In recent years, there has been a skyrocketing success of global histories of states and regions that have not been the traditional foci of global history. Since 2017, a series of volumes has appeared on the global history of Sicily, Catalonia, Spain, Portugal and Hungary, among others. In this article, we offer some cautionary tales and challenges; we explore emerging directions in the field, as well as its potential limitations, and advocate for a dynamic approach, which allows us to see how East-Central and Southern European societies played a crucial if not always glorious part at specific historical turning points and eras, be it in the first era of globalisation before 1914, during the First and Second World Wars or in the Cold War. In the absence of the Southern and East-Central European perspective, the global history of colonialism, decolonisation or modern warfare is at best incomplete; at worst, skewed.

This paper aims at a re-appraisal of the relationship between ordoliberalism and early European integration. This will be pursued through a reconceptualisation of the ordoliberal framework – with an emphasis on correcting its misperception as an exclusively German tradition and its re-constitution within a transnational neoliberal framework. Moving beyond nation-centric historiography and building on research of transnational epistemic communities, this paper will examine the role of the neoliberal framework as a mutually shared approach towards markets and regulatory institutions that animated key architects of European integration. Those responsible for designing integration did not meet and negotiate as representatives of particular national interests or nationally distinct political economies. They shared common perspectives and goals framed within a specific liberal orientation with particular views about the economy, the state and the legal/institutional framework necessary for embedding the market orientation of European integration, best captured by the transnational neoliberal framework.

Through archival research, this article examines the relationship between the UK government, UK banks and the Bank of England during the development of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) sovereign debt crisis in Poland, Romania and Hungary. UK banks played a key role in the development of East–West relations during the Cold War through actively developing business ties with CEE countries. This article reveals that the UK government saw these relationships as a means to further its foreign policy goals towards the region and strengthen East–West European political and economic ties, which it sought to encourage through the use of export credit guarantees. It also illustrates how these foreign policy goals were the motivation for the UK government to encourage continued lending to Poland, Romania and Hungary during the outbreak of the CEE sovereign debt crisis through the Bank of England in its role as an intermediary between the government and banks. The article contributes to the underexplored role of export credit agencies, specifically the UK’s Export Credit Guarantee Department (ECGD), in the development of the sovereign debt crisis and demonstrates how UK banks helped finance the UK’s foreign policy toward CEE during the Cold War with the support and encouragement of the UK government.

This article examines the role played by Serbian demographers in the lead-up to the Yugoslav Wars. I argue that demographic research contributed to nationalist narratives and territorial claims. Demographers propagated concepts such as the ‘demographic threat’ posed by non-Serb populations, particularly Albanians and Bosnian Muslims, and the notion of ‘genocide’ against Serbs. They linked fertility, ethnicity and territory. By focusing on the most prominent Yugoslav/Serbian demographer, Miloš Macura, and the research institutions he set up, the article traces the radicalisation of demography during the 1980s. I argue that demographers used nationalism to reframe demographic processes in ethnic terms and thereby increase their status. The work of these demographers influenced political leaders and was widely disseminated to the public, shaping collective consciousness and preparing the ground for conflict. The analysis is based on contemporaneous expert literature, policy documents and archival information. It also highlights the role of international debates about the connection between demography and development.

One of the most attention-grabbing (and frequently studied) aspects of the international medical congresses held in Europe around 1900 concerns the scientific topics debated at them. However, how did these congress participants effectively interact with each other in these international meetings, when most physicians did not share the same language? This article centres on a theme that has not been sufficiently explored: the challenges of multilingualism in a globalising world of medical science amid growing imperial tensions and cosmopolitan ideals. Analysing the congresses held in Rome (1894), Moscow (1897), Paris (1900) and Madrid (1903), I redefine the meaning of cosmopolitanism as a crucial social framework that facilitated predictable and amicable ways of interaction between participants. At the same time, I argue that multilingualism and the frequent misunderstandings arising from language diversity have played a significant role in reshaping the ‘centre–periphery’ relations of scientific communication. As physicians from different national and linguistic backgrounds struggled to communicate in them, language became a key element to understand the politicisation and nationalisation of science at the turn of the century.

This paper explores the role played by the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in the technological transfer that benefited the Bulgarian electronics industry. Utilising UNIDO and Bulgarian sources, it demonstrates the key role this technical assistance played in the growth of the socialist state’s electronic industry. Despite the official priority of North–South relations in its agenda, UNIDO developed a special relationship with the Eastern Bloc. The paper shows the critical avenue of West–East technology and expertise transfer by focusing on one of the main technical assistance projects, which supported the Research Institute for Instrument Design (NIPKIP) in Sofia. The paper assesses the impact of UNIDO’s programmes on the whole process of building an electronics industry in Bulgaria and shows converging but distinctive strategies. UNIDO facilitated the socialist state’s re-entry into the European economic and expertise exchange space and helped raise it to be a provider of technical assistance too.

