Power and the Nation in European History

Len Scales is Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Durham. He has written articles for various journals such as Past and Present and the Journal of Contemporary History. Oliver Zimmer was educated at the University of Zurich (Lic. Phil. I) and at the London School of Economics and Political Science (PhD), and he began his academic career at the University of Durham in 1999. In 2005 he took up a University Lectureship (CUF) at the University of Oxford. Previous publications include A Contested Nation: History, Memory and Nationalism in Switzerland 1761–1891 (Cambridge, 2003) and Nationalism in Europe, 1890–1940 (2003).

'The sixteen essays in L. Scales and O. Zimmer (eds), Power and the Nation in European History combine to form an excellent volume, ranging chronologically from medieval to modern times.' Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature

• Introduction Len Scales and Oliver Zimmer; Part I. Approaches and Debates: 1. Were there nations in antiquity? Anthony D. Smith; 2. The idea of the nation as a political community Susan Reynolds; 3. Changes in the political uses of the nation: continuity or discontinuity? John Breuilly; Part II. The Middle Ages: 4. Germanic power structures: the early English experience Patrick Wormald; 5. The historiography of the Anglo-Saxon 'nation-state' Sarah Foot; 6. Exporting state and nation: English institutions and English identity in medieval Ireland Robin Frame; 7. Late medieval Germany: an under-Stated nation? Len Scales; Part III. Routes to Modernity: 8. The state and Russian national identity Geoffrey Hosking; 9. Ordering the kaleidoscope: the construction of identities in the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth since 1569 Robert Frost; 10. Nationhood at the margin: identity, regionality and the English crown in the seventeenth century Tim Thornton; 11. The nation in the age of Revolution Ian McBride; Part IV. Modernity: 12. Enemies of the Nation? Nobles, foreigners and the constitution of national citizenship in the French Revolution Jennifer Heuer; 13. Nations, nation and power in Italy, c.1700–1915 Stuart Woolf; 14. Political institutions and nationhood in Germany, 1750–1914 Abigail Green; 15. Nation, nationalism and power in Switzerland, c.1760–1900 Oliver Zimmer; 16. Nation and power in the liberal state: Britain c.1800–c.1914 Peter Mandler.