Continuity and Change in Contemporary Europe

Continuity and Change in Contemporary Europe focuses on the dramatic events in Eastern and Western Europe over recent years, events which have not produced the 'golden age' which many people expected when the Berlin Wall came down. In fact, Europe in the 1990s is, the authors argue, in many ways a more uncertain place than it was before 1989. This is not due simply to recent events themselves, but also to longer term historical problems. Hence the book traces the complex interplay of past continuities and present day changes in an increasingly unified Europe by looking at national experiences and at the broader international and institutional context. The authors cover the status quo in the aftermath of the last war, economic and social growth and attempts at European integration; the new developments of the 1980s with the surge in Western European integration, glasnost and perestroika, and the revolutions in Eastern Europe; and giving special attention to the problems of the 1990s, in the European Union, inside the states of Europe, and in security and international affairs. Undergraduates will find Continuity and Change in Contemporary Europe especially helpful since it deals not just with history, but current affairs, the emerging challenges with which Europe is increasingly faced, and ways to understand them.