This volume examines the power of Europe from 1830 to 1870.

This volume surveys the political, military and diplomatic history of a period of changing alliances and limited and gentlemanly but frequent wars. It gives particular weight to the emergence of Prussia and Russia as European Powers and to the rivalry of France and England in America, in India and on the high seas. The economic background to these national fortunes is of increasing international trade, technological progress and colonialisation. Socially, European society slowly evolved from the domination of the aristocracy to that of urban populations and bourgeois administrators. Intellectually, the culture of Europe took on what are recognized as specifically eighteenth-century forms and ideals. From the point of view of world history this period saw the confirmation of European pre-eminence and dominion.

Brokers of Culture analyzes how Italian Jesuit missionary émigrés attempted to integrate a heterogeneous western population (Native Americans, Hispanics, European immigrants, and native-born Americans) into a global religious community while simultaneously facilitating those groups’ entry into American society.

This important collection of classic articles and papers presents a variety of perspectives on key topics in international security and conflict. These include how the structure of the international system constrains nations’ choices, how domestic politics may affect decisions on war and peace, how individual and small group behaviour can affect foreign policy, and how international organizations can affect the security of states and peoples. Some of the selections are classics, but most represent recent research and analysis. They draw on international scholars working from different kinds of theories (realist, liberal-institutionalist and constructivist) and research methods to ask why nation-states may fight violently or stay at peace.

Experts consider whether American primacy will endure or if the future holds a multipolar world of several great powers. The unprecedented military, economic, and political power of the United States has led some observers to declare that we live in a unipolar world in which America enjoys primacy or even hegemony. At the same time public opinion polls abroad reveal high levels of anti-Americanism, and many foreign governments criticize U.S. policies. Primacy and Its Discontents explores the sources of American primacy, including the uses of U.S. military power, and the likely duration of unipolarity. It offers theoretical arguments for why the rest of the world will—or will not—align against the United States. Several chapters argue that the United States is not immune to the long-standing tendency of states to balance against power, while others contend that wise U.S. policies, the growing role of international institutions, and the spread of liberal democracy can limit anti-American balancing. The final chapters debate whether countries are already engaging in "soft balancing" against the United States. The contributors offer alternative prescriptions for U.S. foreign policy, ranging from vigorous efforts to maintain American primacy to acceptance of a multipolar world of several great powers. Contributors Gerard Alexander, Stephen Brooks, John G. Ikenberry, Christopher Layne, Keir Lieber, John Owen IV, Robert Pape, T. V. Paul, Barry Posen, Kenneth Waltz, William Wohlforth

During the Cold War, nationalism fell from favour among theorists as an explanatory factor in history, as Marxists and liberals looked to class and individualism as the driving forces of change. The resurgence of nationalism after the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, called for a reconsideration of the paradigm. Against Orthodoxy uses case studies from around the world to critically evaluate decades of new scholarship. The authors argue that theories of nationalism have ossified into a new set of orthodoxies. These overlook nationalism’s role as a generative force, one that reflects complex historical, political, and cultural arrangements that defy simplistic explanations.

World War I represents one of the most studied, yet least understood, systemic conflicts in modern history. At the time, it was a major power war that was largely unexpected. This book refines and expands points made in the author’s earlier work on the failure to prevent World War I. It provides an alternative viewpoint to the thesis of Christopher Clark, Fritz Fischer, Paul Kennedy, among others, as to the war's long-term origins. By starting its analysis with the causes and consequences of the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War and the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, the study systematically explores the key geostrategic, political-economic and socio-cultural-ideological disputes between France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Russia, Japan, the United States and Great Britain, the nature of their foreign policy goals, alliance formations, arms rivalries, as well as the dynamics of the diplomatic process, so as to better explain the deeper roots of the 'Great War'. The book concludes with a discussion of the war's relevance and the diplomatic failure to forge a possible Anglo-German-French alliance, while pointing out how it took a second world war to realize Victor Hugo’s nineteenth-century vision of a United States of Europe-a vision now being challenged by financial crisis and Russia's annexation of Crimea.