This article analyses how forms of private cooperation between East and West were reshaped during the late Cold War and beyond. It does so by studying an elitist East–West club, called the International Vienna Council, which brings together leaders of multinational companies and leaders of the planned economy. While the permeability of the iron curtain has been well documented, little is known about the evolution of East–West circulation patterns during that time or the role played by economic elites. The International Vienna Council, initially a forum for ‘parallel diplomacy’, gradually became a platform for concrete business cooperation. The club’s activities continued after 1989, but it struggled with the transition from an East–West club to an interest group within the European Union. These dynamics shed light on the gradual autonomy of a private East–West cooperation group and its contribution to defining a pan-European economic space since the 1970s.

This article explores the role of the Vatican and Catholic aid agencies in resettling European displaced victims of war in the aftermath of the Second World War, contributing to the field of refugee history and humanitarian studies. Focusing on the entanglements between Catholic humanitarians and UN agencies such as UNRRA and IRO, it shows how controlling mobility and managing population movements became a central part of the Vatican’s agenda and paved the way to greater involvement of the Catholic Church in the post-war reconstruction. In doing so, the essay intersects primary sources (predominantly from the Vatican and US Catholic archives) and different historiographical debates, with the aim of nuancing our understanding of post-war ‘refugeedom’ and the emergence of the ‘Cold War West’.

The article examines intellectual and political debates on human rights that took place between the European Economic Community (EEC) and the Africa, Caribbean and the Pacific Group of Countries (ACP) in the context of the Lomé Convention between 1988 and 1991. In this period, the debate between the two groups exploded and resulted in intellectual compromises, and had significant political consequences for the practical implementation of Lomé. Drawing on recently declassified archival material from the Historical Archives of the European Union, as well as periodicals and archival materials from the United Kingdom and France, the article traces the intellectual and political evolution of the issue of human rights in between the global north and global south. As a development cooperation agreement, Lomé provided a space for representatives of the EEC and the ACP to advance and negotiate their own understandings of human rights, particularly their supposed universality and their connection to development.

The paper analyses the creation of socialist Poland’s foreign and foreign economic policies from 1957 to 1967, focusing on the country’s involvement with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the European Economic Community (EEC). It argues that for the Polish policymakers, the interest in accession to GATT went beyond economic benefits such as alleviating the EEC’s protectionism and securing better terms for exports to the Common Market. Joining the Agreement was also important for the political goals of Polish diplomacy and was considered a part of a general drive for rapprochement with the West and implementation of the principle of peaceful coexistence. Redefining the scope of foreign policy, Polish diplomats attempted to embed Poland in a network of international interdependency and wanted to see the country as a pioneer of the East–West détente.

This article deals with the reception of the Yugoslav model of self-management in Italy between the 1950s and 1970s. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources from Yugoslav and Italian archives, this research provides new evidence about transnational exchanges of models of industrial democracy that transcended ideological barriers and the Cold War divide and linked Italian party elites, trade unions and Christian-oriented movements to the ‘Yugoslav model’ in a common search for a ‘third way’ in industrial relations.

This article examines one of thousands of reports describing murder trials that are stored in the archives of the Habsburg ruler in Vienna. The monarch was required to evaluate every civilian death sentence in his realm, including the Kingdom of Hungary, and he alone could decide if the execution should proceed or be commuted. But it was the relevant justice minister who composed the reports and framed the decision for the monarch. Through these reports, the minister shaped what would happen through persuasive narrative and expert advice. After evaluating seven hundred reports, we selected one specific case: a murder conviction in Budapest in 1915. We show how the justice minister, an expert in criminal justice reform and an opponent of the death penalty, directed the emperor towards clemency and contributed to the steady decrease in the use of capital punishment.

Since the 1970s, Japan has occupied a position of political, economic, and technological power. The article argues that Japan’s rise during this period resulted in increased European East-West cooperation. Firstly, it demonstrates the threat posed by Japanese competition in sectors such as automobiles and electronics encouraged the expansion of Western European companies into Eastern Europe. Secondly, by examining the case of Poland, it shows how Japan’s rise served as a model for opening socialist economies. Viewing the increase in East-West European cooperation through Japan’s ascent offers a fresh perspective on this phenomenon. It illustrates how the emergence of new global powers facilitated the fragmentation of Cold War divisions, enabling a more balanced understanding of the political and economic motivations behind this cooperation in capitalist and socialist countries. It also suggests that East-West European cooperation was shaped by a broader global transformation that escapes a purely Cold War logic.

