GHIL Lecture

Willibald Steinmetz

Writing a History of 19th-Century Europe:

Challenges, Conundrums, Complexities

Narrating the 19th Century: New Approaches

17 May 2016

(0:50 h)

GHIL Lecture

Willibald Steinmetz

Writing a History of 19th-Century Europe:
Challenges, Conundrums, Complexities

This lecture deals with ways of narrating the history of Europe in the nineteenth century. How should we define Europe? What were its specific features in the nineteenth century? One suggestion is that nineteenth-century Europeans were obsessed with comparisons and competitions. Another idea is that they were caught in endless paradoxical demands for equality and recognition of difference.

Willibald Steinmetz is the current Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Political History at Bielefeld University. Among his publications in English are the edited volumes Writing Political History Today (2013), and Political Languages in the Age of Extremes (2011).