in detail, and The Changing Face of Empire does a great deal to illuminate the breakdown in relations with the Netherlands that was to culminate in the Dutch Revolt.
