War and Social Change in Modern Europe: The Great Transformation Revisited

Halperin traces the persistence of traditional class structures during the development of industrial capitalism in Europe, and the way in which these structures shaped states and state behavior and generated conflict. She documents European conflicts between 1789 and 1914, including small and medium scale conflicts often ignored by researchers and links these conflicts to structures characteristic of industrial capitalist development in Europe before 1945. This book revisits the historical terrain of Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation (1944), however, it argues that Polanyi’s analysis is, in important ways, inaccurate and misleading. Ultimately, the book shows how and why the conflicts both culminated in the world wars and brought about a ‘great transformation’ in Europe. Its account of this period challenges not only Polanyi’s analysis, but a variety of influential perspectives on nationalism, development, conflict, international systems change, and globalization.

• Focuses on the interrelationship of global structures, states, and social forces in conflict and social change • Details the key role of imperialist wars and social conflicts both in Europe’s industrial expansion and in bringing about the great transformation • Illuminates parallels between the political dynamics of ‘globalization’ and those that gave rise to the dismantling of systems of national welfare and regulated markets in eighteenth-century Europe

1. Conflict and change in world politics; Industrial expansion in nineteenth-century Europe: a critique of the Polanyian view; Conflict and change: a class approach; The Great Transformation, revisited; Part I. Social Forces, Industrial Expansion, and Conflict in Europe’s Nineteenth-Century Market System: 2. The first transformation: social forces in the rise of Europe’s nineteenth-century market system; The aristocratic - ‘absolutist’ conflict; National political revolutions and the struggle for the state; The new balance of social power and the new European order; Class conflict, revolution, and war; 3. Europe’s nineteenth-century industrial expansion: a ‘bottom up’ perspective; The dual economy; Domestic markets; The circuit of capital; 4. Europe’s century of war, 1815–1914; Conflict and dualistic industrial expansion; Labor, enfranchisement, and ethnic struggles; Imperialist conflicts; 5. World War I and the post-war retrenchment; Imperialism and war in Europe; The post-war retrenchment; Labor, democracy, and minorities between the wars; Imperialism in the interwar years; Part II. The Interregnum: 6. The polarization of European society, 1918–39; Prelude: challenge and response, threat and compromise before World War I; Post-war revolutionary currents and the Fascist reaction; The polarization of European society; 7. The politics of appeasement and counter-revolution: international relations in Europe between the wars; British appeasement policies; The ‘appeasers’; alternative interpretations; Part III. The Great Transformation: 8. The post-World War II order; Europe’s post-World War II social peace and prosperity; Social structure and development in post-war Europe; Peace in Europe; 9. The great transformation and the eternal return: ‘globalization’ reconsidered; Europe’s nineteenth-century industrial expansion: the ‘great transformation’ revisited; Globalization: the ‘great transformation’ reversed?