This article reassesses the relationship between the British government and British commercial interests during the Spanish civil war. It has often been argued that British economic interests inclined the government toward non-intervention, effectively favouring Franco’s insurgents over the Spanish Republic. However, records from the Spanish Emergency Committee (SEC) – a little-known and hitherto unstudied committee formed by British insurers operating in Spain – reveal a more nuanced picture. Initially, the SEC pursued ‘mercantile neutrality’, avoiding state involvement and playing little if any role in the British government’s policy of non-intervention. But as their efforts to protect their interests failed under increasing Francoist pressure and a worsening European political context, they turned to the British government for support. The SEC’s experience highlights the complexities of state–capital relations during the inter-war period and the difficulty of defining ‘national’ interests in times of crisis, showing how business archives can provide new insights into key debates in international history.

In 1924, the Italian ship Regia Nave Italia visited twenty-eight ports in thirteen Latin American states. Initially conceived as a commercial venture, it became a tool of Mussolini’s foreign policy led by Giovanni Giurati, a cabinet minister appointed as extraordinary ambassador. This article uncovers the colonial agenda of this voyage, arguing that a racialised vision of the Italian diaspora in Latin America shaped strategic alignments between the fascist government and Italian economic elites. It shows how ideas of race, migration, and Latinity configured discursive strategies designed to materialise fascism’s project of demographic imperialism through engagement with local authorities and their population policies. Within a longer genealogy of colonial practice, the Regia Nave Italia illustrates how Italy’s informal empire intersected with fascist ambitions across the Atlantic.

This response to Robert Gerwarth and Gwendal Piégais’s special issue on humanitarianism and civil wars in Europe has three parts. First, it aims to situate the authors’ findings in the broader context of what might be termed the ‘dialectic of humanitarianism’ – namely the reciprocal tendency of the violence of war, and notably civil war, and the mobilisation of humanitarian aid for its victims, to reinforce each other. Second, it considers in more detail some of the implications of the findings of all of the authors on the specific challenges posed by civil wars for ‘humanitarianism’ and for the ways in which we might write the history of the latter in the future. Finally, it reflects briefly on one key aspect of that history, namely the politicisation of humanitarian aid.

We examine the construction of a pan-European economic space from the perspective of the activities of the Liaison Committee of the International Chamber of Commerce with the Chambers of Commerce of the Socialist Countries. We make three important contributions. First, we show that the Cold War does not mark the end of economic exchanges between Eastern and Western Europe but is part of a longer history in which Eastern Europe was an economic periphery of Western Europe. Second, we emphasise that some Eastern European actors from Czechoslovakia and Hungary used the Committee to develop their contacts with the West and gain some independence vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. Western European businessmen also sought to expand their sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, to the detriment of their American competitors. Third, we highlight the complex relationship between states and business in both blocs and the porosity between ‘political’ and ‘economic’ issues during the Cold War.

While the impact of the two world wars and other inter-state conflicts on the history of humanitarianism has been a major area of research for some time now, comparatively little work has been done on the question of how internal wars impacted on the ways in which transnational actors and institutions approached the issue of offering relief to populations caught up in armed conflicts. Through seven articles and a thematic introduction, this collection covers conflicts that occurred in the years 1917–1949 when Europe experienced a remarkable spike in civil war violence, from Russia to Spain, and from Ireland to Greece. Collectively, these articles offer a fresh analysis of the connections between civil wars and the evolution of modern humanitarianism during Europe’s mid-twentieth-century crisis, highlighting transnational connections between humanitarian practices and actors across several conflicts.

Cold War historiography has long assumed an interruption of most pan-European, West–East economic relations between 1945 and 1989, before the circulation paradigm imposed the idea of a porosity of the ‘iron curtain’. This article offers a double displacement in the analysis of pan-European economic connections during the Cold War. It first highlights the legacy, up to the late 1950s, of pan-European economic debates about socialist economics that have been developed in the interwar period within the communist parties’ network in Europe. Second, it shows how these networks created opportunities in the people’s democracies for challenging the implementation of the Soviet economic model. A clear Cold War divide in the field of economic ideas was delayed, at least until the beginning of the 1960s. A pan-European discussion about the limits of the equation between central planning and socialist economics, developed in capitalist interwar Germany, lived on.

Scholarship on minorities in the inter-war period have largely ignored the Flemish question. One obvious reason is that the Flemish accounted for a majority of Belgium’s population. This article, however, argues that the domestic and international historiography would benefit from considering the Flemish a minority, albeit a peculiar one. I suggest that the Flemish question embodies the contradictions of an age in which the nationality question ‘morphed into the minority question’ (as Holly Case has pointed out) without disappearing altogether. The article traces the evolution of different understandings of Flanders in the Belgo-Dutch-German transnational space and shows how such understandings challenge traditional conceptions of minorities, majorities, nationalities and kin states. The article further contributes to a broader shift in historiographies of nationalism and diversity in inter-war Europe by moving focus from East to West and considering minority questions as a pan-European phenomenon.