This book is a transnational history of European weapons law that utilizes the law and primary sources to trace the development from early portable firearms to modern-day weapons. Challenging many conventional assumptions, this book establishes that weapons control in the current sense is a new phenomenon. Control with possession only became dominant between 1918 and 1939, thereby establishing a high degree of uniformity for the first time. Weapons law is old in Western Europe, but only as a palette of possible solutions. Possession control triumphed as a tool against Communist and Fascist attacks on democracy and remained as an instrument against crime and accidents. It is argued that previously the laws on possession furthered rather than hindered ownership. For centuries, governments sought security by encouraging trusted men to arm themselves, rather than disarming the suspect. Legislators used a range of carrying restrictions, sometimes many but mostly few, as a tool against armed crime. The author examines attitudes and policies towards power, law, violence, social hierarchy, national defence, and civic freedom. This volume offers historians and social scientists a new perspective on the long-term development of Western European states and societies, and it will be of value to undergraduate and postgraduate students of history, sociology, and politics.

This book is a transnational history of European weapons law that utilises the law and primary sources to trace the development from early portable firearms to modern day weapons. Challenging many conventional assumptions, this book establishes that weapons control in the current sense is a new phenomenon. Control with possession only became dominant between 1918 and 1939, thereby establishing a high degree of uniformity for the first time. Weapons law is old in Western Europe, but only as a palette of possible solutions. Possession control triumphed as a tool against Communist and Fascist attacks on democracy and remained as an instrument against crime and accidents. It is argued that previously, the laws on possession furthered rather than hindered ownership. For centuries, governments sought security by encouraging trusted men to arm themselves, rather than disarming the suspect. Legislators used a range of carrying restrictions, sometimes many but mostly few, as a tool against armed crime. The author examines attitudes and policies towards power, law, violence, social hierarchy, national defence, and civic freedom. This volume offers historians and social scientists a new perspective on the long-term development of Western European states and societies, and it will be of value to undergraduate and postgraduate students of history, sociology, and politics.

In introducing the student to the history of the development of European culture, the problem of proportion has seemed to me, throughout, the fundamental one. Consequently I have endeavored not only to state matters truly and clearly but also to bring the narrative into harmony with the most recent conceptions of the relative importance of past events and institutions. It has seemed best, in an elementary treatise upon so vast a theme, to omit the names of many personages and conflicts of secondary importance which have ordinarily found their way into our historical text-books. I have ventured also to neglect a considerable number of episodes and anecdotes which, while hallowed by assiduous repetition, appear to owe their place in our manuals rather to accident or mere tradition than to any profound meaning for the student of the subject. The space saved by these omissions has been used for three main purposes. Institutions under which Europe has lived for centuries, above all the Church, have been discussed with a good deal more fullness than is usual in similar manuals. The life and work of a few men of indubitably first-rate importance in the various fields of human endeavor—Gregory the Great, Charlemagne, Abelard, St. Francis, Petrarch, Luther, Erasmus, Voltaire, Napoleon, Bismarck—have been treated with care proportionate to their significance for the world. Lastly, the scope of the work has been broadened so that not only the political but also the economic, intellectual, and artistic achievements of the past form an integral part of the narrative. I have relied upon a great variety of sources belonging to the various orders in the hierarchy of historical literature; it is happily unnecessary to catalogue these. In some instances I have found other manuals, dealing with portions of my field, of value. In the earlier chapters, Emerton's admirableIntroduction to the Middle Ages furnished many suggestions. For later periods, the same may be said of Henderson's careful Germany in the Middle Ages and Schwill's clear and well-proportioned History of Modern Europe. For the most recent period, I have made constant use of Andrews' scholarlyDevelopment of Modern Europe. For England, the manuals of Green and Gardiner have been used. The greater part of the work is, however, the outcome of study of a wide range of standard special treatises dealing with some short period or with a particular phase of European progress. As examples of these, I will mention only Lea's monumental contributions to our knowledge of the jurisprudence of the Church, Rashdall's History of the Universities in the Middle Ages, Richter's incomparable Annalen der Deutschen Geschichte im Mittelalter, the Histoire Générale, and the well-known works of Luchaire, Voigt, Hefele, Bezold, Janssen, Levasseur, Creighton, Pastor. In some cases, as in the opening of the Renaissance, the Lutheran Revolt, and the French Revolution, I have been able to form my opinions to some extent from first-hand material.

This book provides an in-depth contextual analysis of the role of international law in the growth of British presence in West Africa during the early- and mid-nineteenth century. It highlights this period as an important experimentation phase which saw the genesis of the treaties that have now become associated with the Scramble for Africa.

Examines early modern Spanish contributions to international relations by focusing on ambivalence of natural rights in European colonial expansion to the Americas.

This book offers a comprehensive and comparative analysis of the history of passports, border surveillance, border crossing, and other elements of European border regimes in the 20th century. Border regime is interpreted widely, including inbound and outbound travels, permanent and temporary movements, distance and local border traffic, borderland fortifications, penalties for borderland offences, and also restrictions of free movement, even inside a given country. Based on archival sources from Hungary and the Czech Republic, extensive literature and more than two decades of research, the author distinguishes between two basic border regimes: the restrictive eastern and the permissive western systems, and a transitional zone between them. The historical development of these regimes is discussed in the framework of waves of globalisation and territorialisation. Border Regimes in Twentieth Century Europe offers the first-ever systematic comparison of European border regimes for students, scholars, and any readers who are interested in travel history, border studies, globalisation, area studies and 20th century Europe, including everyday history. By presenting their different historical experiences, the book contributes to a better understanding between old and new member states of the European Union, as well as between member and non-member states.

This proceedings book gathers selected papers that were submitted to the 2020 International Conference on Comprehensible Science (ICCS 2020) that aims to make available the discussion and the publication of papers on all aspects of single and multi-disciplinary research on Conference topics. ICCS 2020 held on October 30–31, 2020. An important characteristic feature of Conference is the short publication time and world-wide distribution. Written by respected researchers, the book covers a range of innovative topics related to: Big Data & Data Mining; Business, Finance & Accounting & Statistics; COVID-19 Impact; Educational Technologies; Innovative Applied Sciences; Innovative Economics; Management Technologies & Systems; Media Technologies; Physical & Material Sciences; Medicine, Public Health & Rehabilitation. This book is useful for private and professional non-commercial research and classroom use (e.g. sharing the contribution by mail or in hard copy form with research colleagues for their professional non-commercial research and classroom use); for use in presentations or handouts for any level students, researchers, etc.; for the further development of authors’ scientific career (e.g. by citing and attaching contributions to job or grant application).