Democracy is often understood as institutional forms abstracted from the political, social and intellectual history of Europe. This course will instead analyse assumptions, developments and crises of democracies in the nineteenth and twentieth century, with particular attention to the legacies of the major conflicts (First and Second World War; Cold War), to the periods of transformation and transition, to the antidemocratic dynamics of interwar Europe.
Attending students are required to rely on notes taken over the course and to prepare on one of the books of group (a) and on one of the books of the group (b). Non-attending students are required to prepare on the two books of group (a) and on one of the books of the group (b):
a)
M. Mazower, Le ombre dell'Europa. Democrazie e totalitarismi nel XX secolo, Garzanti, Milano 2000
J. W. Mueller, L'enigma democrazia. Le idee politiche nell'Europa del Novecento, Einaudi, Torino 2014
b)
R. Evans, Alla conquista del potere. Europa, 1815-1914, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2020
C. Clark, I sonnambuli. Come l'Europa arrivò alla Grande guerra, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2013
G. Claeys, Marx e il marxismo, Einaudi, Torino 2020
P. Gatrell, L'inquietudine dell'Europa. Come la migrazione ha rimodellato un continente, Einaudi, Torino 2020
R. Gerwarth, La rabbia dei vinti. La guerra dopo la guerra 1917-1923, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2017
I. Kershaw, All'inferno e ritorno. Europa, 1914-1949, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2016
T. Snyder, Terre di sangue. L'Europa tra Hitler e Stalin, Rizzoli, Milano 2011
S. Pons, La rivoluzione globale. Storia del comunismo internazionale dal 1917 al 1991, Einaudi, Torino 2012
M. Mazower, L'Impero di Hitler. Come i nazisti governavano l'Europa occupata, Mondadori, Milano 2010
I. Deak, Europa a processo. Collaborazionismo, resistenza e giustizia fra guerra e dopoguerra, Il Mulino, Bologna 2019
T. Judt, Postwar. Europa 1945-2005, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2017
P. Hanebrink, Uno spettro si aggira per l'Europa. Il mito del bolscevismo giudaico, Einaudi, Torino 2019
R. Paxton, Il fascismo in azione. Che cosa hanno veramente fatto i movimenti fascisti per affermarsi in Europa, Mondadori, Milano 2006
In agreement with the teacher, the students may ask for other texts.
Learning Objectives
The course intends to provide the students with fundamental means for orienting themselves in the history of contemporary Europe, analysing the different regions of East and West in a comparative framework. Notably, it aims at investigating the processes of democracy-building, their different stages and forms, with special attention to the crises of the interwar period.
Prerequisites
It is recommended to have already passed the examination of contemporary history.
Teaching Methods
The course will be based on frontal lessons.
In case, a part of the course will be held in form of presentation and discussion of texts (a book, some articles) by the students.
Type of Assessment
The final examination is oral. It aims at assessing the acquisition of the knowledge in the history of contemporary Europe and of its main questions. An optional book presentation is scheduled for attending students. The evaluation of the presentation will add between 1/30 to 3/30 to the mark of the oral examination.
Course program
The course aims at explaining the history of contemporary democracy in the different contexts where it was born, was contested and overthrown. The analysis will follow the different trajectories of democracy-building, the various political cultures that legitimised the democratic institutions, and the political and social transformations they implied in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe. A special attention will be devoted to the transitions and crises of democracy in interwar Europe. Overcoming the traditional dualism between East and West, inherited by the Cold War, it intends to investigate which were the convergences and divergences between different imperial and national experiences both in Western Europe and in East Central and South-Eastern Europe.
In the first part the course will present a general overview of the preconditions for the ascent of the early democratic forms, from the political revolutions of the late eighteenth century to the Great War. At the core of the analysis will lie the various conceptions of democracy and the conflicting relations with liberalism and socialism, as well as the different forms of antiliberal and antidemocratic, populist and antisocialist reactions. While the forms of popular participation developed in Europe, new waves of authoritarianism, nationalism and racism arose.
The course will tackle the cycle of war and revolution of 1914-1922, with the aim of analysing the violent backlashes of the post-war period, the collapse of the continental Empires and the formation of the new nation-states and democratic institutions: a competition between different ideas of Europe derived from post-war disorder – one that marked both the effort of reconstruction in the 1920s and the subsequent crisis of the 1930s. A special attention will be devoted to the crisis of the liberal democracy, of the ascent of new, violent political experiments (fascism, Nazism, Soviet communism.
A final part of the course will point out the fundamental features of the long post-war period up to 1989-1991: the legacies of the Second World War, the divisions of the Cold War and the different paths of the constitutional democracies in Western Europe and of the popular democracies in Western Europe, the drivers of development and crisis between the 1960s and 1970s, up to the transformations of the 1980s, to the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Communist regimes, to the process of European integration.