Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. 'The King’s in His Castle... All’s Right with the World': The
Collapse of the Middle Ages
2. 'The Other Reformation': Martin Luther, Religious Dogma and the
Common People
3. 'The World Turned Upside Down': The Crisis of the Seventeenth
Century and the English Revolution, 1640-49
4. The Rise of the Third Estate: The French People Revolt
5. Becoming an Appendage to the Machine: The Revolution in
Production
6. From the Revolutions of 1848-49 to the First People's Democracy:
The Paris Commune
7. The Rise of the Working Classes: Trade Unions and Socialism,
1871-1914
8. Protest and Mutiny Confront Mass Slaughter: Europeans in World
War I
9. War Leads to Revolution: Russia (1917), Central Europe
(1918-19)
10. Economic Collapse and the Rise of Fascism, 1920-33
11. Against Fascist Terror: War and Genocide, 1933-45
12. A New Europe? 1945-48
13. Europeans in the Cold War: Between Moscow and Washington
14. From the Berlin Wall to the Prague Spring: A New Generation of
Europeans
15. Fighting for Peace in an Atomic Age, 1969-89
16. Europe Falls into the Twenty-First Century
Notes
Index
William A. Pelz (1951-2017) was Director of the Institute of Working Class History in Chicago and a Professor of History at Elgin Community College. His works include A People's History of the German Revolution, (Pluto, 2018) Wilhelm Liebknecht and German Social Democracy (Haymarket, 2015), The Eugene V. Debs Reader (Merlin Press, 2014) and A People's History of Modern Europe (Pluto, 2016).
'From the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 to the collapse of the Soviet
Union, William A. Pelz presents a challenging alternative to the
conventional narratives of European history'
*Ian Birchall, author of The Spectre of Babeuf (London)*
'A fascinating journey across centuries towards the world as we
experience it today. it is the voice of the ordinary people, the
less prominent figures, the women in particular, their ideas and
actions, protests and sufferings that have gone into the making of
this alternative narrative'
*Sobhanlal Datta Gupta, former Surendra Nath Banerjee Professor of
Political Science, University of Calcutta (India)*
'This is a history of Europe that doesn't remove the Europeans.
Here there are not only kings, presidents, institutions but the
pulse of the people and social organisations that shaped
Europe'
*Raquel Varela, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal)*
'This lively and engaging book is not the story of lords, kings and
rulers. It is the story of the ordinary people of Europe and their
struggles against those lords, kings and rulers, from the Middle
Ages to the present day'
*Francis King, editor, Socialist History*
'An exception to the rule that the winner takes all in
historiography'
*Sjaak van der Velden, International Institute of Social History
(Amsterdam)*
'The focus not only makes history relevant for contemporary debates
on social justice, it also urges the reader to develop a critical
approach towards sources, always asking who is represented and who
is lost'
*Ralf Hoffrogge, Ruhr-Universität Bochum*
'This book is a splendid antidote to the many European histories
dominated by kings, businessmen and generals. It should be on the
shelves of both academics and activists ... a lively and
informative intellectual tour de force'
*Marcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social History
(Amsterdam)*
'Well-written and engrossing'
*Morning Star*
'Gives an illuminating history of the class struggles and revolts
which accompanied the modernisation of Europe'
*Counterfire*
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